OKay, I have stumbled upon this one quite some times before and saw it mentioned in another thread just now.

Theoretically spoken.. developers of great MSX products like Pumpkin Adventure 3, the MODplayer for turboR, Meridian etc. etc. etc. were all amateurs.

However, the word 'amateur' has quite a negative edge. Like amateur products are always inferiour to commercial products. Like they are not even worth looking at (putting it as negative as possible). In the past, the MSX community have clearly shown this is not the truth at all.

In newsposts and forumposts I often say 'amateur' (with quotes)... but... isn't there a better word we could use for this?

Non-Commercial

That way it doesn't sound as negative

or Non-Profit, or Non-Professional

*note: some do actually sell their products, but it's usually not to make a living

Hmmm but you can be an 'amateur', you can't be a 'non profit'

there's a difference between 'amature' and 'amaturistic'

IMHO the latter word sounds worse than the first one

pseudo-professional would be a good word, or quasi-professional.

Amateur sounds good to me. No need to invent a new word just because one or two amateur-projects are good enough to be called professional. Most amateur projects are what they are: amateur projects. And one can see that from great distance.
I'm not saying here I don't like these amateur projects or that they are bad. (But most of them are, of course.) Just like professional projects over 90% sucks.

Sjoerd, somehow I have the feeling you missed a large part of the 90's MSX software developed by the MSX Community

<Frank H. D.>Pah, the literal meaning of amateur is enthousiast</Frank H. D.>

If you take a professional photoshop artist and an amateur photoshop artist (take for example the demoscene), you'll notice that there's usualy not much difference.

However, when recording music, there's usually more difference between an amateur and a professional project. Amateurs won't hire a 300$/hour studio to do their mixing there, and professionals might hire instrumentplayers or have better equipment than amateurs. Usually, these things cause a slight difference between amateur and professional projects, where *real costs* are required.

But without any costs related, there's no reason an an amteur would do less quality than a professional. Both can have the same attitude.

Quote:

Sjoerd, somehow I have the feeling you missed a large part of the 90's MSX software developed by the MSX Community

Me too. Just like I missed a large part of the 80's MSX software. I 'discovered' most 80's software in 1995. (Internet! ).
I think I missed about 10% of the MSX software of the 90's.

What about Semi-Professional?

semi = half
quasi = pretends to be
pseudo = seems like, but isn't

The best word in this case might be 'semi-commercial' I think. With 'non-profit' the creator doesn't want money for it in return (allthough it'll be always something to welcome of course). Even the word 'hobby' may give a negative sound to all this... As if thiungs created 'as a hobby' are less than the same thing being sold. It's really a pity.

home-brewed software

community software