Port Mozilla, Collect $3696

An anonymous reader writes "The goal of the AmiZilla effort is to raise such an obscene/huge amount of money to give away to the first programmer/team that can port Mozilla to Amiga that Amiga programmers will be falling over themselves getting this application coded in record time. The booty currently stands at $3696. Parties interested in making some extra cash to pay off student loans/go on a wild bender can find more infomation here."

Comments

I would rather see it coded well

[earthforce_1]

Than coded fast. Code that is cranked out in record time ususally isn't efficient or stable. How do you verify that the winning code contains no major bugs?

Re:I would rather see it coded well

[TheViciousOverWind]

Well... My guess is that they'd be happy with a bit buggy browser at first, which can then be approved upon.

Re:I would rather see it coded well

[peksik]

I believe the idea isn't to get fully tested bug-free code, but moreover to get a somewhat working version of Mozilla to kickstart the development. It would work both as a proof of concept and a nice base for the port.

Re:I would rather see it coded well

[jago25_98]

but they have NOTHING right now.

let's just pause to imagine that right now...

ah.

Re:I would rather see it coded well

[jafuser]

to get a somewhat working version of Mozilla to kickstart the development.

Was this an intentional Amiga pun?

Obscene?

[emo boy]

Is $3676 an obscene amount of money now?

Re:Obscene?

[MickLinux]

By next year, you should be able to buy an ice cream cone with it.

I'd say that comes pretty close.

Re:Obscene?

[emo boy]

The point I was trying to make was that in order to create a piece of software that works well and represents the rest of Mozilla community well will probably take a lot more funding than 4k. How much more are they likely to raise for this project?

Great Idea

[Jedi1USA]

Nothing like cold hard cash to get someones attention. This isn't "pay off the mortgage" kind of money, but better than a poke in the eye with a stick.

$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[Speare]

If the port should take four man-weeks to do, that works out to about $23 dollars per hour. Somehow I think they're going to need to collect more bounty before developers would "fall all over themselves" for the task.

That said, if I had extra cash, I'd offer bounties for small programming tasks. My home life doesn't afford enough hacking time to do all of the ideas I write down, and I would love to parcel them out for a hobby-sized bounty to students or other junior coders who also want to use it as a learning opportunity.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[Cocoronixx]

There was a website like this. Cant find the link, but you would submit a project you want wrlitten, contact info, and amount you are willing to pay. I think the site also required the programs be GPLd.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[kinnell]

that works out to about $23 dollars per hour. Somehow I think they're going to need to collect more bounty before developers would "fall all over themselves" for the task

$23 dollars per hour is a lot to someone who is currently unemployed, or doesn't have the time to work because they are studying. Given that there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing without any optimism about financial reward, this probably will get quite a good response.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[m0RpHeus]

I'm serious with what I'm about to say.

While you from think that that is too low for compensation, programmers from Asia, like those from India, Philippines, whatever, will find $23 an hour to be something that will make them filthy rich. I'm not kidding. As someone who lives in a third world country.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[LiquidCoooled]

Rentacoder
Its from the same people that run planet source code
I cant see any requirement for GPL though.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[poopdik]

$23 dollars per hour is a lot to someone who is currently unemployed, or doesn't have the time to work because they are studying. Given that there are a lot of people who do this kind of thing without any optimism about financial reward, this probably will get quite a good response.

I think most of the people responding with the cost/time concerns aren't any kind of programmers at all. The kind of programmers you need for something like are the kind that would probably be doing it anyway but now at a more hurried and energetic pace.

"I'm not touching that computer with even one finger until you can guarantee I will be making a civilized wage." That's what this hobby has come to.. how pathetic.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[Speare]

I actually ran a small homebrew site like this for a while. It was www.mindshareware.com. Not a firm requirement for GPL, but for any of the open licenses (as I published source code). Got three one-day projects finished.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[usotsuki]

Mozilla's "fork license" is IIRC MPL/GPL/LGPL.

It should work...

-uso.

Re:$3696 / 160 =~ $23/hr for one month

[Plutor]

You're thinking of Rent-a-coder.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[TCM]

Would Moz even be able to run on an 8 mhz Amiga 500.

You overclocked yours? 1337!

$3696 is a huge amount of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

That prize amount is pretty big, considering that it is larger than the total profits from selling Amiga computers for the past 10 years.

Re:$3696 is a huge amount of money!

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

That prize amount is pretty big, considering that it is larger than
the total profits from selling Amiga computers for the past 10 years.

Erm, not really. Commodore didn't go bankrupt until 1994, and sold quite a few Amigas in the year before (Just not enough to pay the exorbitant salaries of the management). Escom, which bought Commodore's assets in 1995, also produced and sold Amigas for a few years afterwards (The A1200 and A4000T specifically).
Plus a number of AmigaOnes have been sold just this year. :-)
So I don't think it's really fair to say that, even if you're just doing it to try to get (+5 Funny) :-P

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[TallEmu]

probably as well as the old ray-tracing programs ;)

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[questamor]

The newest Amigas are AmigaOnes, 800Mhz G4 boxes

Your comment is the equivalent of "It's good to see the Windows community as fanatical as ever, would mozilla even run on a 16Mhz 386" or "Would QuarkXPress even run on an 8Mhz Mac Plus"

Mind you, the AmigaOne, having been out nearly a year now, still doesn't have an OS written for it.

I hear after Mozilla is ported, someone will be working on getting networking going for it.

My Mail to Bill.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have contacted Bill already about this some weeks ago and suggested that it may be better to port either Webcore or GRE to Amiga. Here an excerpt of my email. I think it's quite illusionary requesting a port of Mozilla to Amiga specially now where the entire roadmap of Mozilla changes. Read on.

----

Hello,

I don't know if you are the person responsible for the

http://www.discreetfx.com/AmiZilla.html

I would like to contact you because I think there are better ways to help the Amiga getting a good Webbrowser. There was a german Article about this on www.amiga-news.de which I have read and replied to.

http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/comments/thread /A N-2003-05-00184-DE.html

Message 18 and 21. Sorry It's written in german Language so you may need to translate it using babelfish. I think you will understand it and the
contents of it.

But here a little summary.

I used to be a member of the Amiga community from 1984 - 1996 and left for Linux. I am following the Mozilla development process for various years now, contributed to it with bugreports and some minor patches, then went over to support the GALEON people.

My personal opinion is that porting Mozilla is a wrong way to go because of complexity and the required maintainership.

The mozilla approach was always criticised by many people of the open source community because of it's bloat. e.g. it's an entire development
plattform (basically a whole os and widgetset) that was also the reason why browser such as galeon, skipstone, epiphany or k-melon showed up,
they all used the embedded mozilla component and used their native window which fits pleasingly into the environment what many people simply wanted was a fast webbrowser which either fits into their desktop environment either GNOME or KDE.

Over the time the SAFARI people showed up and they have decided to take the KHTML component from KDE (supports DOM, CSS1 and CSS2, HTML4, JS,
SSL and so on), they ripped the library out of KDE, wrote a wrapper around it and called it webcore:

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/webco re /

the kde people then got told about this after safari got released and the safari and kde people are now working on one unified component e.g.
2 teams are working on one library, they are now up to separate the backend from the engine so you can simply take the library and have it used on whatever plattform you like. The link above shows you an old version of the webcore, it's not the same as they are using now.

During the time Safarit was announced the Mozilla people got heavily pissed off and decided to change their entire roadmap because they
finally realized that XUL (their widgetset) and their way of doing things wasn't attractive to the public thus their new roadmap is to create a separate suite the email client and then the webclient (in the means of phoenix (firebird)). they are also working now to separate the
frontend from the backend and thus they work on the GRE component called Gecko Runtime Environment which offers alternative browser to use a
light library instead the requirement to install the whole mozilla stuff.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/GRE.ht ml

------------------

The point is, that I think it would be better to work together with one of these two teams either the KHTML team or the GRE team and have these
libraries ported to the Amiga rather than porting the entire mozilla project. The problems with Mozilla port could be various. On the one hand is that you need to deal with the Maintainers of mozilla. A lot of individual people that you need to explain why you want to have Amiga support in it and then the various complex problems that may show up. I know from various developers who tried to port Mozilla to GTK2+ plattform that this caused an neverending flame wether they go Pango (for fontrendering, language and AA) o

Re:My Mail to Bill.

[DrXym]

There is no such thing as the GRE at the build level anyway, since you must build the entire Mozilla first before running the script that cherry picks the subset of files that represent the GRE. If Mozilla doesn't build, you have no GRE.

So it is better to just forget about there being a GRE at all to begin with. Just port Mozilla and the GRE will fall out of it, but the reverse is not true.

Re:My Mail to Bill.

[DrXym]

The GRE is a stripped down version of Mozilla, but the stripping down is done after Mozilla has been built. In other words, you must build Mozilla for the stuff that the GRE cherry picks to be there in the output dir. There is no "make gre" that only builds the gre stuff. It is a post-build step that you will see in mozilla/embedding/config.

So if you did want to build only the GRE bits, you would have to make a list of what things those are compile around all the other stuff (leaving a mess of ifdefs in your wake). As the other stuff is mostly some extra C++ components, plus of course all the chrome, and other settings that make the GRE useful for something, it kind of makes no sense to not build Mozilla. Besides Mozilla is the most convenient way to test if the port actually works or not.

Of course, you could break down the port into small steps (always a good idea). I would suggest that it would follow this general model.

1. Makefile / configure system. Detect Amiga from the script and add some #defines to config generated headers for conditional compilation. Fix bustage in perl scripts etc.
2. Port NSPR. Since NSPR is already portable this might be easy.
3. Port XPCOM, strings. Sort out the directory provider and component manager, inter-thread marshalling, local file object, memory manager.
4. Port widgets & gfx. Code for creating windows, drawing graphics etc.

From there upwards it should become plain sailing as stuff becomes increasingly abstract and generic. Mozilla does have some chrome overlays for various platforms but you could probably get away with using the Unix one for a while.
It obviously also helps to disable stuff like psm, mail / news, mathml, xslt and other bits and pieces that can be enabled later once the core is working.

Re:My Mail to Bill.

