Its too bad they dont have a toolkit for allowing third parties to create custom firmware for it. Its not like it would be a maintainance problem for them, they could just disallow warranty claims related to unofficial firmware. Besides, its not like the users couldnt reset the camera with official firmware anytime. I've always thought that companies that opened up their firmware/software to the public for their products usually found that the move benefited them by enabling many new and unforseen applications that creative third parties wrote. Look at TI and its higher end calculator line, they are now the most used calculators in the US, partly because of the widespread availability of many third party packages for them. Also, originally Nintendo kept all the software development to themselves, but other competitors opened up their systems to outside developers and it quickly became the dominant marketing model due to its success.
The "green button" fix for K/M lenses could have been written long before Pentax finally came out with it. And a pretty good Av mode using the green button could be easily developed along the lines described here recently. Plus people could switch Av/Tv wheel orientation, (potentially) add a rotate mode when the grip shutter button is used, etc. There are many potential new functions that could be added if the firmware was opened up. I've heard many suggestions on this group worthy of a firmware function for them.
rg
