One thing that is interesting to think about, what if they had gone OpenSource. They were a full on vertically integrated hardware manufacturer. Maybe the could have gotten more technical people, programmer, nerds, even universities on their computers, specially the Amiga.
That it is still not is kind of ridiculous.
For most people free software meant freeware, software that was both free of cost and free to distribute but rarely included the source code. When source code was shared, it was usually for the benefit of other developers (e.g. examples and libraries). Those who did may have put it into the public domain, requested money for its use, or left it in legal limbo by saying nothing at all.
Yet the idea of distributing the source code as a means of collaborative development or to extend the life of software, few outside of the academic world would have accepted such notions. Such notions had been purged from the commercial world at least 20 years prior.
And that's even before one considers the personalities of the people running Commodore.
And I was more talking about early on, not late in the game.
> When source code was shared, it was usually for the benefit of other developers (e.g. examples and libraries).
Yeah that is the main benefit you try to get.
If you are launching a computer, like the Amiga, in crowded market you need adoption by developers.
From everything I read about Commodore their metal model of the computer market was that they sold computers and they just needed a new model of computer every year. They didn't really have a longer plan then what new computer are we releasing next year.
But as far as I know, they were pretty open in terms of releasing data sheets and so on.