[DrXym]

GRE end product is a lightweight runtime, so you are correct in that regard, but it is not built that way. Perhaps the emergence of various standalone / distinct clients will cause the build system to be redone, but I believe at the moment, that even for Firebird you must still build Mozilla first before you can build Firebird.

I have no experience of webcore, but I would guess that it would suffer many of the same issues. It might look lighter, but then you still have to port zlib, png, jpeg, expat, QT and various other bits and pieces to make it work. So the work involved might amount to the same and of course you don't have a browser at the end of it, just a browser engine.

Simple.

[tomstdenis]

1. Make an x86 emulator.
2. Boot Windows....er... linux.
3. Install Moz.

Profit.

Heck I'd pay 3639$ to see Moz ported to my Gameboy Color [the Z80 one] that in itself would be a feat!

Tom

Re:Simple.

[DrXym]

I had a PC emulator for my Amiga 500. It clocked at a breathtaking 0.1 Mhz!

You could literally type something on the command prompt and wait a minute for the characters to agonizingly appear one at a time on the screen. Other than its excrutiating speed it was useful for transferring files and whatnot but it fast it was not.

Re:Simple.

[kasperd]

and wait a minute for the characters to agonizingly appear one at a time on the screen.

I tried different emulators on an A1200. And as long as you were just typing simple DOS commands the speed was acceptable. At least one of the emulators came with a native ANSI.SYS driver, that could speed up text output significantly. If you forgot to use such a thing, I can imagine it must have been slow.

Re:$4000?

[Rik Sweeney]

No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.

I don't think you can appreciate what a mammoth task it really is. Porting Gecko will be a major effort in itself.

If it really is so easy then why hasn't someone ported it already? The Amiga still has plenty of developers left, enough to code OS4.

Re:My Mail to Bill. And my second reply to him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah and sorry for my bad english and bad explaination.

A last note. I was talking about GRE (Mozilla Gecko) and KHTML (Safari Koqnueror) libraries all the time.

These are full rendering components available as libraries. See it as an object. You write a native Amiga Window, add a toolbar, add a bookmarks system and there where you want to see the rendering stuff, you simply put the HTML rendering object inside. It's like putting a big pushbutton in the middle of the window (adding a gadget to your window). Mozilla don't remain the way it is now the entire 1.4 roadmap changes.

It was:

Mozilla (email, chat, web)

It becomes:

Gecko Runtime Engine
-
|
|-> Firebird
|-> Galeon
|-> K-Meleon (dunno if the stick to it)
|-> Other app if wanted
|-> AmigaOS Browser (MorphOS Browser)

It was:

Konqueror (Web)

It becomes:

the Core
-
|
|-> Konqueror
|-> Safari
|-> Other app if wanted
|-> AmigaOS Browser (MorphOS Browser)

You see you don't need to care for either GRE or KHTML anymore, their developers (usually big teams) keep the rendering engine up to date, keep them fast, keep them cool. And the Amiga, Safari etc. teams add their little backends to it (e.g. wrapper for widgetsets, OS filecalls etc). Even if you can't get your own widgets or filesystem calls inside it, then you still can grab always the ewest core from releases or CVS and have your little changes done externally knowing that you always be able to update from CVS.

1-2 mb of short library including everything ready to render if embedded in your window) compared to 30-40 mb of Mozilla hard to maintain and hard to share functionality amongst other apps. No reinventing of wheels over and over again because the components are all written already. I would tend to say that 1/2 of Mozilla as is now is code for plattform independency (such as own widgetset, own lowerlevel functioncalls etc.) 1/4 is the Widgetsets and Library interfaces for various OS's such as Windows, Mac, Linux and the remaining 1/4 is what really matters. And this 1/4 is being split out of it in a separate library called GRE. (Well I lied with 1/4 here it's probably a bit more but to give you a clue).

Of course porting a big project like Mozilla may attract customers and have them come back to AmigaOS (MorphOS).

Ok I hope I was informative and I hope you understand the translations of the replies I gave to www.amiga-news.de.

thought it might be a interesting project...

[Anonymous Coward]

and then fell to the floor laughing uncontrolable because i found what i was looking for (its in the FAQ):

Q: What will be the requirements and the minimum spec for the Amiga version.

A: Well that will depend a lot on the programming team that tackles the port and their skillset but the spec I would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever/Amithlon/AROS/MorphOS. 68030+ CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA.

get it ! get it ! they are talking about the original amiga series, not the new one with the 600mhz PPC !
mozilla isnt even running lag free on my dual P3 with 512mb ram omg omg this is so over the top :DD

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[Doomrat]

They said that about Quake. :-)

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[amigabill]

That meant the low end. Anything written system-friendly would still run on the new machines, and should be easy to then port to powerPC native for the new machines. Why would you limit yourself to ONLY classic hardware if you were participating in this project??

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[Lumpy]

mozilla isnt even running lag free on my dual P3 with 512mb ram omg omg this is so over the top :DD

wow what did you do wrong?

My old P-II SMP box runs Moz damn fast... pretty much lag free.

But then I have a SCSI U160 12 disk Raid array on that box.. but no processor setup on this planet even a 8 processor P-4 90ghz box with "Future-seeum(TM) technology" can affect load speed off of a rotating magnetic storage device... my Hard drives are simply 10 times faster than anything you have.

I'd look at your low end IDE drives and bus. you either need to set something using hdparam in linux or your hardware has some real problems.

dont blame software load time on your processors, blame it on the real bottlenecks in your system.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[SN74S181]

That's just the way Amiga zealots think.

I can remember a time when they'd stand out in front of a Sherman Tank with their Amiga, because it was so big-n-tuff-n-powerful that it would NEVER be run over.

Furthermore, I'm starting to figure out the how and why of the more rabid subsection of the 'Linux community' on Slashdot. I've wondered for some time about the irrational hate and rabid attitudes. It's the former Amiga zealots who've shown up (apparently in about 1996) who've ruined it.

Can't you guy find somewhere else to take your attitude. Linux used to be cool, and about tech.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[Darren Winsper]

Show me a 3GHz Amiga.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[mdwh2]

A: Well that will depend a lot on the programming team that tackles the port and their skillset but the spec I would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever/Amithlon/AROS/MorphOS. 68030+ CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA.

First of all, it says this is only what he would like, and doesn't seem to be a requirement to collect the money.

A 68030 may be unreasonably slow, but it would still work. Even if an '060 is too slow for a 68k version to be worthwhile, it would be fast enough on Amithlon. Once you've made the effort to make a 68k version, compiling an '030 isn't really any extra effort. Minimum CPU requirements above a 68020 aren't so common on the Amiga (I don't know whether that's because there's little speed advantage on doing so with 68k versus x86, or not) - so just because there's a theoretical minimum CPU of an '030, that's not the same as a recommended minimum.

32MB RAM may be a problem, but it may still be possible. Windows 2000 reports here that Mozilla takes up about ~23MB (eg, viewing this very article), and AmigaOS only takes up a few MBs for itself. OS-friendly applications should really care whether they're running on a graphics card or AGA or whatever, and I don't see that running in 256 colours is much of a problem.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[mdwh2]

The FAQ has just been updated to say "680X0+ CPU" instead of "68030 CPU". Which this change, the described minimum requires seem reasonable.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[SydShamino]

You do know that there is now a fully-developed internet suite for the Commodore 64, right? Web, email, newsgroups, ftp... all in 64 kbits running at 1 MHz.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[JasonAsbahr]

Um, he's talking about a _68030_, is he not? That's seriously slow. Running OmniWeb NeXTSTEP on a 25MHz 68040 is too slow for modern web usage, I can only imagine how slow it would be on a slower processor.

Re:thought it might be a interesting project...

[Darren Winsper]

And you sound like you didn't get my point at all.

Booty?!

[lawpoop]

You mean, I can finally get *gulp* booty for programming?!

Re:Booty?!

[trikberg]

booÂty 1
n. pl. booÂties

1. Plunder taken from an enemy in time of war.
2. Goods or property seized by force or piracy.
3. A valuable prize, award, or gain.

Re:Booty?!

[stor]

Well, ~$4000 will buy you quite a bit of booty.

Cheers
Stor

scary stuff

[Timesprout]

Working very hard on the soon to be released AmiZilla Mascot, she is very sexy

I'm almost temped to donate 10K to see just what sort of wild bender someone who finds a green lizard sexy would actually go on.

Take the money and run!

[WwWonka]

$3676? Hmmm....

$40 to build a shocking Xbox controller.
$100 to buy a Dremel Powertool to explode Steve Miller Cds to infinity
$300 emergeny room visit to have a RN look at your electrical burns on your hands and to pull CD shards out of your ass.
$3236 To start litigation against /. for insipring your creative genius to aforementioned experiments.

Re:Take the money and run!

[KrispyKringle]

Being a bigger geek than Steve Urkle: Priceless.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[Asemoon]

Not on a 7 Mhz A500. But on a PPC upgrade classic system or AmigaOne computer @ 600 Mhz - Dual 1.4 Ghz AmigaOne running AmigaOS4 this would be powerful enough.

23$ an hour is HUGE

[CrazyJim0]

I just graduated CMU with a degree in CS, I'd take a $10 an hour job if I could find one.

The problem with this thing is that second place gets mo money. So if you coded for 150 hours and someone else finishes, then you got paid 0$/hr. To me, this is unacceptable because I always end up getting shafted like that.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[NoInfo]

Kid, this is America. Take some risks or you're not going to last very long.

A CMU CS degree and a port of Mozilla under your belt would likely be a Good Thing. No more of those "always end up getting shafted like that" excuses, just get out there and do it.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[BreadMan]

Have you:

- Visited http://www.tc-p.com/careers/index.cfm
- Checked all the companies at http://www.pghgeeks.org/pghtech.html
- Checked with the folks you did your internship with, they may not be hiring, but may know somebody who is. If you didn't do computer work during the summer, getting a job will be a little harder.

And that's if you want to stay local. Good Luck!

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this thing is that second place gets mo money.

Wow! I want to come in second place then!

