Archive : : New AmiZilla Website
Posted By: discreetfx. on 2008/8/12 8:21:41
A few of you have noticed that a new AmiZilla website was launched recently. The talented artist that created it did a great job. AmiZilla has been a catalyst for change in the Amiga marketplace and an inspiration to all. AmiZilla shocked the Amiga market and even received wide press on Slashdot, Mozilla forums and many other news sites when it was launched in 2003. Many were caught off guard that an Amiga effort could bring in over $10,000 in donations, the Amiga is suppose to dead right? The Amiga is not dead, the AROS Bounty system, MorphZone Bounties and many other bounty systems were all inspired by AmiZilla and went on to collect thousands of dollars. DiscreetFX did not consider this competition to AmiZilla, in fact we embraced it and put lots of money into AROS Bounties, MorphZone Bounties and many others. The small community that is Amiga proved that it was not giving up and it was willing to pay for quality software to be ported to the Four Headsmen of Amiga.
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A paradigm shift occurred in the Amiga market and has been going on ever since. Amiga owners don't mind reaching into their pockets for quality software vs having no software at all. The sad news in all of this is that the dream of AmiZilla has still not been reached. Firefox proved that it is difficult to port and it will take talented programmers time to do it. Progress was made, a CVS was setup, NSPR was ported and other little models of Firefox but the main goal has not been achieved. Talented developers also gave us Sputnik for MorphOS and OWB for Amiga OS 4.0 & 3.9. Their skills are appreciated because the Amiga had no CSS capable browser. The blunt truth of the matter is that programming is hard and developers need to be paid for their time and work. Over $10,000 in bounty collections in the Amiga market is a great achievement but unfortunately it is not enough. Without Firefox running on the Four Headsmen of Amiga we are not taken seriously and miss out on the wealth of plug-ins and respect the web based platform that is Firefox would give us. Even small unknown operating systems like SkyOS have Firefox.

So we have a two new goals for AmiZilla, $15,000 & $20,000. At these higher bounty levels maybe Linux developers will get interested and run an Amiga virtual machine and or even buy an EFIKA running MorphOS 2.0 and or a used system running Amiga OS 4.0. Even a virtual AROS system is free to setup and use on most environments. Maybe an old Amiga developer that feels inspired and loves Firefox will return to Amiga programming to collect the bounty. We don't care how it gets done we just want it completed to help the Amiga marketplace. To help the contest reach a new level we have added another $1000 to the bounty. To reach a goal of $15K & 20K we will also need the help of others that believe in the dream of Firefox for Amiga OS, MorphOS & AROS.

Best regards

DiscreetFX Team

Links:

New AmiZilla Website

The Four Headsmen of Amiga
 
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Velcro_SP
    Joined: 2003/7/13
    Posts: 929
    From: Universe
    After all this time this bounty project seems to be somewhat unrealistic... Does it really expect Firefox3 on 68xxx series CPUs with 32 megs of RAM and OS 3.9? That hardware is named in the FAQ... FF3 will never run on that. Is it a bounty for some Netscape 4.5-Gold 1998-era version of Mozilla? The FAQ also includes the silly statement that "Amiga OS is the very best place to have something like Firefox because of the elegance of the design of the operating system." Elegance is not going to get you over the hump of mammoth technical obstacles and some impossibilities such as the aforementioned FF3 on 68xxx with 32 megs RAM.

    How about a time limit? What happens to the money if nobody ever claims the bounty? Who gets it? What's going on with the interest right now? Are there means for contributors to get their contributions back after two years? After five? After ten?

    Why not make the bounty capabilities-based rather than a mandatory homage to the Mozilla code? Sputnik or whatever should be able to fulfill the bounty if it met capabilities and stability requirements and so on. And slap a Mozilla skin on there if it makes people feel better. IIRC you talked to the "former Netscape executive" contributor who doesn't want to go along with that. Well, leave his portion out and you still have a nice bounty, and you can possibly award it to someone in the community who's worked hard and come up with something satisfactory.

    Given the absence of realism I'd finally fault the solicitation: "Even if you only send $10, or $5 or even $1 every dollar makes a difference." People who can only afford tiny amounts of money should be putting it in a savings account, not blowing it on some bounty that never really goes anywhere, year after year after year. Even if they are diehard Amiga fans ready to believe in the dream.

