Before I start, take this as casual conversation and not wild fantasy

What can the average end user besides myself do for MorphOS advocacy besides buying a license key or 2? It would seem to me spreading the word would have very little effect. Just a thought, but what help would more cash flow to the MorphOS have? Would an optional premium user registration system where users would pay a monthly subscription of say $20 - $30 or so a month help anything? At best I'd guess maybe 200-300 people would consider it out of the current user base (might be high estimate, guessing).

It is not a ton of money to be sure, but it is something. Would ~$60k a year buy anything? Pay for one currently unemployed starving programmer to work full time? Pay license fees for some technology we might not otherwise have? Would a steady, if small, cash flow help anything?

Just asking as a non-programmer end user.

[ Edited by redrumloa 19.08.2012 - 20:12 ]

I know that I express my opinions in these kind of threads far too often, but here I go again.

I doubt that paying for one full time MorphOS developer would make much difference (depending on how talented and productive that particular programmer was, but if he was really talented, he would be employed elsewhere full time at 3 to 4 times what we could afford to pay him). It would not hurt, but I doubt one full time programmer is the answer to what you are looking for.

Spreading the word might not seem to help, but it does in a small way and can spread to bigger and better things in the future. Getting the right people interested in MorphOS3.x could be worth 5 new developers, in the future.

I know a lot of people are pushing for the MorphOS Dev. Team to port to more and newer hardware, but the hardware we already have right now to run MorphOS3.1 on, is plenty fast enough to run 99% of the software we currently have, and 85% of the software we are likely to get within the next 2 or 3 years. Support for a few G5 Mac models would improve those numbers even further. Support for some kind of multi-processor configuration plus the few G5 Mac models, would possibly be enough speed and power for 100% of our current and near future software needs for a few years.

I would rather see more software written new, or ported from other platforms to MorphOS3.x, than see more changes to MorphOS3.x, but that is just my opinion. I don't mean to say that the Dev. Team should stop doing bug fixes and new features for MorphOS3.x, but ports to more hardware platforms makes us more like Windows users that feel they have to upgrade their PC's every 2 years or less, just because they think they have to own the latest and greatest thing on the market, not because they need it for any real reason.

My Windows PC is 5 years old now and can still run almost any software on the market today (haven't found anything it can't run), and I don't plan on upgrading it any time soon, unless I donate it to my 19 year-old Son and then build a new computer for myself that has newer components.

If you want to promote MorphOS, then learn to use it well and show it to all your friends and tell them why you like it more than other computers. Learn to program software for MorphOS3.x and maybe in a couple of years you will be able to create something we all need, or want to run on our MorphOS computers.

Those are the only two suggestions I can figure out to make and the two that I am trying to accomplish myself. The programming studying is going well so far.

i'm not sure money is the problem here, the main MorphOS issue is the number of active and skilled developers available to work on the platform and to make new modern applications. Applications attract new users, beyond the alternative OS lovers and hobbyists.
just my 2 cents.

i do agree, my 2 cents are, that the difference between developers and users is getting higher and higher. Imo it's the lack of simple developing software like Amiga Basic was for AmigaOS 1.3.

Developers need their own evolution, that starts with Basic, then goes through Pascal and similar simpler languages, than basics of assembler, and at last after knowing how to work with these languages make the step to C/C++ or other modern difficult language. Of course my choice is AmigaE/PowerD, it's simple and effective.

MOS Team, please add to the MOS 3.2 CD some developer materials, autodocs, arexx description, some basic and others to attract new developers, i don't see the current way, where everything separates to users and developers as a wise solution, imo we need to get these two bases more together.

Bye, MarK.

This is part of how the HaikuOS project is getting the job done - http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2012-08-20_two_contractors_each_two_months Although, after reaching their $30k donation target last year, I'm not so sure they'll meet this year's $35k target. Even so, where Haiku has a general donation method of funding, MorphOS has registrations and bounties.

But who knows? Maybe the general consensus within the team is that it is already big and productive enough.