SCNR.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[LWATCDR]

I have no idea of where you live but if you have a degree in CS from CMU and can not find a job that will pay a job that pays $10 an hour you got to move. I pay support techs that answer the phone $10 after they have been her for 3 months.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[terradyn]

I just graduated CMU with a degree in CS, I'd take a $10 an hour job if I could find one.

I'm not sure how much you've actually looked but it's not that hard to find a job with our qualifications. I also graduated from CMU last year and every single one of my CS friends were able to find a job (some weren't able to find it immediately but all within a 3-6 month timeframe). You just have to be a little more proactive in the job hunt. Hang in there.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[HopeUnknown]

Second place gets mo money.

These slashdot kids talk wack, yo.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[Skuld-Chan]

Stream is still hiring for 10$/hr (well no not really, but it makes a good joke anyhow)

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[Wakko Warner]

I just graduated CMU with a degree in CS, I'd take a $10 an hour job if I could find one.

Then go be a night manager at Taco Bell. Contrary to what many folks might tell you, there are CS jobs out there that pay more than $dick.99/hour. If you've got a degree in CS from Carnegie Mellon, you're either not looking hard enough for work or you're living in the wrong part of the country. Look harder or move.

Also, regarding the metric the parent post threw out, there's absolutely no way anyone could port Mozilla to a new operating system in a month's time. You'd be lucky to get it done in six, at which point you'd be making much less than minimum wage, and probably living on ramen or your own reconstituted waste (though I can't tell the difference, can you?)

23 dollars an hour is good for a mid-level position. Nobody should take a job out of college that pays less than $15 an hour ($30k/year), regardless of where in the country you live and what the cost of living there is; $30k a year in the IT field is so bottom-of-the-barrel it's not even funny.

- A.P.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[AWhistler]

Look harder or move.

I'll shortcut this for you....move! I was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area. I live in Northern VA now. Pittsburgh is a fantastic place to live, and a lousy place to work. Of course, I'm not sure where to tell you to move. Things are hard around here (AOL/Worldcom/Cable&Wireless, etc). Some folks say Colorado is doing well, other say it's lousy too. Not sure about the Golden Triangle, but I was in the area last April and there was construction everywhere. I hear Atlanta's doing well now. And of course, forget California.

Re:23$ an hour is HUGE

[Patik]

I'd take a $10 an hour job if I could find one.

If you coded for 150 hours and someone else finishes, then you got paid 0$/hr. To me, this is unacceptable because I always end up getting shafted like that.

Maybe these two things are linked. Why would anyone want to pay you $10/hour when other people can do it faster than you?

Arguments...

[Psiren]

No doubt this will end in the usual arguments about who did what and when. It always does when money is involved. Humans are just too greedy.

Re:Arguments...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I agree, and think thats one of the things GAIM did correctly. From their faq:

Does AOL's attempts at blocking Trillian affect Gaim?

No.

Is Gaim affected by the vulnerability found in Windows AIM or Yahoo Instant Messenger clients?

No.

Can I IM you guys?

Sure! Look at the Contact Information page!

Can I give you money/hardware/other expensive things that can be hocked for cash what with you all being students/full-time-workers and helping to produce this wonderful software instead of studying/sleeping?

No. We're completely fool-hardy and won't accept any gratuities with no strings attached for just being good guys. That and we'd have to share with everyone who has submitted patches. ;-)

And as some other project(can't think of the name off hand) put it, If you'd like to help out, submit patches/artwork/docs/translations/etc.

Teens need cash. Machines cost cash.

[Zapdos]

This is more then the average kid makes all year. The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be all over this. That is if they had a machine to work on. Hope that machine cost considerable less than 4K$

Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash.

[JimPooley]

The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be all over this

The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be going "What the FUCK is an Amiga?"

Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash.

[danoaks15]

Thats is me my friend. Unless anyone wants to donate an Amiga to me I'll still be caddying. Its the 12-16 year old nerds who would probably win this if they had Amigas. They have the most time on thier hands and can just sit on the computer all day and code.

DAMNIT

Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash.

[American AC in Paris]

The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be going "What the FUCK is an Amiga?"

Older Geek: "Amiga". In Spanish, it means 'female friend', and...
Younger Geek: What the FUCK is a female friend?

Re:Teens need cash. Machines cost cash.

[Josuah]

The 12-16 year old computer literate kids will be going "What the FUCK is an Amiga?"

From my age of 15-18 (I'm guessing, it was 9th through 12th grade) I knew what an Amiga was/is. We used one at my high school to do television production stuff. The desktop looked a lot like NeXTStep, I think. But no, I didn't have one myself.

I also started reading /. quite a while ago. As my number will attest.

Re:$4000?

[mdwh2]

No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.

And much money do the guys porting Mozilla to other platforms receive?

This is open source. Of course, the amount of money isn't going to attract someone who is looking to do programming for commercial gain, but I don't see that anyone is claiming it is. $4000 is a lot more than the $0 that is up for offer by default on open source projects.

The idea is that if someone is perhaps tempted to port it (be it for fun, or whatever else drives people to write software for free), then the cash is a little extra incentive.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[questamor]

What do you call amigaos 4.0?

"vaporware"

it's just like monopoly

[lastfuture]

first place:
> Port Mozilla,Collect $3696

second place:
go directly to /dev/null
do not pass go
do not collect $3696

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[WWWWolf]

Would Moz even be able to run on an 8 mhz Amiga 500.

Unexpanded A500? Heck no. Needs more memory. That's all. =)

I guess, of course, that theoretically the Gecko part might be able to run (verrryyy slowly) as is with gobs of extra memory. The tricky part would probably consist of Assembly Optimization, including full hardware support. (Mmm, blitter...)

I don't think they'll be able to get the UI part itself ported properly. XUL stuff takes ungodly amounts of processor even on x86 hardware. They'll probably do what everyone else's doing and put a native GUI around Gecko.

No, aside of those things, I know very little of Amiga, I'm a C64 guy... =) I'm guessing a lot here.

However, I know that in Commodore scale, 1 MHz of MOS6510 with 64k of memory is about 16MHz of 386SX with 1 meg of memory in the PC world, so logically, a 8 MHz m68k with 512 kb of memory would be 128MHz with 8 megs of memory in PC world. Or something.

The easier route

[DrXym]

I would guess the most straightforward way of porting to the Amiga would be via some X11 port on that platform and reuse most of the X11/GTK widgets. Treat the Amiga as a weird Unix variant, use gcc, gmake and as many GNU tools as are required to make things easy on yourself.

You still have the NSPR and Makefile system, and some assembly used by XPCOM to contend with, but the length task of writing widgets and gfx classes from scratch would go away.

Re:The easier route

[johannesg]

AmigaOS has absolutely nothing to do with UNIX (and the mere fact that it multitasks doesn't change that one bit).

Furthermore, while I appreciate the humor in "cooperative memory protection", it doesn't really mean much now does it? ;-)

As for how you should do it, that depends on how Mozilla talks to the underlying OS. Does it have a decent abstraction layer? If so, a port may be feasible. Mind, I wouldn't want to tangle with BOOPSI ("Basic Object Oriented Programming System for Intuition") again, with its weird "you can clip anytime except when painting" rule...

Another question is if it uses fork() for anything more than loading external processes. AmigaOS does not and cannot support this call (although obviously it has its own call for starting programs).

Re:The easier route

[DrXym]

It Moz calls fork() (and I haven't checked), it is either safely contained within some ifdefs, or behind an abstraction. For the most part, the browser is as portable as you might hope considering how many platforms it builds on.

Advice for the students who got busted by the RIAA

[Unominous Coward]

...get coding, jailboy!

In 2 years...

[jkrise]

Port Mozilla to Linux (Linux without SCOde) --> Show code to SCO --> Collect $1,000,000. SCO sues Mozilla, collects $1,000,000,000 from AOL!

Enjoy.

Sponsors

[richie2000]

One of the sponsors in their list gave 5 bucks and a link back to his site; www.sendmeapound.com. Go check out his Pound-O-Meter. I love an optimist, but not enough to give him money. :-)

Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac

[jetsetscoot]

Or make even more people happy - somebody please port Firebird/Phoenix to Mac OS9. There are a ton of us who have not made the jump to OS X, and I for one have gotten to really like Phoenix on my work pc. The last Mozilla port to the old mac is 1.2.1 from last December. I feel abandoned.

-Jetset

-I can't hear the forest now for all the falling trees

Re:Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac

[seney]

i.e. 5 for mac os 9 has wonderful support for standards - it's very fast - not bloated ----

doesn't have tabs.

but os 9's gui isn't as slow as os x - less need for tabs in that regard.

Re:Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac

[Andy_R]

Seconded, we never got a bug free version of Mozilla, the last one still has the debilitating problem that when you collapse the front window you lose the inability to type anything, in any program at all, and we never got the spam filtering.

If only a few of those people would stop porting linux to hairdryers, making tcp/ip stacks made out of christmas tree lights and casemodding PCs into happy meal toys, the open source movement could really get a strong foothold in the Mac market :-/

If there was a port Moz to OS9 fund, I'd donate to it.

Re:Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac

[Phroggy]

I feel abandoned.

Yep, that's cuz you were abandoned.

The overwhelming majority of Mac users downloading Mozilla at the time the decision was made were using OSX. Netscape had no interest in maintaining a classic Mac version of Netscape. The Mozilla team tried to find somebody to maintain a classic Mac OS port, and one guy was going to do it, then he bailed out, so it died.

This is one of the things that can happen with Free software. Sure, the source code is all there, but nobody's working on it, so it doesn't get maintained.

(Of course it's much worse with proprietary software, since the source code isn't there and nobody could work on it if they wanted to, and the binaries might get pulled as well. At least old Mozilla binaries are available.)

Re:Port Firebird/Phoenix to Classic Mac

[madsenj37]

Mac OS 9 is dead in Apple's eyes, especially since Quark supposedly can abandon OS 9 as well. At least with Amiga, there are companies supporting the OS. Even if Amiga is dead in the eyes of some, it has companies backing it up at the time being, unlike Mac OS 9. OS 9 has been out for a while and you have survived thus far. How much of a difference will a new program make on a dead development platform?

That title made me think of Slashdot Monopoly...

