Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:
Acill wrote:
@Amigadave the user base will never grow with the current pricing and hardware lock model. In fact I'm willing to bet it's gotten smaller in the terms of dedicated users.
I was a very dedicated user before 2.0 was released, to the point of funding my own trip to amiwest to show off 1.4 and one of the first peg 2 machines here in the west coast. I convinced several people to switch to morphos, did demos of hardware at frys electronics, an several other small electronics stores.
It took all of one hour on 2.0 to decide the new release was not worth it and the team was alienating those of us that busted our asses to help spread the word without a single thank you. So live your dream in dream land and keep shoving cash at them. Slowly the platform is going to die as those few left get fed up with it and come to realize that the few developers porting rehashed software from code older then dirt and no new ones making a showing is all they get.
I am not living in any dreamland, but I do have hopes that MorphOS will continue to improve and expand, I won't deny that. If it is a dream, only time will tell. I have no doubt that there are many former users like yourself that are angry or disappointed with the decisions the MorphOS team has made regarding security and pricing, but I don't know if those emotions from some users is going to equal the downfall and failure of MorphOS to survive. MorphOS has a small chance to survive with or without those emotions from former users and some remaining users that are no happy about those decisions.
As far as survivability, MorphOS is in the same boat as AmigaOS3.x, AmigaOS4.x and several dozen other alternative OSes around the planet. It bothers me that the team does not do more to appease the disenchanted former and current MorphOS users that are so displeased about the licensing scheme tied to the hardware the way it is and pricing of a MorphOS key, but I don't have any answers about what they could do to make everyone happy and still feel secure that their work is protected from piracy, so until someone advances some ideas that work for both sides of these disagreements, I can't blame the MorphOS team for what they have done (other than my wish that they would lower the price of MorphOS license key to a more publicly acceptable amount, like 99 euros, just to shut up those that are complaining about the price and to hopefully spur a bunch of potential AmigaOS3.x and AmigaOS4.x users to switch to using MorphOS2.4 and create more activity and hopefully more development on and for MorphOS. But that is only a marketing decision and no one can be 100% certain of any results for such a change in pricing).
As for your argument that the user base has probably gotten smaller since the introduction of 2.0, I won't dispute that assertion as it is very likely that many 1.4 users would not have continued to use MorphOS after there was any charge for it introduced. Amiga users are notorious for being a bunch of cheap-skates that don't want to pay for anything, but continue to spend small fortunes on systems that have been outdated for over 10 to 15 years. We are a weird group and many are addicted to the name Amiga and anything that has anything to do with it.
Can you really blame the MorphOS team for finally deciding to start getting back at least some beer and pizza money for all their hours of work on this MorphOS project? None of them are getting rich from ~730 license fees when you have so many members on the development team and we are talking about years of work. I multiplied it out once and it came out to some crazy low hourly wage comparable to something a McDonald's employee might make.
[ Edited by amigadave on 2009/12/28 13:24 ]
MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
