While its a free world a lot of people in my opinion take the free development of BWW simply for granted.
As I mentioned in my Warpstock US presentation we checked the logs of the Netlabs RPM server.
In about one month (during the summer break). We had about 600 unique IP addresses connect with Arca Noae Package Manager to download updates. Knowing that by far not everybody uses ANPM on a daily basis that gives a much better inside in the private users using OS/2/ArcaOS. Its a bigger number then we thought it is.
Please Roderick, remove this from your speech. It sounds like Microsoft counting the statistics of MS Office piracy and crying out loud they could be making more money.
The RPM server statistics are not potential donators, if you ever think about charging money for the libraries on the netlabs RPM it will backfire. It may get money the first two months and later squeeze more people out of the community. That is called "
bread for today, hunger for tomorrow" in simple words. In my experience only desperate salesman uses that strategy to cash their check at the end of the month and burn the customer for any future relationship within the company.
The donations are what they are, and I don't like treating the OS/2 community members as cheapo bastards living at the expense of software developers. It is better to inspire people to support the project by showing how important it is for our community and how much progress had Bitwise showed, instead of insulting the community saying that they haven't given enough.
The modern browser is an important project for the community and a lot of people had chipped in knowing that Bitwise can deliver. I can only suggest to change your speech into something more positive and don't get frustrated.
Regards