[Dutchmaan]

What a cool version of the game that would make, eh?

Righto

[zakezuke]

It's good to see someone interested in mozilla for Amiga, something that could be considered to be a standard up to date web browser.

I honestly don't know what I used on the amiga in ages past, I just remember I made the mistake of accepting some 2.x roms and could no longer do that software load of 3.x [exact version number I can not remember presently]

From what I remember, even if you had AGA or 3rd party 24 bit graphics, in my case it was a retna (sp) card, your web browsing experence was pretty limited due to the fact that the stock amiga graphics were at best 16/32/64 colors. I don't honestly remember the details, it's not like you couldn't get 4096 colors, just apparently not for things like gif or jpeg files.

Which brings another point all together, pre 68030 based machines are not really the best at web browsing unless you have a math-co. Gifs are not so bad, jpegs however are pretty slugish. This is not to say that modern amiga users don't have accelerators... this is to say such a product would only be useful to those people.

Perhaps someone wiser then I could remember the particulars, I really couldn't be bothered being nickle and dimed on my amiga, so I just went with lynx and got frustrated and went to the PC.

So issues I see with this project

1. Would browsing in 8bit color or above graphics require a specific rom set?

2. How ever are you going to find a math-co for jpeg decoding.

This is actually comming from a person who was and still is to an extent a big amiga fan. Part of the reason I had to abandon it was the simple fact that even web browsers that were made for the amiga required money from me to display properly.

Re:Righto

[AMiGR]

Actually that is a long forgotten past, nowadays,
most users have PPC accelerators, REAL graphic cards (even if they are old, like the Voodoo3),
>64Mbs of RAM or even better, a new PowerPC
motherboard like the Pegasos (running MorphOS,
if you want AmigaOS compatability), with modern
hardware like the Radeon series, etc.

Re:Righto

[amigabill]

>1. Would browsing in 8bit color or above graphics require a specific rom set?

No, just a graphics card supported by either the Picasso96 or CynerGraphX APIs. Such cards can display 24bit screens quite easily. I myself run my Amiga4000T in 800x600x24bit. 1024x768 starts to get too small things for my poor eyes to cope with... I also have an Amiga3000 with a Voodoo3 card and also an ATI Radeon that I am helping develop drivers for, currently at beta level and about to go out for public beta testing. The system ROM has nothing to do with it, the software does. As I remember, your Retina card probably wasn't supported by either Picasso96 or CyberGraphX, came with some p-roprietary API that wasn't as system-friendly as the new ones are.

Re:Righto

[zakezuke]

Most users is a relative term. Those still active with Amiga are likely to have these things. Other people, many whom I know personaly, still keep their amiga around just for its game library, pretty much kept it stock. No need for accelerator just to run Pirates after all.

I pose these issues because there are alot of people like my self who still have an amiga. Such a project like getting a modern web browser to work on it would be spiffy.

In my case, I own an amiga 2000... I have like 2.x roms and a 68030 accelerator with math-co [can't remember which one]. If I could get a web browser working on it, it would likely still be in service. To me it's not long forgotten past when talking about a machine that I keep under my futon.

Re:Righto

[zakezuke]

But the Retnina card did support AGA emulation, but from what I understood all the web browsers that existed for the amiga required rom revision 3.x or above. I'd have to really search back and figure out the issue, but dispite the fact that i had a 24bit graphics card, dispite the fact that I could emulate AGA pretty well, I was stuck with viewing jpegs with 1st generation amiga graphics.

I really don't remember what the issue was, as I knew other people who owned the retina graphics card who were above to actually see the colors using AGA emulation. But those people had the latest roms commodore released before they went under.

Re:Righto

[johannesg]

Back then I was using AWeb, in 24-bit color, using a Picasso IV graphics card. There were never any issues with images being dithered or anything - it just worked in 24-bits.

Most of the graphics cards require at least OS 3.0. I'd guess that most (both? ;-) ) remaining Amiga users are at least using that version.

As for JPEG decoding, that's a trivial exercise: just use the excellent datatypes system and load any image format as if it were native. There are plenty JPEG datatypes (PPC, 68060, no math copro, etc.) that will handle the decoding for you.

Like you I was and still am a big fan of the Amiga. It was a clean, elegant, responsive, *pleasant* system, and I miss it dearly. No doubt some people here on /. will rant about it being obsolete, but there has never been a finer OS.

Re:Righto

[usotsuki]

Don't you mean 68040 (which had a built-in FPU)? :)

-uso.

Re:Righto

[zakezuke]

Ahhhhh! This is where I need a memory refresher.

In order to run Amiga os 3, don't you need the corisponding roms? My memory could be incorrect on this issue. I remember I traded my 1.3 roms for some 2.x roms, but I lost the ability to run amiga os 3.0, which was nessicary to run Aweb as well as Voyager. This is assuming i'm remembering correctly. There was a hack to do a software load of the 3.x roms that didn't work at all under the 2.x roms I had.

If someone would be so kind as to refresh my memory... do you need rom revision of 3 or above to run amiga os 3 or above?

As far as JPEG decoding... I with respect disagree. if you are talking 68040 / 68060 / PPC I believe they all had FPUs onboard. If you are talking like a 68030, there was NO fpu onboard. While you can decode JPEG compression, it's butt slow on a 68030. Not so slow as a 486-sx machine, but pretty damn slow.

I honestly don't know if 24bit graphics cards required OS 3.0.... I did just fine with Amiga OS 1.3 and 2.x.. I was an old hitachi monitor at 1152-834 or so resolution. It was a fixed frequency, but games that operated at standard amiga modes would display, just look smaller on the screen. Rembrandt I think was another one that was 24 bit that worked under AmigaOS 1.3, though I could be wrong on the model name.

Re:Righto

[johannesg]

do you need rom revision of 3 or above to run amiga os 3 or above?

Yes. Most of what constitutes AmigaOS 3.0 is in those roms, and the diskloaded parts require it. As you say, it is possible to load ROMs from disk using a bit of trickery.

While you can decode JPEG compression, it's butt slow on a 68030

You hear no argument from me there ;-) What I meant was that the software implementation is simple, not that the algorithm runs quickly.

I honestly don't know if 24bit graphics cards required OS 3.0.... I did just fine with Amiga OS 1.3 and 2.x..

Perhaps you are right - it's been a while since I actually used an Amiga. Unfortunately...

Re:Righto

[amigabill]

Maybe the 3.0/3.1 roms were needed then. I never had any 2.x stuff so maybe I'm just not remembering other people's adventures trying to use it with graphics cards. Anyone still actually using an Amiga today really should have the 3.1 roms, which are required for AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 releases, and will be required for the 4.0 release as well when used on old hardware, and had fixed some issues in the 3.0 roms.

The AGA chipset machines came with 3.0 and later 3.1 roms, so it makes sense that 2.x might not work right with them, and thus not be able to deal with AGA emulation.

Re:Righto

[zakezuke]

I honestly don't know. I could run most software I wanted to that called for AGA graphics. Ugh it's been so long I can't remember the titles. But needless to say I wanted to do graphics editing which was a bit of a pain under a stock amiga. All the software I had either supported the retina directly which was the cool stuff, or worked under the retina AGA emulation.

*****Except Web browsers***** which refused to run under workbench 2.1. I'm not sure what was so diffrent about 3.x kickstart / workbench, but I didn't have it, nor did I want to buy it. By that point I litterly could buy a PC for the value of the roms for the Amiga. In fact, I did buy a PC.

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's great that people are interested in getting a standard web browser under the amiga. For someone like my self, it sorta defeats the purpose to invest money just to get a free web browser working.

Re:Righto

[zakezuke]

You hear no argument from me there ;-) What I meant was that the software implementation is simple, not that the algorithm runs quickly.

I'm thinking of running netscape on an old mac. I bring up macintosh because simply put, it was a hell of alot easier to get a web browser to display 8-bit. Even on a 68030 based mac, I think it was an LC III [short pizza box], checking hotmail with a 56k modem took roughly 3-min for the page to load. Getting the riser card with math-co onboard I didn't actually time it because I could actually drink my tea and fetch my e-mail, rather then fetch my e-mail, brew tea (2min 20 seconds in microwave, sugar and icecube). And this was classic hotmail with jack squat in the way of graphics.

Re:Righto

[jafuser]

Whee Aweb...

I wrote the first AREXX mailto: and news: handlers for Aweb... They were even commercially distributed with the software for some time. I remember the publishers asking me what I would like in return for use of my scripts and I just asked to be able to recieve the beta copies as they were developed, which was a great position to be in as Aweb was all the rage at the time. =)

I miss AREXX... It wasn't really the language itself that was so fantastic as much as the availability of AREXX hooks in nearly all the applications. It was cool to be able to not only script the actions of a single application, but also tie an application together with another... so you could easily toss together batch scripts to automate a bunch of functions even though GUI-based applications.

I remember writing tons of IRC client functions in AREXX as well as a ton of code for the C-Net BBS system. I have yet to see anything which so elegantly tied together the internal capabilities of such a large variety of applications.

Re:Righto

[Ben Hutchings]

The early web browsers used the OS 3.0 datatypes system for image decoding, rather than their own built-in datatypes.

I'm sure that..

[mikecheng]

both amiga programmers will be fighting hard to get the cash.

I used to use the GCC tools on the amiga (ADE - or whatever it turned into). But then that slowly went stagnant - and it was 10x faster to cross-compile stuff on the FreeBSD/Pentium166 than to wait for the A3000/'030.

When Amiga/PPC hardware started appearing, I was keen to do some portage of unix-ish type stuff - except the PPC dev toolchain was so woeful it made me want to cry.

sigh.

Re:I'm sure that..

[johannesg]

When Amiga/PPC hardware started appearing, I was keen to do some portage of unix-ish type stuff - except the PPC dev toolchain was so woeful it made me want to cry.

I remember that. I bought a PPC board with the specific intention to do some cool ports, but it just couldn't be done. The PPC stuff just never worked, and it was plain impossible to find out what was broken: the hardware itself, the communication software, the PPC kernel, the PPC compiler, ... And it wasn't just my own software: there has not been a single piece of software that ran stable, everything would crash sooner or later.

