Not sure who's right, but I feel some people feel like the OS is not good enough for selling it...

Bill Gates sold shit in the past, far worse than the alternatives (nowadays, I just feel that it's a bigger shit, but more or less the same smell ;P). So, what's necessary is vision and find business opportunities, not waiting hidden in your closet.

< edited here >
P.S. And for a hobby OS we have AROS. I agree ppl should put efforts on that :)


[ Edited by Hawk on 2006/4/2 19:27 ]

@Merko:
I disagree with your second post (the one about SWOT). It's just a
tool, so it is only as good as the people doing it.

I am myself a "techical man" (and used to be a professional
programmer), so I'm used to hearing that anything that's "non
technical" is bullsh*t... However, when this kind of brainstorming
techniques are used by KNOWLEDGEABLE people (like the MOS team, who,
as you said, know the market) the results can be quite impressing.

So I was only wondering, whether the MOS team took the time to do a
"proper" analysis of the situation (and no, neither "living the
sitation", nor each team member keeping to himself is an analysis
). So, following through with a protocol (call it SWOT, call it
whathever you want) can help the participants keep focused in the
discussion at hand.

As for your other post (the long one), I must say that I can see your
point of view (even if I don't agree 100 % with what you say).

@CISC:
I do understand why you reacted like that, but I think granny's
intention was not telling you what to do. He believes in the potetial
of the OS (as I do, but that is a different story), and he would
probably want to see it realize that potential.

Now, let me ask you ONE question (since we, outsiders, have little
visibility on what's going on in the MOS team):
Did you (the team) ever got _together_ to do some brainstorming
about the future of MOS? Maybe even bringing in some "outsiders" in
the discussion, since I very much doubt that the team competence pool
covers ALL the possible fields of informatics; even though it shows
that you are an extremely talented bunch, the possibilities are so
vast that it is not possible for you to know everything: SCADA
systems, satellites, data acquisition systems (original amigas
were QUITE often used for this, even at NASA), avionics, ship
automation, embedded, desktops, etc.

Finally, let me say for clarity's sake that I'm not advocating
granny's plan, nor a plan of my own device. I agree with Hawk, I'm
sure there are opportunities out there, you just* need to find them.

* "Just" is somewhat light as an statement, since it is the most
difficult part of bussiness creation, and one of the main factors in
the success or failure of the enterprise. Of, course, the best way to
AVOID finding an opportunity is by NOT looking for it (I'm not saying
that it is the case, I simply don't know).

dolen wrote:
> MOS seems to have a lot of dedicated users who wants to get involved
> but cant.

Really? Where? Why wouldn't they be able to get involved?

I think MOS being closed source is just a bad excuse from people who
don't want to be involved and want to blame something else than their
laziness/lack of time/lack of talent/whatever.

If someone really wants to improve MOS there's certainly enough to do
without having access to any particular sourcecode.


winterhunter: Your reasoning is flawed. Some things that are
non-technical are bullsh*t. Not all things. However, I would place
most of the "business" or "entrepreneur" material in the bullsh*t
category. Lots of it even directly appeals to flimsy new-age concepts,
but even what doesn't usually lacks even the aim to be falsifiable.
I don't deny that there are some more or less useful tools to improve
brainstorming sessions (though I would rank SWOT analyses as less
useful) but what caused my remark was your statement that such
methods would let someone "factually SEE" whether there is a business
case. Sorry, but there are simply no magical methods to turn guesses
into facts like this.

@ merko
Yeah everybody has an excuse that`s ture, but sad to say the motivation factor is money.
Out of an average user base of about 2000 users, if everyone would donate 100 euro it would be 200,000 euro. Now that would get alot of things done I would think. Give me a 200,000 euro a year job anyday.

Merko,

Maybe the big boom are just around the corner... ?

Hi,
to get this clear:

The problem of MOS beeing closed source is not directly correlated with the need to fix some OS probs urgently.

To me, it's more about believe in the future.

AmigaOs was allways closed and some day support became weaker and weaker ...but more and more little companies fought against each other ... the result was the overall dead of the whole project.

What can give me some confidence to invest my time and money into MOS, if I can't see how future support is supposed to be existent ?

bye

judas: Uh, there's a ton of open source OSes which have far less
people working on them than MorphOS does. Now, making MOS open source
would potentially attract some people who get motivated by working on
open source projects. But it would factually *demotivate* at least
several key contributors in the current team. We know this because
they said so. Personally I'd keep these people any day over these
mystical magical open source fanatic developer that would supposedly
appear out of thin air (and what would they know about MOS
development, anyway?).


Nitro: Clearly the current team are not motivated by money mainly
(although bounties have turned out to be useful, the sums are not
large enough to be the main motivation). Your figures are unrealistic,
there are not 2000 users and most of the users that do exist would not
pay 100 euro annually. But even if you would be able to employ 2-3
programmers, that's simply not enough. MOS would *still*
depend on people working for free. And when you have 2-3 people
getting paid, what do you think this does to the motivation of the
people who don't get paid? I'm not saying the idea is to be dismissed
completely, but it's unrealistic presently and it would be rather
problematic. I don't rule out the possibility that in a few years, the
userbase could grow to a level where it would be realistic to have a
few people employed. It's hard to see what would cause this currently,
but you never know, it's not completely out in the blue. But I'm quite
sure we're not there at the moment.

