Quoting Dilwyn Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Will you be releasing this as freeware or shareware, or as a > commercial product? > > > > Mark > Commercial (price undecided yet) and a demo version: useable, but > limited by the number of program icons which can be set up. >
Please do NOT flame me. I mean no disrespect to anyone involved in developing QL software or hardware. I am a casual user, who has just recently gotten back "into" using QL after more than 10 years. I understand this is mostly a philosophical question, but I have a direct question I'd like an answer to. This is NOT a direct response or reaction to the above mentioned product, BTW. I'm curious to understand why just about anything for the QL is commercial. Is there that much of a market for QL software in Europe or the rest of the world BESIDES the US? I might have a mistaken impression that any QL computing done nowadays is by dedicated hobbyists. I guess I've grown too accustomed to the Linux/BSD world of open source projects that anybody can hitch their wagon to. There seem to be a number of decent or really good QL programs that run great on hardware that is arguably almost 20 years old, but it _appears_ to me that the vast majority of it is commercial. Not terribly expensive, necessarily, but certainly not open source where a project can perhaps evolve quicker with more contributions. I had hopes of porting some useful applications to QL. Or of even writing them. I'm finding, after having only just recently purchased a QXL card and setting up a box, that I _almost_ have to purchase a bit more software to do any serious development on this box. I am also disheartened to realize that I can't contribute directly to any products or projects currently underway. I do see that there are still a number of companies and individuals selling software and hardware to this day. I could assume, I guess, that this means there's still a market, if only not in the US. I would love to have an environment setup on the pQL (pseudo QL) box I have so that I can compile _and_ edit BASIC and C/C++ programs and release them. Port useful *nix userland utils where possible. I'd *REALLY* love to get ppp/tcp-ip up and running on this box so I can put it on the net. My first project would then be a port of thttpd or something similar. My biggest fear is that I'll have to bootstrap the whole process, reinventing what someone has done commercially for a box that's really just a hobby. :) Mark ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