A major problem was that any IO had to go through the 68K, and context switches were hideously slow. Thus the utility of the PPC was severely limited to specific (long-running) tasks. Quickly building some PPC support into existing applications was impossible.

And there were two kernels for it (the "official" PPC kernel and another one which was slightly different), which could not run at the same time and which were not compatible...

The whole PPC thing stank from day one. Too bad, it could have been so good...

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[Bunji X]

34 minutes!?

The horrors of running MS Windows...

Re:$4000?

[aliens]

You're telling me that Junior Programmers are making $144,000/year? Man where are you working? Got openings?

Opensource would rather see it coded fast

[gwappo]

.. than well.

Humble opinion: In Open source it is more important to have something to start with so others can follow someone's lead, than have something to finish with, so no one else has anything to add.

Besides, they do mention "Beta", beta == feature completeness with only minor problems. Should be okay.

Re:Opensource would rather see it coded fast

[fireman sam]

If they don't want feature complete, here is my entry:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
fprintf(stderr, "IMPLEMENT ME: start running mozilla on the amiga\n");
return 0;
}

Re:Opensource would rather see it coded fast

[Zork the Almighty]

Why is this marked troll ? It's not a troll.

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[mekkab]

SOrry kid, if you want to play it safe submit your resume to Microsoft, or IBM. OR the government- you get a great pension.

I understand that your cost benefit/risk analysis leads you to the unknown- that you could get nothing.

BUt if you are saying that you'd take a $10 an hour job, you are obviously more than a little hungry for some new opportunity.

Opportunity costs upfront; you have to risk it. No you can't count on winning, so make sure you have some contingency plan.

However As my buddy sielwolf pointed out America is about risk and opportunity. America awards mavericks- and to be one you have to have the skills to back it up and the audacity to pull it off.

If you aren't brave enough to risk a months effort for a potential gain of NOT only $3 grand but REAL experience porting an enormous software project- basically being an integrator. Integration is where the market is AT right now.

From a CS CMU graduate, I would expect a lot more.

What's the point?

[sharv]

I'm all for porting and getting things running on obscure platforms, but why is getting Mozilla on the Amiga the one that people put up the cash prizes for? Aren't there development projects more worthy of a financial incentive than getting a browser to run on hopelessly-outdated hardware, no matter how rabid the geek-niche userbase?

It's fun and all, but couldn't that money have been better spent on rewarding developers to make something more likely to be useful? I'm sure the crowd here can come up with a long list of more deserving sources for a couple thousand dollars.

I'll start by nominating the EFF.

Re:What's the point?

[AMiGR]

Well, I wouldn't call G3/G4 motherboards totally outdated hardware. They are not on par with x86 ones, but they do the job. Even better, when the PegasosII motherboard is launched, based on Marvell's chipset. The G4 module they will give with it (they already have protos) is 1-1.3GHz (they made 3 protos at different clock rates at that range, to see what has the best speed/price ratio and sell that).

Re:What's the point?

[nickos]

...but why is getting Mozilla on the Amiga the one that people put up the cash prizes for?

Because the Amiga community, despite everything they've gone through still has a passion for their platform. If (not likely admittedly) Microsoft went bust tommorrow, do you think there would be die hard users doing this sort of thing for the Windows platform 10 years later?

This passion speaks volumes about the qualities inherent in the Amiga archiecture and OS.

Re:What's the point?

[mdwh2]

Don't you think that those donating money are doing so because they feel it will be useful to them? Who are you to decide how other people should spend their money - you are free to donate your money to causes that you feel are more worthy.

Platforms such as Windows and MacOS get billions spent on them, whilst platforms such as BeOS and AmigaOS go stagnant.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[AMiGR]

1) Get real. 2) FORGET asm opts and ANY hardware banging HW acceleration. The port should be a clean, MUI using port, for anyone using 68040/60 (slow but ok), 603/604(acceptable) or G3/G4 (cool!). Forget any of the old baggage.

Why not port khtml instead?

[fault0]

I've heard it's easier to port khtml instead of Mozilla. The relative ease that the Apple and the Aetheos guys ported it perhaps shows this.

Re:Why not port khtml instead?

[BZ]

khtml is a rendering engine. Mozilla is an application. Porting gecko (the khtml equivalent in Mozilla) and porting kthml are about equally difficult. Possibly easier for gecko, which is designed from the ground up to be easily portable.

If you want to compare porting Mozilla to something, you'd have to compare it to porting all of the KDE widget set _plus_ khtml.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[squiggleslash]

Blimey. If it takes 34 minutes on your Athlon, I'd switch OSes or platforms. I mean, seriously. My Wal*Mart box (800MHz C3 with Slackware Linux 8.1) loads it in about 5 seconds. I don't think even my (ancient) G3 Macs take more than 10-15 seconds.

What are you doing? Loading it from tape?

READY.
LOAD "MOZILLA"
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE AND PRESS ENTER

Re:What a waste of time!

[xutopia]

it was a nice platform in its days. I can understand the nostalgy. If today's computers were done with the same smarts that the Amiga was made with we'd be in a better state of affairs.

Modern Amiga compatible solutions

[Mike Bouma]

There seems to be some confusion with regard to which OSes/solutions this effort is directed at. Currently there are 4 main 68k Amiga compatible solutions DiscreetFX would like to see supported. For two first one listed below PPC native versions would be preferable:

1) AmigaOS4

This is the official new AmigaOS developed for classic Amigas upgraded with PPC accelerators and new AmigaOne computers which are being sold with G3 and G4 processors.

Some of the latest but still unfinished screenshots of AmigaOS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=560
AmigaOne motherboards can already be bought in combination with Linux at the following dealers (AmigaOS4 will be delivered for free as soon as it is finished): http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/dealers.php

With MOL MacOS X can also already be used with this system (as well as with the Peg below):

http://www.anythingamiga.com/XEPics/x2.jpg.html

2) MorphOS

Its ABOX environment is a re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. The re-implemted Exec kernel is hosted on top of a Quark microkernel. The OS is fast and responsive and currently runs with G3 Pegasos motherboards. Interested people will have to wait for the Pegasos II, which is planned for release in September. An interesting review can be found at OSNews:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3589

3) AROS

An open source project intended as a multi-platform re-implementation of version 3.1 of the Amiga operating system. Most of the development takes place on x86 computers. Much of the source code was used for MorphOS. http://www.aros.org/

4) UAE, Amithlon and other 68 AmigaOS emulators

AmigaOS XL: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=604
Amiga Forever: http://cloanto.com/amiga/forever/

Re:Modern Amiga compatible solutions

[downix]

Interested people do not have to wait for the Pegasos II in order to run MorphOS. There are still Pegasos motherboards for sale with several retailers.

Obscene amount?

[gosand]

The goal of the AmiZilla effort is to raise such an obscene/huge amount of money to give away to the first programmer/team that can port Mozilla to Amiga that Amiga programmers will be falling over themselves getting this application coded in record time. The booty currently stands at $3696.

Hey, that's great. The goal is to raise an obscene/huge amount of money, but they currently have a little over $3500? I think they would need at least $10k for it to be considered big, and more than that to be obscenely huge. The faster it gets programmed, the less they have to pay. If that kitty sits for a year, I am sure there might be a considerable amount of money in it, but then it wouldn't exactly be done in record time.

An interesting idea, kind of like an open contract - but it sounds a little hyped to me. But with all the out-of-work programmers out there, any job is a good job I guess.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[jweatherley]

Perhaps Mozilla will be ready when AmigaOS4 is released.

another source

[DohDamit]

I'm guessing that this(Google Answers)) might be a source of labor that would satisfy your desires.

Phoenix

[Sinus0idal]

Isn't there a java version of mozilla available? I know nothing about amiga, but am I being stupid asking if there is a Java VM available for it?

IMHO, if there isn't, it would be more beneficial porting a VM, because then the amiga could run both Phonenix (mozilla port) and it would allow for developement/execution of many other java apps too..

Re:$4000?

[DohDamit]

Hmm. $4000/(10 days * 8 hours/day) = $50 per hour. Divide by 2.7 for employer costs and we're down to ~$18.50 an hour, or roughly $38,500 a year. No, I think he's about right on the mark. Truth told, it still seems a bit on the low side.

Re:$4000?

[poopdik]

No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.

Please, hold me back from coding it!

Are you people for real?

That's why your job, your ego, and your SUV will all be sent off to some programmer in Asia. Give it a couple of years, you'll be back on the line at McDonalds.

Re:hey all you pimply faced geeks....

[56ksucks]

No, But I hope to get my WIFE pregnant some day.

Re:Amiga Owners

[Anonymous Coward]

Amiga does have vorking browsers. When people do want to port Mozilla it does not mean there is no working browsers. Amigas current browsers lack some modern features and that's why we want Mozilla. Otherwise those current browsers are quite good and fast (Ibrowse, Voyager)

6502 assembly

[johnwbyrd]

I'll pay $17 for the first person to port Mozilla to the Commodore 64. Bonus of $3 if you don't require a double-notched floppy.

How much would I get if...

[Anita Coney]

I ported the Amiga OS to run on the Dreamcast?

Port Mozilla, Collect $3696

[Unominous Coward]

Don't you have to pass Go first?

Re:Port Mozilla, Collect $3696

[GQuon]

Don't you have to pass Go first?

Well, the Amiga allready has ports of Go. No need to duplicate efforts. :-)

Re:Port Mozilla, Collect $3696

[Unominous Coward]

Just make sure you don't end up going to jail for stealing the source from SCO.

Wouldn't it be easier...

[Fizzlewhiff]

To make an AmigaOS skin and put that on your Mozilla running in Linux? I would agree that it would be fun to have a working copy of Mozilla to run in UAE to show my friends but I honestly don't see any real world use. Even in AmigaOS4 is finished, it isn't going to revive the Amiga to its 1980's glory days. The Mac and the PC have long taken over the reigns that the Amiga once held in sound and graphics. I'd much rather see the efforts go into a more modern and existing OS like Linux or even Mac OS X.

Re:$4000?

[poopdik]

You're telling me that Junior Programmers are making $144,000/year? Man where are you working? Got openings?