@ merko
Yeah I know that number is unrealistic. I don`t know what the Morph-team does outside of MorphOS. I assume they are like alot of people that work on projects in their spare time. These things take alot of time, and I see alot of people get impatient and complain or just drop out of it all. Alot of things have been done by bounties. Yet some things like a Mozilla port with an almost 10,000 reward are still in the waiting. Rumor has it there will be a beta release soon. I`m happy that updates still happen for MorphOS. I hope we never see the problem that BeOS fans have had. Even the Haiku team had to hire one full time developer. But with the bounties, some people have to choose between a project they like or a project that can play the bills. Maybe some kind of super bounty would help. It wasn`t long ago DJBase had to sell his peg2 for some cash. I hate to see things like that. I hope he can get another.

Hi Judas,

> What can give me some confidence to invest my time and money into MOS, if I can't see how future support is supposed to be existent ?

As I see it, the money spent and invested when purchasing a Pegasos computer - is spent on the Pegasos computer. The computer can be used in a profession and/or for entertainment. I think Genesi/bplan have succeed quite well in what they have done with the Pegasos platform.

But for discussing around MorphOS. MorphOS is just an operating system. Its not possible to buy MorphOS and look on it as You buy a product.

As for open source software and closed software, I do believe that at least 50% of software released for MorphOS during the last year - is open source software, probably higher. Also components that can be considered as being part of the system is of open source type. As for software released aimed for selling/purchasing its 0%.

I do personally believe that the MorphOS userbase can grove a little bit forward. It might be that MorphOS not is attractive enough for now, but there is people who are curios about what MorphOS is, and I think MorphOS can become more attractive forward and then get some more new users.

@judas, dolen, Hawk, winterhunter

Well said.


@everybody

Granted my belief that MOS would benefit much from being open source, I think there are bigger issues than that.

MorphOS right now looks more like a GhostOS. It is being developed from a GhostTeam, it doesn't have financial funding, nor a roadmap, nobody (except maybe the GhostTeam) knows where it is heading, what it will be implemented next and when. It doesn't even have a webpage.

But most importantly it's GhostDevs lack the will to address the above.

Dante,

Maybe you are after something like this ? www.directionsonmicrosoft.com

Funny,
This link
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4452&forum=42
shows that where possible users are helped by the devs.
I'm on IRC only a few times a month, but everytime ppl
who had questions got helpful answers ... so it's really
not fair to speak of GhostDevs ...

And for GhostOS, well, I care where we are. And the
OS is quite stable and usefull. The future is: Nothing is
promised, but there is work done and when you put some energy in looking you can see it.
Do you think the crew would still be around when nobody believed in a future?

Why not be a little more patient?

MorphOS is a hobby project. It once served to push a startup company, but it's no longer the case. Apparently, one can get information about its development, but not in an easy manner.
As for its nature, there will always be controversy and frustration. But that's what amigans have always had, so we should be able to cope with it.
I think that the thing most wrong with MorphOS is that it once had commercial relations, that have failed. If that hadn't happen before, things would have been much more clear.
I hope that the developers can keep on polishing and adding functions to this unique breed of a system. Perhaps some day we will see the mythical 1.5 release, but that would be only to realize, a couple of months later, that we still want more. It's life!

My strongest fear is that the MorphOS looses interest in its baby.

Quote:

I am not sure if I will buy a Pegasos again. For now it lost my interest. I have some differences with the current situation.

Why not open the code, if thats a case of loosing a few developers, is that a risk worth taking to gain more widespread exposure, and contribution. Otherwise MorphOS will continue to available only to a select few, who are willing to buy hardware from a unreputable company. Surely that's the way forward. Ambient development is going great now!

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 27.07.2011 - 13:17 ]

Quote:

heh.. how about $1000? split between 4000 users that would be $4 million!

@ Darth_X

What a great Idea! Everyone can send to my paypal account and, uh I`ll HOLD the money, uh yeah.

Seriously, I think most MorphOS users would pay 100 euro for an OS that had more functions and could perform most of the task you wanted it to do.
I like MorphOS more than alot other systems that charge money for beta releases such as SKYOS and Zeta. There are people that would argue with me that SKYOS has more to offer than MorphOS, but I think SKYOS is crap. Zeta on the other hand I like.

Gimme a functioning MorphOS 1.5 and I will pay for it.

Gimme functioning GigaEthernet and Firewire in MorphOS and I will pay for it.

Gimme a stable, brand new MorphOS 1.5 with all new features active and running (such as TCP-IP stack), and I will pay for it.

Then when MorphOS 1.5 will be available, we will check its usability and more, we all users will judge if it could been sold or not into various markets; for example sold as embedded OS, as hooby OS, as SCADA, as palm-device OS, or if it could being considered unusable.

Because you couldn't consider an OS without all its functions made available to users, and avoid judging first from their response based on direct experience.

Any further discussions are pure speculation.