The next release of the RISC OS Firefox port will be Iyonix-only, developer Peter Naulls revealed today.
Although the updated port, dubbed Firefox 2, is said to be working, Peter, pictured, will first need a further five grand in cash donations from users – even though the revised port may ship without https support, which is crucial for online banking and shopping.
oh just five grand – wait a minute I have that somewhere in my pocket…
$5000 at $40000 a year is only 1.5 months of full time development.
That’s not a very long time and that is based on a low salary for a software developer.
oh no!
Edited 2006-11-17 04:58
He’s asking for 5000 QUID. Not $5000 USD.
5,000.00 GBP = 9,466.61 USD (from xe.com).
Yeah, he’s not exactly going to be starving. Either that, or he’s going to take 3 months to do the work.
Go to a Russian university, find some bright students, pay them a couple hundred bucks and get the same work accomplished. I applaud people trying to make a buck, but I can’t imagine asking for “donations” when so many other alternative ways exist to get things done. I guess people just never really consider the alternatives, or forget the world consists of more than the UK and US.
I’m all for paying devs for their work, and paying them justly, but on a small project like this, with a limited userbase, trying to raise 10 large is a big deal, and the money could be better (more efficiently) spent by the people making the donations. Oh well.
Good luck, donation dude!
Surely you jest.
With Out HTTPS!
What is he thinking.
Im a RISC PC user, even if I was an Iyonix user i wouldnt be donating to this project. Id rather donated to developing Browse further.
for real… trying to use a browser without HTTPS is painful. you pretty much cant log into ANYTHING.
I think that’s an exaggeration. You can do quite a lot of work online without https. It seems that there are other tools for the platform that can be used on an occasion on which the user needs to access such a site. It’s not an ideal situation but it’s hardly unworkable.
Fortunately, the HTTP support part is a misquote, and only refers to an initial version, simply due to timeframes involved.
The original announcemement is here:
http://www.riscos.info/unix/firefox/
It makes no sense at all to devleop Browse to the same abilities as Firefox – in fact, it would be pretty much impossible.
I doubt that, the Russian students won’t have the 10 years of RISC OS experience, understanding of subtleties of the Unix compatibility C library, toolchain and the dozens of other issues that make this an unusual and time consuming problem to solve.
It would ultimately cost you far more and take longer.
“the money could be better (more efficiently) spent by the people making the donations”
And how is that then?
Asking people to make an effort to understand or even read the stuff involved on OSNews is a bit of a waste of time, and there is plenty evidence for in the above, But if you knew anything about the project, you’d know because the development isn’t just about Firefox and that there are very few RO developers left, so you’d probably have quite a different opinion.
You don’t need 10 years experience to figure out an OS/API/quirks. Surely, you must jest?
I picked up OS/VS COBOL in half a month, and was writing programs for an OS/370 mainframe within the month, utilizing JCL/COBOL/ReportWriter/DYL-280/etc. In the second month, I was porting OS/VS COBOL programs on OS/370 to Enterprise COBOL on z/OS, and phasing out ReportWriter. This, all coming from a background in C. As a FYI, this is the software that handles ALL of the State of Hawaii’s financial transactions/financial information systems.
I’m not even a programmer by trade, I’m a systems administrator. If I can pick things like that up that quickly, any decent programmer worth a salt could pick up some obscure OS and do a port. Heck, I’ve written software for BeOS (back in my past life, r3 era, I think sometime in ’98, my sophomore year of HS.)
You can’t tell me 10 years of *any* platform programming experience is necessary to port software. No way. If it is, then RISC OS should just go away and die. It would have to be purposefully obfuscated to be that *impossible* to learn. Somehow, I doubt it is.
If it makes you feel better, replace “Russian” with “American”. There are plenty of quite good programmers running around, who would likely learn an OS and so forth just to earn a few bucks, forget 10k. 10k can buy a dev machine, assuming nobody has access, and still pay more than most student programmers earn over a 4 month period.
Now, flip back to Russians, and realize with salaries on the order of 300-500/month considered “good” in many regions, think about what would be possible.
You make it sound like porting software is doing the impossible. “subtleties of Unix compatibility C library”? Hah. Fancy words, for something that just about all UNIX/Linux/BSD based OSs have to deal with. Ever done ports from Linux to Solaris, and dealt with libc/glibc issues? It’s all the same.
Heck, even having done porting work to QNX, it’s not that bad. It’s a computer, with an OS. It’s not organic. There are rules, if you learn the syntax/language, and the interfaces, you’re done. They might differ (and always do) from other OSs, but you just have to learn the differences, and *if* a new language is required – the language – and then you can port software. It’s not like random mutations are appearing in the API. It’s the same no matter if it’s a UNIX-developed application being ported to RISC OS, or a BSD driver being ported to Linux. It’s always the same principle.
Then again, if RISC OS is truly *that* difficult to program for, no wonder “there are very few RO developers left”. Maybe RISC OS is the *hardest* platform to develop for, in the world. Having done ports from mainframes to PCs, jumping from PL/I to Java, I really don’t understand the complexity you seem to indicate exists. I’m not even a good programmer.
It’s your money, spend (donate) it how you like. I still don’t see this as being very prudent, unless you are just trying to help this fellow out. My opinion will stay the same, and my money will stay in my pocket, and my opinion is just as valid as yours. Money talks, and again – I wish this guy the best of luck. Maybe some “angel” organization (Read: too lazy to update as times changed, so stuck with RISC OS) will step in and donate the amount he needs just so they can continue running obsolete systems for a “little while longer”.