I think he was telling you that he's an idiot, who was talking out of his ass.

Re:Amiga?

[Anita Coney]

I agree that the idea is stupid, But PLEASE don't compare the Amiga to Win 3.1. That's just mean. The Amiga was an amazing system, well ahead of its time. While Win 3.1 simply sucked.

Re:My expert opinion on the EU

[lee7guy]

You might be more right than you think.

Gay people tend to be open minded too, hence more gay people would be using Linux, OSX or BSD. Narrow-minded people like yourself most likely use windows and never look for alternatives.

Re:hey all you pimply faced geeks....

[lee7guy]

That is what she told you.

Newsflash: You are not going to be a father.

Interesting...

[onnos]

Usually when people say "it cannot be done", "it's not possible" or "who would be stupid enough to do such a thing?", someone steps up and does it. They usually do it for the kick and fun of it, not even for money.

I would be very interested in seeing who gets this done and he/she sure deserves the money.... I just donated $50 :o)

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[jwilcox154]

Going by your logic, that means Moz should be able to run on a C64* or a C128 (*with a Maxed Out Super CPU, Ramlink, and a HDD).

Since a SCPU has 16MB of Ram and a 20Mhz W65C816S, so logically, it would be comparable to a 320Mhz Pentium with 256 MB of Memory in the PC world, heck with that logic, it might even be possible to port M$ Windoze XP to the SCPU then. ;)

These are called "paying customers"

[FullCircle]

I know it is hard to understand these days, but way back when the Amiga roamed the Earth, the customer asked developers for something, developers created said product, and were paid for their efforts.

Thankfully, The Company (not Kompany) came along and changed all that. Now the developer tells the customer what they want and either gets paid a lot, or nothing at all. It is much easier for the developer now.

More power to these guys. If more projects worked for donations, we might get a finished GUI app once in a while.

I need to go donate a few bucks...

Re:Rest In Peace

[AMiGR]

The Amiga, as a hardware platform is surely dead. The OS is not dead just yet, even if development for it is not profitable enough. It and MorphOS, which is AmigaOS compatible, although improved a lot, are still fun and great to work with. I enjoy it a lot.

I loved the Amiga

[NetNinja]

Amiga went Bankrupt in 1994?

The company transfered owners 3 to 5 times?

Took 6 years to decide which processor they were going to use.

Now an Amiga called Power one, still doesn't have an OS for it?

Now Amiga needs a port of Mozilla?

Sounds like the cart before the horse.

Zombie on Amiga!

Now you know

[lpret]

how Microsoft employees feel. Get the job done quick, you're commended for your speed, it can be improved on later, and you get good money. Tell me you wouldn't want a job like that!

Re:and the point is...?

[AMiGR]

Depends... The point is to port Mozzila to AmigaOS API compatible systems, not on the Amiga hardware. These compatibles do not necesserily run on slow hardware: MorphOS runs on Pegasos and soon on the Pegasos 2 (G3/600and hopefully G4/1000). This hw platform is profitable, cause it's not OS centric, there are several OSes for it in development. AROS runs on almost anything, including x86 boxes. AmigaOS4 (the official update to AOS) will run on AmigaONE(MAI's Teron) hardware, which usually comes with a G3/700 or G4/800. Mozzila would be fine, running on any of these.

You're probably wrong

[lpret]

he probably has an nvidia card and hasn't gotten the correct drivers for it (assuming we're talking linux). When I did a fresh install of Mandrake, I forgot to install the driver and was met with some pretty slow action across the board.

Re:$4000?

[chrisbro]

No kidding. My father went from 90k/yr 16 months ago at Worldcom to working as an umpire for the city and using foodstamps, without a tech job. But that's the state of the tech industry. Take money where you can get it.

Correction!

[Alsee]

The actual amount is $3696.052

-

Re:That title made me think of Slashdot Monopoly..

[jweatherley]

What would the purple squares be?

Re:My expert opinion on the EU

[Warped-Reality]

I can imagine when this generation has kids, and they are fighting on the playground...

Kid1: My daddy can beat up your daddy!!
Kid2: No he can't!
Kid1: Yes he can!
Kid2: Well... your daddy is narrow-minded!
Kid1: *sobs*

Oh you just like your gangsters

[CrazyJim0]

I can understand that. Dog eat dog. Some men are better than other men. Yah thats exactly why I called you an idiot, because your beliefs. My main goal is to help humanity by finding a job that does medical research.

Imagine that, theres men out there that don't worship money like its their god. I know you feel sorry for me that I don't have alot of money, but I feel sorry for you. Someone with alot of money doesn't automatically make that person helpful to society. Look at all those rich people who run auto/health insurance, or lawyers. They hurt society but make a great deal of money in the process.

Re:Oh you just like your gangsters

[mekkab]

I keep people safe. That is my job. I make the world a better place. I work on real-time human grade systems. And I make money.

OHMIGOD! Did I just blow your mind!? ;)

Listen- YOUR initial argument was "Hey, this money sucks if you don't win!"

Myself and some others point out that there is a lot to gain financially even if you don't win, by leveraging this experience in system integration and getting a job based upon it.

NOW you are changing your tune and saying "well, MOney doesn't matter!"

But this is, at worst, in direct contradiction to your FIRST argument, and at best, completely changing the subject (The new topic being Money != Hapiness). And you call ME and idiot? ;)

I'm glad you actually read the Journal Entry. At least we are on the same page. I'm very much so advocating the "risk it" entrepreneurial spirit.
If you have a calling from God (or whatever) to help humanity, then by all means, go to it! But don't complain about people making a buck or two- you chose your path, they chose their path.

I also don't see how making a buck or two precludes one from using that money for good service and the benefit of humanity. Lesse, you graduate from where? CARNEGIE mellon U? DO you know about Andrew Carnegie? He was a captain of industry. He was, for his time, most likely the richest man in the world. And he gave money for libraries, education, and in general, the betterment of man. But be damn sure that he faced challenges, took risks, and made a fat wad of cash.

Re:Oh you just like your gangsters

[Wakko Warner]

I can understand that. Dog eat dog. Some men are better than other men. Yah thats exactly why I called you an idiot, because your beliefs.

No wonder you've not been hired by anyone. Is this how you come across in interviews, too?

- A.P.

Re:Oh you just like your gangsters

[CrazyJim0]

Never gotten an interview except this one where I got flew down to E3 for a video game conferance. Apprently I said,"I like MMORPGS, they're the future", just when Verant broke half its division from 911 software. When you have an interview with a company, its best not to side with the people who left their company... But I didn't learn about it before. Of course Everquest is a kickin money making game, but I'm still not working for 911 :P

Re:Oh you just like your gangsters

[shepd]

>My main goal is to help humanity by finding a job that does medical research.

Mother Theresa died a pauper, and get a hell of a lot less press and recognition than Bill Gates.

Consider that for a moment.

>Look at all those rich people who run auto/health insurance, or lawyers. They hurt society but make a great deal of money in the process.

You are only considering the direct effects of their business on one person (the customer that has a hard time recovering their insurance). Let's look at the big picture for an auto insurance company:

- Employs thousands of people.
- Keeps thousands of people from being completely ruined over unintentionally caused harm.
- Employs tens of thousands of contractors.

Overall, the benefits of an auto insrance company outweigh the "costs". The same can be said for lawyers, although as a law firm is generally much smaller than an auto insrance firm (say, Ford for example) the amount of people helped is much smaller.

Not all lawyers are bad people. Deal with one _before_ you get into trouble and you'll appreciate the hell out of them.

If you ask me, a job that has absolutely zero overhead costs (porting software using GNU tools), that you should already know how to do, and will take under a month, and could potentially pay $4000 is almost no risk at all! The only thing you have to lose is your time. I assume you already have a computer. I guess you _might_ have to buy an amiga, but more than likely you would get that donated to you if you said you're taking on this project.

BTW: If you want to help society, take that money and spend it. The more money flowing in the economy, the better it is for everyone.

recommended this yesterday

[zogger]

..on the Quark xpress thread. IF all the people/customers who were forced by their company products needs to use closed source, overly expensive and long in coming propietary software, if they would just start a fund, all the customers donate to it some significant cash,and offer it to the best open source and free effort out there, they could get way better products, and probably faster, too. The reverse-leeching concept. It's completely logical, has little downside to it, costs a pittance compared to the endless stream of frustration dealing with those large clueless shops. 10% of a normal "license" for some closed source stuff, going instead to developers of open and free, would most likely work quite well in most instances. It certainly ups the enthusiasm for coding I would bet! And it would put well deserved and tremendous pressure on those closed source places to get real on profits,and to get real on quality. It's just another form of competition that isn't in wide use yet, because it requires actually slapping down some cash in advance, rather than the coders slaving away for free then relying on the begware after the fact model.

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[jimsum]

You have to weigh the risk and reward before deciding to do something.

We have numbers in this example. This person wants to make at least $10 an hour; we are assuming that the person who wins this contest will get $23 an hour. If the chances of winning are more than 10/23 = 43%, then this is a worthwhile risk.

You are right to point out that there would be non-monetary benefits to doing this work (which is of course one reason why people volunteer for Open Source work). In this case, however, we can safely assume that the non-monetary benefits are worse for this project than others that are available, or else there would be no need for an added financial incentive.

You are right that porting is an important skill, but porting to Amiga? Why not pick a porting project for a more popular computer? There are benefits to doing this port, but I'm afraid the financial benefits are probably the most significant.

Yah, but I'll check again

[CrazyJim0]

Thanks for the advice, I've sent out 1000's of resumes, but never got anything past a "Recieved your resume" I've never had an internship or anything. Its wierd too because I am qualified, just never got any chances.

I have ideas for stuff that'd been successful in the past:
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clancrazy/ resume/ ideas.html

I do work on lots of external projects. I'm working on a MMORPG right now some info can be found at:
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clancrazy/in dex2. html

Re:Yah, but I'll check again

[brsmith4]

if you've never done internships or worked in the field, your chances of getting a descent job at this point are pretty slim. I don't even have my degree and lived in a small town for most of my career life, but have easily landed some pretty good jobs. You need to know where to look. Your best bet would have been to check out your University's career center and looked into a co-op/internship. It is the equivalent of putting your foot in the proverbial door of the IT world.

