Hello!
I think this is a stupid prize, which could cause a rupture in the already broken BeOS community. We don't want ppl acting on his own hoping to win a prize all coding on the same. We want a team. I know that I'm talking as a bystander, but this shouldn't be the meaning of the prize.
greetings Syrek
Well, that said, I have another idea: I don't know the current status of OBOS as an organization, but if it could have more or less a non-profit org structure, I would simply give 50 Euros to OBOS prior to any release (i.e. now) in order to give the org some resources that would speed up the development. If it fails, I will loose 50 Euros and it will not harm my life style, as it is the case, I guess, for most of us. The accounting would be public, and the administrator would use the money to allocate resources, provide PCs to active developers, provide USB / Firewire peripherals to driver developers and whatever he feels necessary. As there were 20 000 developers at one point in time for BeOS, if we assume that 1000 remain and would pay (Am I too optimistic???(1)) this would be 50 000 Euros, which can be certainly useful. Don't ask me how, let the administrator(s) decide.
(1) In fact, I don't think I am too optimistic. Here (in Japan), there were a few Be conferences organized by Be geeks. They were renting the conference room themselves, etc... Entrance fee was about 10 Euros, and there were about 200 participants each time. I think many of these people would be very happy to a Be (Walter??) second birth. One company has even recreated a BeBox. With a Pentium, but the same look, with the LED bars for the CPU load meters. Here is the home page of these guys with a (still active!!!) forum. http://www.be-in.org/