    [ Edited by Velcro_SP On 2008/8/12 13:24 ]
  • »2008/8/12 14:57
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    SoundSquare
    Joined: 2004/12/1
    Posts: 1213
    From: Paris, France
    a new website...ok

    but where the hell are the new mugs and tshirts ?

    :flame:
  • »2008/8/12 21:52
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    discreetfx
    Joined: 2003/7/26
    Posts: 388
    From: Chicago, IL
    We are not expecting it to run on a 680X0 Amiga with 32MB of RAM. A virtual Amiga via Amiga Forever 2008 maybe. The Netscape executive has increased his stake in AmiZilla now and has over 5K invested. Thus, he is able to dictate to us how the contest is run. Per him and every donor we have asked AmiZilla donations are for porting Firefox end of story. All funds are safe, DiscreetFX has also donated to many other bounty's including Sputnik. DiscreetFX has also busted it's ass to help Amiga OS, MorphOS & AROS in many ways.
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  • »2008/8/14 11:24
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Velcro_SP
    Joined: 2003/7/13
    Posts: 929
    From: Universe
    DiscreetFX, I hope you don't take it personally but I think it's reasonable to ask these questions about the bounty. You're tough enough to take a little polite skepticism.

    Here is what is said in the FAQ at your website:

    Quote:

    "...the spec we would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever 2008/AROS/MorphOS. 680x0+ CPU or PowerPC CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA."


    I definitely see 680x0 (connected to PPC with "or," not "and") and 32MB in there. Heck, that might have been viewed as possible with the version of Mozilla that existed when the Amizilla project started. Time has overtaken this.

    I'm pretty sure it's been five years or more since the project was started. It seems fair enough to ask if anything happens if another five pass, is the project EVER going to be dropped for impracticality?

    Bounties have done a LOT for MorphOS, just look at MOSNet and Sputnik as the prime examples. MOSNet gets less attention now because Netstack is included, but it filled the breach during a lot of the time when MorphOS didn't have a stack, and commercial stacks were not easy to obtain or you didn't know if they'd have glitches on your system. Bounties have done even more for AROS, whose team has darn near perfected their use. But I find after all this time that Amizilla is an unrealistic bounty.

    You could adapt the bounty by raising the specs of the minimum system, perhaps dropping OS 3.9 altogether, or at least requiring a PPC accelerator and more memory on classic systems. The bounty requirements now are a bit nebulous and at least once even arbitrary ("I would like [it to] work with AGA]"). You have your decision about going forward in a different direction without the contribution of the executive, about 50% of the total. But perhaps the opinions of other contributors could be considered, in an open public discussion or roll call, for those still paying attention.
  • »2008/8/14 15:17
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  • Moderator
    hooligan
    Joined: 2003/2/23
    Posts: 1948
    From: Lahti, Finland
    Code:
    We are not expecting it to run on a 680X0 Amiga with 32MB of RAM. A virtual Amiga via Amiga Forever 2008 maybe.


    I have to quote myself from amiga.org thread, regarding running Firefox on Winuae. This was a reply to Ants when he suggested the same:

    "Run Firefox on WinUAE while at the same time running Firefox on Windows can be done by pressing alt+tab once? That does not make sense my friend, not at all "

    I think my point is very valid. Whats the point in browsing featureless Firefox on Amigaside when you can have very much working Firefox on Windows by pressing a couple keys.
    www.mikseri.net/hooligan <- Free music
  • »2008/8/14 20:38
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    discreetfx
    Joined: 2003/7/26
    Posts: 388
    From: Chicago, IL
    FAQ updated and obsolete information removed. As the sponsor of the contest we listen to any and all feedback that helps the AmiZilla project.

    [ Edited by discreetfx On 2008/8/14 15:49 ]
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  • »2008/8/14 21:47
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  • Targhan
    Joined: 2003/2/8
    Posts: 2833
    From: USA
    Heys,

    Let's try not to get too heated. I do understand the skepticism, but I've known the guys over at DiscreetFX for a while. They're trying their best, whether or not they get the tires to meet the road. Personally, I would love to see a scaled down version of firefox that can run on an old as nails 040. If for nothing more than to just to see it done. There are still times I look at my old A1200 thinking that the Mediator inside of it just should not be possible.

    I just can't help to wonder if simply meeting the API requirements of 3.1/3.5 would be enough to get it off the ground in several directions (MorphOS, AOS4, PPC classic, etc)
    :idea:Targhan

    MorphOS portal? www.MorphZone.org
  • »2008/8/17 14:51
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