Re:My question is....

[RdsArts]

How does one go about knowing the sexuality of a OS? And what's worse is, when will these desires come out?

"Mo~~~~~~~m, Windows is trying to hump the sofa again."
"Damnit... OK, hon, just squirt it with the spray bottle."

With company over, that could be down right embarassing.

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[mekkab]

You are right that porting is an important skill, but porting to Amiga?

You pose a good point, however this is all about spin.

You are presenting this to your potential employer as "Hey, I took a large Software Engineering project and ported it to a platform on which I had little previous experience. So if you hire me and you have porting work to do, even if it is on a platform that is brand new, I have overall experience in the act of replatforming."

Maybe the guy who has experience in the platform they are porting to will get hired before you do, but what if the issue is that they have the legacy system which NO ONE KNOWS how it works, and the want to port FROM it? Something like this would be a perfect project to prove that you are the guy to do it.

Is that too much of a long shot for you?

Re:That title made me think of Slashdot Monopoly..

[mrseigen]

You'd go around buying up domains, and then praying that a horde of Slashdotters doesn't come, overturn your furniture and burn your pets?

I'd play.

Re:$4000?

[aliens]

Ahh, I didn't think he meant that there were nay employer costs. It seemed that $12,000 for 30 days was the salary of a Junior programmer.

Ok, let me blow your mind now

[CrazyJim0]

I'm working on a MMORPG now, and I plan on doing it for 2-5 years before release:
http://www.geocities.com/james_sager_pa/ xyzimation /xyzim.htm
http://delvedesigns.com/websites/clanc razy/mmog/

My skills I will learn from this MMORPG will then let me code AI within 20-50 years:
http://www.geocities.com/james_sager2/

My personal problem is that I can't get in with ANY organization even though my qualifications would seem to be alright. Throwing in "ported mozilla to amiga" would trivialize my qualifications as there are several things I've done that I haven't even documented.

So you're getting all out of control on a ton of false assumptions of who I am. I know who you are, you're just a self assured prick. Its easy to do, once you get money, to not care about people who have none. Play it off like they're ignorant. But if you want to admit it or not, we do have an educated poor class thats growing.

How am I supposed to "risk it" when I have nothing but my life to gamble with. Pull a 9 on Bill Gates?

Re:Ok, let me blow your mind now

[Commutative Monoid]

I've had the misfortune of reading your bizarre train of reasoning and absurd behavior, and I can't help but feel that the quality of a CMU education has either dropped, or you're an especially unfortunate anomaly.

Re:Ok, let me blow your mind now

[jgerman]

Oh you've blown my mind. I thought you were 12, imagine my horror to find that you're allegedly an adult. You have completely lost touch with reality.

I have two words for you

GET HELP

. I've read your website. You have psychological problems. Go get help, and for god's sake make some friends.

Thats why I said I'd love a $10/hr job

[CrazyJim0]

When you're 70,000$ in debt, sure I'll be in my mid 30's by the time I can finally get my own apartment, but at least I'll no longer be a burden on my family.

Re:and the point is...?

[nickos]

If I connect my Spectrum up I can bring the entire Internet to a standstill!

Booty Call: Xbox and the N64 Emulator

[BenJeremy]

The Xbox crowd recently held one of these sorts of efforts... to get a successful N64 emulator ported and working well on the Xbox.

It's working quite well, too... in the first pass, only one entry made it, but it looks like it will handle 32MB games by the deadline.

BTW: The booty on that one was something like $2500.

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[WWWWolf]

1) Get real.

Real? I'm a Commodore fan, you expect me to be realistic to any degree? Sheesh, some people. =)

(Hrm, is it time for my annual "GEOS still beats the crap out of Windows" post? =)

Oh, and like I said, I'm not familiar with exact details of Amiga, much less with development. My insistence on asm/hw was based solely on experiences with C64: "If you aren't doing it in raw hex, you aren't doing it Heroically." =)

<digress> ...just last week I coded something in C64 BASIC, the most evil, wretched, soul-eating thing Microsoft has ever released. I live, but only just that. This may, in part, explain why I have weird ideas ... still trying to recover from the shock... </digress>

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[jimsum]

Well I agree about the spin part, and I also agree that porting to an unfamiliar computer is an important skill. However, it is hard to spin this sort of thing on a resume, and you'll have to depend on an HR person to decide that plenty of experience with long-irrelevant platforms is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I believe this project would be valuable experience, but someone skimming resumes probably won't. That is the reason I don't bother to highlight my extensive DOS experience, or my excellent knowledge of 6502 assembly language and Commodore Pets :-)

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[WWWWolf]

Well, the equivalence as I said isn't exact and definitely won't work with a closer examination - I meant the "Commodore scale" less seriously, but apparently the packet with a smiley was inadvertedly tagged with the Evil Bit and NSA's new router blocked it (or something). They're not comparable raw power, of course - More like what I felt I could do with them...

Honestly, In my opinion, the only reason, in the end, why I liked Windows 3.0 (on the 386SX) over GEOS (on C64) was that the PC had a hard drive and a sharper display (not to even mention the fact that Win3 had scandinavic characters). The usability otherwise was about the same. But would Win3.0, theoretically, compile and run on C64? Of course not. Would it be possible to make a C64/SCPU web browser that would be as nice as Mozilla on PC? Probably.

So your analogy is pure crap?

[FatSean]

Duh. The original post about the 8MHz amiga is correct...'cause you can't run jack shit on the 'new amiga'. Hah.

Re:So your analogy is pure crap?

[mdwh2]

Duh. The original post about the 8MHz amiga is correct...'cause you can't run jack shit on the 'new amiga'. Hah.

He may be wrong to mention the AmigaOne, but the original post was still wrong. First of all, no one cares about 8MHz A500s since the OS and software runs quite happily on Amigas with CPUs up to a 66MHz 68060. Secondly, it could utilise PPC accelerators that Amigas can have (up to a 233MHz 604). Thirdly, MorphOS (an Amiga compatible OS, which is also a valid target for this prize) runs on the Pegasos which comes with a 600MHz G3. Lastly, one could point out Amithlon which runs AmigaOS on a PC at speeds far greater than any 68060 Amiga.

The first of these would probably still be slow for Mozilla, but the rest should run it fine I would have thought.

Its like shooting fish in a barrel!

[mekkab]

from your previous parent post: My main goal is to help humanity by finding a job that does medical research.


From this parent post I'm working on a MMORPG now, and I plan on doing it for 2-5 years before release

Gee, you sure are working HARD on that main goal, aren't ya?! [/sarcasrm]
Whatever kid.

Throwing in "ported mozilla to amiga" would trivialize my qualifications
Okay, good point. So for you, the only pay off would be the 3 grand, and thats not a sure thing.

I know who you are, you're just a self assured prick
DAMN STRAIGHT, mutherfucker! ;) I'll Wayne Gretzky on any MC.

How am I supposed to "risk it" when I have nothing but my life to gamble with. Well, your answer is right there- YOUR LIFE. Gamble with that. Oh, but how? And how to do it without completely compromising your principles, etc?
Thats the eternal question. If you can't see the answers, then DON'T risk it. However, if you'd like some help, Ask Rustin.

One last thing:
So you're getting all out of control on a ton of false assumptions of who I am.

I can make one true assumption about you. You are afraid. And that's not even an assumption, thats something that screams out in your writing; from these messages on slashdot to your webpage.

Re:Its like shooting fish in a barrel!

[jgerman]

You are afraid

After reading his website (I was morbidly fascinated):

• He has almost completely lost touch with reality.
  
• His ideas are so simplistic and child-like that I was literally shocked to scroll down to the bottom of one page and find that he is, apparently, an adult.
  
• It's likely that he's suffereing from some sort of mental disorder, whether it's Aspergers or something else, I think he needs help.
  

I honestly thought he was a 12-14 year old initially. His "resume" includes claims that he "invented" certain ideas concurrently with others, in a couple of cases, ideas that were for sure around long before he claims to have come up with them. And I don't even know where to begin with his poor grasp of artificial intelligence. He's taken the most trivial ideas and drawn conclusions from them. I really can't see how he got into CMU, much less graduated. I'm certainly not suprised he doesn't have a job.

Huh?

[Wakko Warner]

The two Amiga users left will have to split the money (and learn how to program), but $1800 or so is still quite a chunk of change. If this were 1985, they'd be able to buy a new Amiga with that kind of cash!

- A.P.

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[mekkab]

Yr right- this is not knowledge for HR, this is for AFTER you have the interview with someone ( a technical manager) who is already on the project.

Despite coming in handy on my current project, I'm not sure if I would advertise my assembly expertise, either!

Re:Mod this up! or port it today!

[_xeno_]

Send me a PowerBook and all the needed dev tools and I'll look into it :)

Actually, I think that's your real problem and why it probably won't get ported any time soon (if ever). Developers for the most part hate MacOS 9 and lower, simply because it was a crappy OS from the development point of view. (No dynamic memory allocation sticks out as the largest reason for the hatred, but no threads and other things that make a modern OS modern also help.) Most developers are a hell of a lot happier with MacOS X simply because it gives them the mix of UNIX and OpenStep goodness that makes programming just that much easier.

(Disclaimer: my facts are made up. Actually, I'm not sure about them - I think they're correct, but I haven't actually verified them, so please be kind in correcting misinformation. This is based on listening to older developers who hated MacOS x where x < X. (Er, x < 10.) So I may be wrong - but this is the impression I get and probably the reason MacOS 9 users are going to be left out in the cold. I could be wrong. I don't know.)

However, for a sufficient bribe, I'd be willing to take a look at Mozilla code again :)

Creepy Lizard

[nfotxn]

Eww, that furry cartoon holding the amiga beachball is kinda creeping me out.

AMiGA STILL HAS THE POWER

[SWAUG.org.uk]

The computing world hasn't stood still since 1994 when Commodore went bust - so why do so many non/ex-Amiga owners think that the Amiga has also?