Just out of curiosity though, who is running RISC OS on desktops, and why? I mean, this is OS News, and there are tons of OS nuts around here (a good thing) – but I generally understand why people run these alternative OSs. However, with RISC OS, I truly don’t. I don’t see any specific niche it fills. BeOS fills some, QNX fills some, etc – what niche does RISC OS fill that people run it on their desktop? I’m not being sarcastic, I’d appreciate a genuine response.
Thanks for completely misunderstanding my point. As I said, it remains. You cannot pay people to pick up an obscure OS and develop a port of Firefox (the biggest program RISC OS has ever seen) in a reasonable amount of time and money. I didn’t say it would take 10 years.
Thanks also for all your other unfounded assumptions about our platform. Once again, another OSNews commenter who is all opinion, but no fact.
QNX is POSIX, RISC OS is about as far from Unix as you can get.
Fools all around us.
Yes, _it_ is my money – after all, I’m the one collecting it. Give me a bit of credit for knowing what I’m talking about.
I made no unfounded assumptions, you apparently picked/choose what you read out of my post, however. Also:
You cannot pay people to pick up an obscure OS and develop a port of Firefox (the biggest program RISC OS has ever seen) in a reasonable amount of time and money.
Sure you can. That’s 31 months at the average Russian’s salary of $303/month. Even at a “high” salary by their standards, it’s 20 months. You better believe somebody would jump on a project like that, and unless they were stupid – it wouldn’t take 20 months to learn RISC OS/do a port. You’re asking to be paid as a full time developer at average US development wages for 2 months. That’s fine, I have no qualms with this. I just don’t see it as the maximally effecient route for people who want the most bang for their buck for RISC OS. It’s obviously much better for you.
As to your comment about POSIX compliant, read my entire post. BeOS was not POSIX compliant. Nor is OS/370. Thank you for answering my question, as well, and the rather silly attempt at belittling me.
Yes, _it_ is my money – after all, I’m the one collecting it. Give me a bit of credit for knowing what I’m talking about.
At least now the reason for your bias is apparent. Good luck with getting your money, I do wish you the best – regardless of what my opinions might be of this situation. I’m sure you know exactly what you’re talking about when it comes to RISC OS, I in no way doubt your technical knowledge, nor doubt your ability to do the port. I’ve never once said I do, nor have I belittled your abilities. I *still* don’t believe this is the best way to spend the funds, but *I* am not a user of RISC OS – although I have helped people migrate away from it. The users still using RISC OS (on a desktop????) are probably in a different position than me though, and to them – $9500 might make sense for a Firefox port, instead of going through the trouble of sourcing help from students and the like. Time is money, no doubt about that.
Maybe you should start a “port YOU from RISC OS to *insert modern desktop OS here” campaign. Charge money to port software *off* RISC OS so people can move to something modern. Take those legacy apps that confine people to RISC OS and move them into some modern languages. You’d probably make a lot more money, heck – even turn it into a business. It just doesn’t make sense to go backwards in a time warp. Best of luck to you, either way!
Well, you’ve already decided all the answers. It’s always a waste of time dealing with such people, since they aren’t open to rational argument. If you were really interested in the answers, I might spend the time, as I did the for Amiga people in a simuilar quandry, but in reality, you’re just a troll wanting to put his own POV on everything, and arguming for the sake of it.
I leave you to your fantasies.
By the way, your ‘?’ key is stuck.
Sorry, I couldn’t let this rest. Assclowns (look up the meaning) like you are the reason there’s so few RISC OS developers left.
Let’s take some of your short sighted assumptions.
“BeOS was not POSIX compliant.”
No, but it’s one hell of a lot closer than RISC OS is.
“At least now the reason for your bias is apparent”
Which bias is that then? If I were after money, I wouldn’t be bothering with this. It’s a poor way to make a living.
“You better believe somebody would jump on a project like that, and unless they were stupid – it wouldn’t take 20 months to learn RISC OS/do a port”.
You’re right, it wouldn’t. But guess why – because I already spent several years working on the stuff that made the port even conceivable. And because I wasn’t short sighted enough to sssume that Firefox would be the be all and end all of porting. I developed stuff that would enabled a whole raft of OSS apps to be ported to RISC OS with relatively little effort,
[Unix compatibility library]
“Hah. Fancy words, for something that just about all UNIX/Linux/BSD based OSs have to deal with. Ever done ports from Linux to Solaris, and dealt with libc/glibc issues? It’s all the same”.
I’ve dealt with such things. It’s a completely different class of problem. The changelog for it (“UnixLib”) is plenty of evidence to that.
I’m not even going to mention all the other things that had to be done to get there.
So in other words, yes, we could pay someone who was not familiar with the OS, but it would result in a lower quality, slower and most untimely port. It wouldn’t benefit the OS in terms of related technologies, and they’d be doing it purely for profit. In other words, a stupid idea.
Where would it make sense to pay someone? A poorly student with some RISC OS programming experience already to convert a much smaller port (say, gnash) built upon stuff I’ve already done. As yet, I’ve been unable to find such a person, even though I know there would be no problem getting the users to pay for such a thing.
Oh yeah, did I say it already? Assclowns.