NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/programmer/4375

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 4.9 KB

Path: sourcery.han.de!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
References: <4f4qn6$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4fk3o7$[e-mail]> <4gem95$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4gmlmg$[e-mail]> <4gnvtf$[e-mail]> <4gqi0h$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4guj1l$[e-mail]>
From: "Olaf Barthel" <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 11:04:14 +0100
X-NewsReader: IntuiNews 1.3a (7.9.95)
Subject: Re: Registrated developer, myth or reality?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

In Article <4guj1l$[e-mail]>, Joanne Dow <[e-mail]> wrote:
> In article <[e-mail]>,
>    [e-mail] (Ronald van Eijck) wrote:
> >In article <4gqi0h$[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Joanne Dow) writes:
> >>
> >> Which costs you more, no information or BIX's $13/month plus $1/hour telnet
> >> access with maybe 5-10 minutes per day connect time? If no information costs you
> >> more you know what I am on about. (What you get for free is generally worth
> >> precisely what you paid for it, too.)
> >>
> >> {^_^}     Joanne Dow, Amiga Exchange Editor on BIX, aka The Wizardess
> >
> >For europe you can add the cost for your local IP and phonecharges which
> >is probably about the same or a little more then the costs for BIX. This
> >means that support trough internet will cost us say US$ 20/Month and
> >BIX would add another US$17. This is a price difference of about US$200
> >a year. Not much for a company but very much for every private developer
> >out there. Not to forget that the Internet account they have gives them
> >a lot of other things they frequently use while the 200/year for BIX
> >is just a channel to devsupport.
>
> PHWEEP! 15 yard penalty for inaccurate commentary. You cannot access ADSP or any
> OTHER Amiga support without that same internet account and with approximately
> the same connect time.

   I hate to do this, but: the access to ADSP always required only a working
UUCP setup. You would call the site set up by your Commodore support manager
(cbmger in Germany, cbmswi in Switzerland, etc.) and simply exchange batched
news articles. Even in its heyday it would take less than 4-5 minutes to
get the poll done each day unless one had subscribed to the Usenet newsgroups
the cbm europe backbone carried in addition to the closed adsp newsgroups.
Ignoring the fact that one didn't get much for the developer registration fee
this was the cheapest part of the support program.

> [..]
> >I also doubt that developer support on BIX would be up and running
> >as you say, even though the environment would work the developer
> >material that Olaf and others are working on would be just as far
> >as it is now, not done. Its not the medium that takes time, its the
> >copyright issues, lots of tapes that have to be screened etc. etc. etc.
> >AT also has the website running, mailing lists setup, ftp servers
> >ready etc. but they don't open to the public until they have some
> >stuff sorted out. Legal matters always take time.
>
> Download file. Dearchive file into individual directory. Scan all text files for
> "Commodore" and replace with "Amiga Technologies." Since SOME of the material is
> being changed add the new date if the year has changed. Once all files are
> scanned rearchive and upload. How long do you think this would take with
> suitable AREXX macros. Gimme 4 man weeks and I'll have it done myself. Your
> claim here is bogus.

   If it were that simple I'd have done it myself. The text files carrying the
copyright notice present no problem at all. The problems are in:

- Product licenses; the legalese text was tailored for Commodore, which
  used to be a US company which sometimes found itself bound to
  US law. These texts needs to be revised and adapted to european law.

- Third party tools; the v37.55 Enforcer on the NDK is partly owned by
  Mike Sinz, "scratch" and "memoration" belong to Bill Hawes. We tried
  to get the most recent Enforcer from Mike but it didn't work out
  (don't ask me why -- you wouldn't believe it). I didn't ask Bill yet,
  though (forget my own head next).

- Other tools; the whole rest prints banner messages bearing the
  Commodore copyright. Recompiling the code does not help in all
  cases as some few tool sources are missing, for example wack v40 being
  one of the missing pieces. Hey, who can wield a hex editor and wants
  to spare a few hours to hack the copyright to ESCOM AG (yep,
  it's ESCOM who owns the rights, not Amiga Technologies).

I want to see the material made available to the public as soon as possible.
I also believe that BIX should play an important part in the budding
developer support network. But try as you might, decision-making is a slow
process at Amiga Technologies.

--
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