[openbeos] Couple of non-sequiters

I usually discourage posting things that I think are off topic. And I think 
that these sort of are, but sort of aren't. So at least you get 2X the OT post 
for the price of one:

1) As you may or may not know (or care), I was an Amiga user back "in the day". 
87 - 93. A thing for doomed platforms, I guess. ;-) In that time period, I 
owned a product called PageStream, a really great desktop publishing app. When 
I switched to BeOS, I gave away all of my Amiga software. I got in touch with 
SoftLogik (then the company working on PageStream) and asked them to port to 
BeOS. They were not interested at that point in time. They have now decided to 
port PS to other platforms. 

So. Here is the deal. Grasshopper (the new company) has a survey up. If you are 
interested in DTP ***AND*** would preorder, given a warrenty that you would get 
your money back if the software was never made, head on over to their site 
(http://www.grasshopperllc.com), fill out the survey and support a great 
product. I can't vouch for their decision (whether they will port or not), but 
I *can* vouch for the quality of the app. I was doing real DTP on a 25 mhz 
Amiga 1200. The real deal - kerning, post script output (back when that was 
rare) and more. I loved PS and think that it could fill a lot of the gap on the 
BeOS side. Between Gobe Productive and PS, I think that we would be in great 
shape.

2) I know that many of you are OSNews.com readers. I am. But for those who are 
not, there was a post about being forthcoming in financially rewarding those 
who develop OSS. You can find it at OSNews 
(http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1587). I have been thinking a lot about 
this, lately. From two different fronts. 

One is that we would all like to see OBOS done quicker. Well, the only way that 
I know for that to happen is more coding time to be spent on it. There are two 
ways of getting more coding time - more people and each person spending more 
time working. Well, I look at myself and realize that I spend "only" about 4-5 
hours a day on OBOS. I know that if I were doing this full time, I would easily 
spend 10 hours a day working on it. The problem is my bank - they want this 
silly mortgage payment... So I fantasize, sometimes, about how great it would 
be and how quickly we could get done if OBOS paid the bills. For myself and 
some of the other devs.

The other aspect is a little more community minded. A few days ago, I talked 
about a "need", how I use my web browser most frequently (going to Google). It 
was an innocent comment, made in passing. The next day, Francois posted a 
message about a replicant that he put together to quickly search google and 
display the response in a browser. And he included the source! I was astonished 
and very grateful. If I could have pulled out a fiver and handed it to him, I 
would have. It seems like there is a lot of software that I go looking for and 
find. It would be really nice if there was a way for people who write an app to 
get some form of reimbursment back. 

So, I don't know. These are just some ideas that have been knocking around in 
my head. I really don't want to start some big thread about this. But if 
someone wants to respond ***OFF LIST*** to me, I would be intereted in having 
such a conversation...

Michael

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