The developer of the RISC OS Firefox port has complained that a "significant proportion" of users who pledged cash have failed to cough up when asked to. To date, there are four beta versions of Firefox for punters to download and test drive, with each release being met with varying degrees of success for end users."Perhaps understandable given that Firefox is still some way from being a nice RISC OS application," admitted Peter on his blog earlier today. He continued, "In fairness, many people have been very generous, and I hope many will continue their [Unix Porting Project] subscription after their 6 months; but for the rest of the pledges, it's a considerable amount of money I may never see back."
In his original announcement, Peter said he would collect pledged cash once a beta version is made available.
He also lamented that very few developers have shown an interest in aiding the development of the mammoth web browser port and the Unixlib and CX11 libraries. According to Peter, it's also possible for someone to tweak some elements of Firefox's appearance by editing the XML and Javascript user interface files.
In March this year, Peter first called for people to pledge money to the project. The programmer, originally from New Zealand, is set to move to the west coast of the US with his family, which is hampering development. With his computers packed away, Peter says he will be relying on VirtualRiscPC on a laptop. He added, "You'll just have to look for new versions [of Firefox] when I'm able to make them".
Peter has also moved the location of the Firefox downloads to his own website, now that riscos.info is no longer hosted from his home cable internet connection.
Links
RISC OS Firefox website