Iyonix Select pledge campaign reaches target

By Chris Williams. Published: 3rd Dec 2005, 13:03:48 | Permalink | Printable

Team effort

The campaign to get at least 100 people signed up to fund an XScale Iyonix port of RISC OS Select has met its target with less than a month left to its deadline. The petition, hosted by pledgebank.com and set up by Iyonix user Phil Mellor, was launched in October after RISCOS Ltd. said it wanted at least 100 Iyonix users to subscribe to its scheme of rolling updates for RISC OS 4 before development time could be committed to finishing the port to the Castle machine. Those who signed up have pledged to pay for one year's subscription, provided the target of 100 users is met.

Statistics show that the campaign plateaued to around 80 signatories, but over the past couple of days, eager users posted to the Iyonix and Select support mailing lists imploring others to sign up.

An Iyonix user who did not pledge said, "[RISCOS Ltd] do now have their mandate, and I for one will be delighted to subscribe to Select for the Iyonix as soon as finances permit. Having been a past Select subscriber, I do think it will be well worthwhile. I miss the little things it provides, like a PNG-capable ChangeFSI and the Draw and Paint enhancements."

Another added, "I didn't pledge either, but will consider resubscribing when it is available and has enough added value to me personally. Like I said before: the first weeks after buying my Iyonix I did still use Select on my RPC as main system, but after a few weeks so many improvements to RISC OS 5 were made available that I haven't missed Select a single moment since."

People can continue to pledge until the deadline of December 31st, and should drop ROL an email to notify the company.

Phil Mellor and RISCOS Ltd. were unavailable for immediate comment.

Links

Iyonix Select on Pledgebank.com

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Discussion

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I like the suggestion in the email from pledgebank telling us that the pledge had been fulfilled:

"Why not take some photos of you fulfilling your pledge".

I look forward to lots of photos showing people stuffing envelopes full of cash

flypig on 3/12/05 2:26PM
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This is great news, and big 'thank you' to Phil Mellor for his initiative. But why couldn't ROL have done this?

I genuinely believe that ROL do have the RISC OS market's best interest at heart in the work they do, but it seems to me that they lack certain key skills to make their work more successful.

Perhaps if ROL had communicated with the press and users more effectively we would have seen an Iyonix version of Select much earlier.

fylfot on 3/12/05 3:07PM
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When this issue was first raised, I sent an email to ROL advising I would support Select for the Iyonix. I received a reply thanking me and saying my name had been added to a list. After reading the above item on Drobe, I checked Pledgebank to find that my name was not there. I have now corrected that omission. Others who have given a commitment directly to ROL may care to check their name is noted in pledgebank.com.

roberthunter on 3/12/05 4:11PM
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roberthunter: The pledge list isn't anything to do with ROL, and is independant, which would be why your name wasn't in there.

andypoole on 3/12/05 4:33PM
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Great news, but why does the Pledgebank show that 106 have singned up and state it to be 7 over target :-)

So now all we need is that ROL accepts those Pledges and starts work on IYONIX Select ... as soon as Select 4 is out for 26 bit since their subscribers for 26 bit Select are still wating for that overdue release.

Big thanks to Phil Mellor for doing ROLs job on this one!

hzn on 3/12/05 4:55PM
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hzn: Because the target was 99, and 106-99=7, the last time I checked

andypoole on 3/12/05 5:03PM
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The problem with posing for photos as flying pig suggested, tongue in cheek, I'm sure, is that the amount of readies required and small details like that have not been disclosed. Not that I wouildn't make a charming model, you understand :-)

oldstuts on 5/12/05 8:58AM
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I wondered about pledging. But I couldn't see how voluntiering to sweep leaves in the garden was going to help write software. And then I realised that I didn't know what ROSelect will do for my Iyonix - No, actually! That was the killer. So I decided not to sign-up.................................... yet. I guess I need a web page to read. Any advice?

Xinoyi on 5/12/05 4:01PM
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Xinoyi:

[link]

at the bottom of that text there are a few links to feature lists of previous Select versions.

Grek1 on 5/12/05 4:51PM
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I imagine I am like a lot of other Iyonix users, who upgraded from a RiscPC without ever getting personally involved with Select.

Subscription payments were too much like the licencing system MS uses. I prefer to assess a product, (functionality/price), and purchase it with a one-off payment.

I have in the past installed Select, for one of my brothers, onto his RiscPC. At the time I did not see anything in it that I needed, and it has caused my brother the odd problem.

The last thing I did for him was to install the Adjust ROMs, but I still have not seen any "must have" features.

If Select is so great, why has nothing really been shown to Non-Select people, to convince us that we need it ?

My Iyonix is great, and I would only be interested in Select if it would add to the current package.

ajb on 5/12/05 5:34PM
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ajb and Xinoyi:

I think there are genuine advantages to Select over RO5, although they may not be what you're looking for. The things that stood out for me (when I did subscribe in the past) were icon cut and paste, improved filer (e.g. thumbnailing), better networking (e.g. instant effect configuration changes) and sprites with proper transparency (great for icons).

However, the biggest benefit that Select is likely to bring is a unified OS across the full range of RISC OS machines, meaning that the "under-the-hood" advantages of Select can be harnessed by programmers properly.

Moreover, I don't think it's in Castle's interest to be worrying about maintaining the user-facing parts of RISC OS, like cut and paste in writable icons. In my view, Castle are much better placed to deal with hardware and the more fundamental improvements (HAL, USB support etc.).

Personally, my only worry is that some of the improvements found in RISC OS 5 (such as good USB and graphics card support) will be lost in Select. This would really be a bad thing and I hope ROL can manage to provide the best from both versions. The sooner ROL get started on Iyonix Select, the sooner this issue can be dealt with.

This is my personal reasoning for wanting Select on the Iyonix: it's the only way we're going to end up with a unified OS. Let's hope this is ultimately what Phil's pledge brings about.

flypig on 5/12/05 6:04PM
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I pledged because, like flypig, I see Iyonix Select as a step towards a unified RO. I'm pleased to see the list pass the 100 mark and that there is clearly further demand on top of that.

I wonder if I'll actually get to spend any money.

TonyStill on 5/12/05 10:11PM
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To Grek1 : I'm afraid the data didn't mean anything to me because: To ajb : I'm with you; I'm not a techie and I don't want to understand the intricacies. I want to know what it does so I can evaluate if the thing is any good for me. To TonyStill: I can afford to make an occasional mistake and buy something which isn't really what I expected, in the knowledge that I'm also helping the community. And anyway there's so much s/w out there which is free - I guess I'm still ahead! To the developers of anything: But I'm not going to spend tuppence on a left-handed molybdenum grungemorbler just because someone says I ought to. To Germanius: Now here's an example of a recent innovation whose web page pursuades me.

Xinoyi on 12/12/05 4:38PM
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