Former Netscape Executive gives $4000 to AmiZilla

POds writes "Recently a Former Netscape Executive made a 2000 dollar donation to the Amizilla project, but for one reason or another, decided 2000 wasn't good enough and donated, yet another 2000 dollars. His only request is that he wants to see the amount get over $10,000 so is requesting others donate what they can. The Booty is now over $8400 and goes to the first developer(s) to port Mozilla to the Amiga platform."

Comments

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

What $10,000 could have done to advance some more meaningful Open Source project. What's next-- OpenOffice for C64?

Re:*sigh*

[LearnToSpell]

Why the hell not? It's his money, not yours. If you think there's enough demand for OO.o on C64 (or whatever), and you want it that bad, put up some money and see what happens. Criticizing what other people think is important enough to spend money on is pretty lame.

Re:*sigh*

[Stray7Xi]

I'm glad you realize that you should donate to projects you find meaningful. (Apparently this guy already did)

Re:*sigh*

[mdwh2]

What $10,000 could have done to advance some more meaningful Open Source project. What's next-- OpenOffice for C64?

First of all, it's Amiga not C64. I don't like Macs, but that doesn't mean I say "What next, an Apple II port?" when I see a Mac story.

Secondly, I don't know about bounties in particular, but bear in mind that platforms such as Windows have had a phenomenal amount spent on them in terms of general software development, compared to niche platforms. We're talking billions. Macs probably get a fair amount too. Linux gets plenty of both commercial and open source development.

Yet as soon as someone stumps up a few thousand to help fund a possible port of a browser (to a platform whose browsers lack all sorts of modern features), this is seemingly unfair?

Rightly or wrongly, the market is driven by those with money to spend. Most of the time, that means that Windows wins, and platforms like the Amiga lose out. This is one of those rare times when things don't go that way.

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[Dreadlord]

Mozilla team has nothing to do with this, it's a contest of porting Mozilla to Amiga, the developer who does it wins the money, check out this.
But I think I somehow agree with you, how cares really about porting Mozilla to Amiga while there are lots of useful Open Source projects that require more support?

Re:Please give us Firebird first

[DrXym]

The Mozilla team is anyone who wants to throw their help into the project. Lot's of people don't work on Firebird (the browser), but their contribution is still important. Think of people working on mail / news, editting, embedding etc.

If someone wants to port to Amiga, then let them. For all anyone knows they might find some bugs in the layout engine, or widgets or add something useful to the configuration script etc. . It's even possible that while porting to what might politely be called a throwback platform they introduce benefits that other low performance platforms such as handhelds can use.

In other words, the more platforms the merrier.

Amiga is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

3. The AmiZilla Project must fully compile with running binaries on each of the following Amiga-like OS's: OS3.1, OS3.5+, MorphOS, UAE, Amithlon, DraCo. (Hint: don't hit the hardware, and stick to OS3.1: MUI, ClassAct 2, some internal gadget system, and bgui are acceptable).

I was the proud owner of a 500, 2000, and 4000(which I sold at a profit many years back). The Amiga was the hardware. It had a great API but the hardware(angus, denise, etc.) was what it was all about. If you aren't hitting the hardware, it's Amiga in name only.

Amiga zealots.

[saintlupus]

The Booty is now over $8400 and goes to the first developer(s) to port Mozilla to the Amiga platform.

I'm a BSD and Macintosh fan. And even I think the Amiga is dead.

It's not beleaguered. It's not "dying". It's dead. It's been ten years. For crissake, give up already. They were great back in the day, but so was Lionel Ritchie and skinny ties.

--saint

Re:Amiga zealots.

[segmond]

I hate your attitude, since when does population in terms of software use mean that a platform or a software is dead? Imagine this, is QBASIC dead? Sure, for developers right? But if some company out there is using it, which there are still many using it, and their business depends on it, and it does what it is suppose to do, why should they upgrade? Because people are saying it is dead? Let me ask you a question. Do you know how many QBasic apps are behind some business logic/functions out there? If I say more than 50,000. Will you be surprised? Do you know how many Amiga fans/users are out there? If there are 20,000 of them. That is still a very big user base. So long as they are happy with their OS and can do all that they desire, it is not dead. Whoopie, I use a P90mhz, 40mb, 2gig laptop. All my friends laugh at it and say it is ancient. I just smile, because it meets all my needs! So it's not ancient to me.

Re:http://www.aros.org

[saintlupus]

its so nice to piss down on somone else and forget where your OS of choice were just few years back!

I got started on Commodore gear -- my parents bought a C64 when I was really young, and that what I cut my programmng teeth on.

I read Commodore Magazine for years, typing in the programs in the back and trying to figure out what they do.

I called my first BBSes at 1200 baud on that C64. And I was really jealous of everyone who had an Amiga or an Atari ST.

Hell, I was even excited when Gateway bought up all the rights to the Amiga name. This was, of course, back when a Gateway was still a premium machine. "At last! The Amiga is coming back! I can finally get one!"

But it's over. The Amiga has been gone for so long that there's nothing but a string of hucksters trying to trade on the name. The platform is dead. It's a shame -- I always wanted one -- but it's over.

The diversity in computing is gone. I work for a college, and there are kids in the CS department who don't believe me when I say that there used to be so many different platforms. It's sad, but it's true, and noble efforts like this AmiZilla bribery don't change it.

--saint

You don't tell opensource programmers what to do..

[Kunta Kinte]

...with their time. It is that simple.

If the donator want's to sponsor porting mozilla over to the original NES, then, that's his right. If someone wants to code it, then that is their right as well.

No one's stoping you from sponsoring the main firebird's development.

Re:http://www.aros.org

[zulux]

The diversity in computing is gone

I know how you feel - but the fun in computing is coming BACK!!!!!

Five years ago, you had a choice: Windows98, WindowsNT or some wacky hard-to find os called Linux that you probably diden't know existed. Oh, and Mac's were ok if you were one of those "Artisits"

Now you can by $1000 Sun/Solaris Boxes

Macs are kick ass computers.

There Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD - the're all cool.

Hell, even XP isen't soooo bad for light use.

Thinkgs are gitting fun again!!