As I said already in the Prime Time thread yesterday, the problem of paid updates might be that - depending on the national laws - the customer might be entitled to getting support. For which there certainly isn't the time and money available yet at the given size of the user base and developer crew.

Therefore some kind of donation system, excluding such guaranteed support, seems to be the way to go. But obviously the people need to get something in return for their donation to motivate enough of them to actually do so.

Therefore I, too, am suggesting a password-restricted forum and download area which offers 'insider information' and single updated files and packages clearly labelled as "use on your own risk". Access to this area would be granted as a 'thank you' and donation by the MorphOS team to everyone who has donated money for the OS development.

This could be handled like with the original Betatesters I. Id est just create a new Betatester II status, which is restricted to those who donate for the MorphOS development. Normal customers would not get access and would have to wait for the official releases which would keep to be free until either the Pegasos platform is fully supported (printing, firewire, etc.) or MorphOS 2.0 is reached or the support belonging to a commercial product can be guaranteed.

Regarding those who wouldn't like to pay since they already paid for the Pegasos and expect a full support of that hardware first: Well, of course it might be a legitimate opinion to tell the MorphOS crew it would have been their own fault to bundle their software with the Pegasos without (as it seems) taking care for getting in turn a fixed and satisfying share per unit of the sales for their development. But a) then be would have had paid more already for the Pegasos, b) is the question what we would gain from punishing the MorphOS crew now for having done so by not wanting to pay for the OS (Is that really in our interest!?), and c) has it always been said that MorphOS would be shipped for free with the Pegasos since it is not ready to be sold commercially yet. So I see no basis for any demands from us users regarding the covered functionality. We paid for the Pegasos, not MorphOS - although obviously for most of us it was MorphOS which made us buy it, not the (excellent) hardware itself.

And finally regarding those who - correctly, as I did yesterday also already - indicate that the money, which the majority of us here in this thread is willing to pay to the MorphOS crew, would be just a drop in the ocean, I guess that our intention of support demonstrated by us towards the MorphOS crew by doing so might at least help to motivate them a bit more and to strengthen them if everyone sees that the users, the customers, are standing behind them, their product, in the first place.

[ Edited by Senex on 2004/7/24 9:36 ]