Most of our members have powerful Amiga setups ( http://www.swaug.org.uk/members.html ) enough power to run Mozilla. Myself I'm typing this on my Broadband enabled Amiga with 256Mb RAM and 330GB Hard disk. We "poor old" Amiga owners have USB 2.0, 3D Graphics cards, 5.1 Digital Sound cards, DVD-ROMs and CD-ReWriters. So as you can see the Amiga market isn't all that bad- we're not expecting to run Mozilla on 1Mb A500's!

SWAUG.org.uk

Divide and conquer

[Syberghost]

Gosh, what an amazing way to take a bunch of people who could probably make a great port if they worked together, and remove all incentive for them to work together. While you're at it, encourage them to work fast instead of smart.

That money could have bankrolled a machine and hosting to set up a collaborative effort.

I know Pittsburgh sucks

[CrazyJim0]

But I have no money for gas, so I'm pretty much stuck in this shithole.

Re:I know Pittsburgh sucks

[AWhistler]

Oh, well in that case, cancel your auto insurance, sell your POS car, and buy a bus ticket.

Rent-a-coder

[jonathanclark]

You should try rentacoder.com, you can do exactly this - post a programming job you want done with a maximum bid and then let people fit over how cheap they will do it.

This site seems especially popular with 3rd world skilled programmers who are willing to do quite a bit of work for very little money. I know several Asian (British meaning) programmers who would are quite happy with $8/hr - and they are fairly experienced. I've heard this site is putting many US programming consultants out of work because they can't compete with those rates.

On one hand this is bad news for us US programmers - but on the other hand it present an avenue where we can find work here and resell it. I'm thinking about posting some large projects there for things I'd like to do if I had the time - but don't.

Jonathan

Re:LOL Amiga suxxor

[alienw]

Well, DON'T put that kind of shit on the resume. The only purpose of a resume is to get past trained HR monkeys and get an interview with someone who has a clue. If it doesn't do that, try to fix it. Try to make it easy for HR people to see that you meet the requirements for a given job -- even if it's something as basic as "proficient with MS Word". Use bulleted lists and make it easy to skim / sort. However, don't make yourself appear overqualified for a position -- if you are applying for an entry-level job, having too many extra qualifications can hurt you. The company might think you will leave as soon as you find another job.

If you do get interviews, that may be a good time to point out various skills that may impress the person who is actually hiring. The person hiring is often a project manager, and relevant skills and cool job-related hobbies may distinguish you from other candidates. Be careful, though.

With all that said, it must nevertheless be recognized that the best way to find a job is through networking. If someone you know can recommend you personally to fill a position, that will carry much more weight than anything an HR department can say. Of course, it depends on the organization, but keep in mind that the hiring manager can often request a position or fudge some requirements to favor a candidate. In fact, many advertised jobs are filled before they are even advertised -- that's why you may not even get an interview when you reply to job ads.

But who's going to maintain it, kid, you?

[bill_mcgonigle]

With apologies to Han, getting a port isn't the hard part, it's getting a maintainer. Classic Mac Mozilla had no maintainer, and now it's gone. It would take months to clean out the bitrot even if someone was interested.

If the Amiga folks spend their money on just a port they're going to have pissed it away if noone steps up to maintain it.

What architecture does the latest Amiga use? It would be better to invest in a binary compatibility layer on the OS for say, a linux version on the same hardware (assuming there is X for Amiga).

define Mozilla

[poot_rootbeer]

I bet I could get Netscape 0.9 (which Andreesen and co. referred to as 'Mozilla' back in the day) ported to the Amiga platform without too much effort... anyone got the source?

First port!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Hundreds of comments, and not one early one with the obvious joke? How terribly disappointing... ;-)

It's kinda like the x-prize

[vudufixit]

Only it isn't

Re:Good to see the Amiga community still alive

[Doktor Memory]

Only an Amiga fan could fail to see the contradiction between the second and third paragraphs there.

Too bloated to fit

[MMHere]

So I fire up an instance of Mozilla on 32-bit Sun, and it takes 39MB just to open to "about:blank". Open slashdot.org, and the process size increases to 42MB.

i86 Linux: open to blank page, 21MB; surf to slashdot.org, 24MB.

How will this fit on an '030 Amiga? I don't think memory sizes beyond a few dozens of MB were common, were they?

Re:Too bloated to fit

[POds]

Not when they were first released. But its been years, and people have updated their systems. Most people who run the 68000 computers, have added PPC boards and more memory to their systems. Those people should be able to handle it alright.

Those people who have no upgrades may not be able to handle it, and i dont understand why they still want to support dieing hardware. The community wont move ahead if people continue to support dieing hardware.

But, by making an 68k version of Mozilla, you'r also support people who use the popular emulators UAE, Amithlon and Amiga Forever.

Also, MorphOS and AmigaOS4 (modern implementations of AmigaOS PPC) also have fantastic 68k JIT emulation built in, so you'll be able to run them with great speed on the new PPC platforms pegasos and AmigaOne.

Re:build POSIX layer instead!

[jshepher]

It has already been done. It is called ixemul.library. Alot of the GNU tools already run on AmigaOS. In fact Apache already runs on the Amiga as well as qmail (no link).

Port Helix, get some AMD OPTERON hardware free

[flowerp]

from www.helixcommunity.org

AMD is looking for developers interested in porting the Helix DNA to AMD's recently launched 64-bit Opteron CPU. AMD has development hardware available for those that are willing to contribute their work. If someone can nail this, they are welcome to keep the loaner system. Please contact Conor Malone (conor.malone@amd.com) for details on this offer.

I'd rather do that, than porting Mozilla. Mozilla is like 10 times bigger than Helix.

Think again

[CrazyJim0]

You think maybe the way I talk to forum trolls may be different than the way I talk to people I like or deal with. Nah, that couldn't be. Just because I want to help humanity doesn't mean I like the lot of you :)

Re:Think again

[Commutative Monoid]

You think maybe the way I talk to forum trolls may be different than the way I talk to people I like or deal with.

Is that a question or a statement? Frankly, it concerns me little how you choose to rationalize your behavior. From your posting to your "resume," you present yourself in such a manner that I find disappointing.

Get a job, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and spend less time chasing delusions of bettering humanity's medical condition with videogames.

insurance is bad to everyone

[CrazyJim0]

The over all effect of HMO's in my area is that they drive hospitals bankrupt, and pull the plug asap.

Car insurance is almost worse. You can easily pay more money than your car is worth. If you do get in an accident, your insurance company plays every game in the book so they don't have to pay you.

Re:$4000?

[BrookHarty]

Really, this is the true love of opensource and computers. All those hackers who keep using Amigas, for the love of the machine. And all the programmers releasing GPL'ed code for the love of programming.

There are so much freeware/giftware that nobody makes a dime. How much you pay to install a free os like BSD or Linux? The ISO's are free, and there are thousands of programs. Lucky people do pay for Linux/Bsd distros.

I like these idea, First people paid for blender, people paying for porting, and also people tiping money to answers that help them. Nice to way to show support.

Re:If you want serious software then go elsewhere

[POds]

New PPC machines have been released. You can buy them now from a dealer new your or from the manufactorer...

The boards are as follows.
Pegasos From Genisi

AmigaOne From Eyetech Based on MAI Teron design.

Soon Pegasos II From Genisi

The pegasos board runs various operating systems including the flagship os MorphOS

AmigaOnes run the new AmigaOS4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment.

$3696?

[epepke]

Wow, that's 13974 in decimal!

Re:How about the Opera Web browser?

[Bert64]

Well, why dont you just compile it yourself? you cant rely on people precompiling binaries for your old OS for the few people who may still be using it... but the software can be compiled.

Re:$4000?

[DohDamit]

Ahh. He was unclear. Three possibilities:
1. Ten days salary, paid bimonthly; $144,000 a year.
2. Ten days clocked, paid by the hour: $50 an hour, ~$100,000 a year. Not exactly Junior Programmer level post 20001.
3. Ten days paid by the company for a consultant: billed $50 an hour, paid 1/2.7 of that, or $18.50 an hour.

It's all good.

060 is fast enough

[cybpunks3]

Opera has versions that run on relatively slow hardware (PDAs without floating point units). An 060 Amiga probably has as much floating point muscle as a modern 206mhz ARM simulating FP in integer math.

I don't see any reason why it's not theoretically possible to write a fast and compatible browser for Amigas with 68060 accelerators.

If you look at An 060 Amiga as having comparable throughput to something like a fast Dragonball Palm or a slow ARM but with lots more RAM, then it might be possible to adapt J2ME VMs and PDA-based plugins (like Flash) to the Amiga.

Not everyone has PPC accelerators in their Amigas since almost all software of any consequence was written for 68K and depending on your setup, it might not be possible to find an accelerator fast enough to justify the cost (most PPC accelerators cards for original Amiga hardware are ancient by today's standards).

Re:Amiga Owners

[bhtooefr]

I downloaded WinUAE today, and played with all three browsers. Voyager is a bit bloated, old, and ugly (try rendering Google, or ...shudder... Slashdot...). IBrowse is very fast, very old, and very ugly (try rendering ANYTHING...). AWeb-II is Opera fast and then some, wayyyy too old (seems like no JavaScript support), and about as ugly as IBrowse. I never tried the Amiga ports of Lynx, but the gui browsers were all shareware.

Re:Amiga Owners

[bhtooefr]

Errm... I HAVE a Celeron 2GHz! I said I ran WinUAE, which is an Amiga EMULATOR!

Re:Amiga Owners

[bhtooefr]

I have so much celery it hurts! 2466000000 times it hurts! (counting the 466MHz Celery!)

Re:Amiga Owners

[mdwh2]

AWeb-II is Opera fast and then some, wayyyy too old (seems like no JavaScript support), and about as ugly as IBrowse. I never tried the Amiga ports of Lynx, but the gui browsers were all shareware.

No, AWeb is now free and open source (the licence is similar to the GPL I believe). I couldn't find it on Aminet, but you can download it from the website.

Also it appears to have some Javascript support (don't know how good it is though).

Re:Amiga Owners

[bhtooefr]

Thanks for clearing up some stuff... I had thought that AWeb-II was the current version of AWeb, in the same way that Excel is the current version of Multiplan, or SCOX is the current version of XENIX.