Imo it's the lack of simple developing software like Amiga Basic was for AmigaOS 1.3.

There is Lua language in MorphOS. In my opinion it is nice language. It has ARexx interface, so you can use it as ARexx replacement. It will also have MUI module soon, so one can write full featured applications in Lua.

I am looking very forward to that. While documentation for Lua is plenty out there, some more information about MUI would probably help.

While Krashan already mentioned Lua, there's also Hollywood. Hollywood is really easy and useful for many things, but of course also has it's downsides:
- relatively slow on mny things
- currently not available (I an confident that this will change again)
- no native GUI toolkit (but AFAIU the plugin system should allow for a MUI plugin, so that theoretically MUI Hollywood Apps could be possible - if only someone wrote such a plug in that is. That would be brilliant!)

[ Editiert durch Zylesea 21.08.2012 - 20:58 ]

well, my point is, that we need something, that is created for MorphOS, with included documentation, examples, a simple basic would be great but not many people will look for lua online, as it doesn't tell them anything... MOS Basic would imo affect lots of people...

bye, MarK.

MarK,

we need something, that is created for MorphOS

Creating a new, MorphOS specific language makes no sense. Lua can be perfectly used Basic style. It can do much more than that, so you can use more advanced techniques as you learn, but can be used in procedural style without any problem. Also bear in mind MorphOS port of Lua is heavily customized (for example modules are loaded dynamically as standard system libraries, standard functions use MorphOS API directly and so on).

with included documentation

MorphOS Lua has full documentation in AmigaGude format, just not sure if it is automatically included in ISO build... Examples will come once I will finish the MUI module.

Just out of curiousity, is AmigaBASIC system friendly enough to run on MorphOS?

btw Yes, I know I could dig through my own files and hardware to find out but maybe someone already knows...

AmigaBasic was made by Microsoft, So you can be sure that they did not play by rules, when it came to coding rules.

Geit

> is AmigaBASIC system friendly enough to run on MorphOS?

I didn't test it on MorphOS, but as far as I know AmigaBASIC programs can't address more than 16 MiB RAM (24 bit) anyway as it uses the most significant byte of the address pointer to store private data, which I think makes it incompatible with MorphOS. There's a patch for CPUs >68000 at least:

http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/PtchAmigaBASIC

MarK wrote:,
Quote:


As someone who has been trying to find the right motivation to go forward with my meager programming skills and learn a new programming language for a long time, I have researched what is available to use on MorphOS3.1 and can tell you that there are actually many choices. There is no need to create anything new, only maybe make some improvements to what we already have, and make them easier for beginners to use, such as easier IDE's, or editors that support more different programming languages, and more documentation, examples & tutorials.

Scribble is excellent, but I don't yet know how many different programming languages it supports. The documentation for programming within and for MorphOS3.x is getting better, thanks to a few people in our community.

I don't know how long it will take the XMOS project to become useful for MorphOS3.x users, but it is one possibility for a BASIC type of programming language that might be appealing to some people, but probably more for just running old AMOS Pro programs on MorphOS3.x, than actually using as a language to write new programs.

Hollywood (which is based on LUA) can be used by beginning programmers and there are several people creating examples with it and providing the source code to everyone who wants to use it for learning purposes. I am very surprised what some people have accomplished with Hollywood, or Hollywood Designer.

People smarter than me can do a lot with Python, but probably the best programming language for beginning MorphOS3.x programmers (at least what I have been told by other more experienced programmers) is AmigaE. Simpler than "C", but faster and more powerful than any form of BASIC.

There are also lots of programming examples and tutorials for almost any programming language online for free.

Good Luck Mark, I have to stop browsing forum sites so I can get back to studying "C" with the Kernighan & Ritchie pdf book, and the MorphOS Programming Guide.

[ Edited by amigadave 23.08.2012 - 16:24 ]

> XMOS project

That should be XAMOS I think.

> for just running old AMOS Pro programs on MorphOS3.x

Thing here is that in order to do this you'd need the source code for those old programs as the old compiled binaries surely can't be made to run on MorphOS.