[matthey]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

You can't really tell from that document, but as I understand it, a lot of people were hired to write code for OS3.5 / OS3.9 and Haage Partner got distribution rights but did not own the sources. So unless I get this thing wrong, there are individuals out there who still own their IP so no single company owns the right to everything that is OS3.9

My understanding is more like H&P was contracted to create an AmigaOS update. They wrote some of the code but also sub-contracted some 3rd party software that was already created to save time rather than reinvent the wheel. The individual sub-contracts varied from entity to entity which was probably a mistake but I expect kept the cost down and likelihood of inclusion high. I don't believe H&P was ever completely paid under their contract so they probably retain some rights to some of the code even though they may not be able to sell them to a third party depending on what their contract says.

Originally Posted by eXeler0

If you ask me, OS3.9, (while modernizing the Amiga OS experience (anno 2002) and in many cases simply updating the codebase so it would compile on more common compilers as we heard in stories from Olaf Barthel) is kind of a leap away from the elegant simplicity of 3.1

There were many bug fixes and improvements made to AmigaOS 3.9 which needed to be done. The developers were limited that they were not allowed to create a new (kickstart) ROM but the whole AmigaOS needed attention. This is why you got the startup kludge. If you have an accelerator with MAPROM then it is a non-issue. Optimization was not a primary goal for an OS that needed major changes but there are still parts of AmigaOS 3.9 which are significantly faster like layers.library (better algorithm), and parts of exec.library like CopyMem()/CopyMemQuick and dynamic memory use with fragmented memory.

I don't believe much changed with the compiler situation other than cleanup for maintainability. Most of the code is still compiled with SAS/C which uses SAS/C features which were requested by C= AmigaOS developers (read ThoR comments for verification). The intuition.library was compiled with the ancient Green Hills compiler and was such a mess that it was difficult to update to even SAS/C (read Olaf comments). There are a few of the third party utilities which are compiled with GCC also. I doubt there is less elegance or simplicity to the sources now. Rather the old code probably used macros and special handling of C code to optimize to the limits of what compilers were capable of then but at the expense of simplicity, readability and maintainability.

Originally Posted by wawa

thats what i have told you earlier in the thread about opening the sources. os 3.9 in comparison with 3.1 is for a large part clumsy and overblown package of independant patches and contributions. especially that they eventually introduce new bugs and incompatibilities, that would have to be handled by subsequent boing ball packages and individual patches. in result the system needs to patch the kickstart and reboot, which may finally take about a minute alltogether, while the genuine amiga experience is almost instant on.

this whole management mess is fine if the user has means, patience and knowledge to tinker and set his system up. but generally each and every upgrade solution after 1993 was a sort of hack, be it hardware or software.

No doubt updating the AmigaOS and un-bottling it on faster machines uncovered more bugs. My perspective is that many more bugs and incompatibilities were fixed than added. Sure, there was eye candy and 3rd party tools included which could have been better but I think the idea was that it was nice to assemble them for the customer. Is all the software included with AROS high quality too?

Originally Posted by wawa

amiga doesnt need to be like this. the system should install by drag and drop decompressing to a boot drive, work on any configuration out of the box, be simple, up to date and maintainable by the community.

It is nice that the AmigaOS can be simply copied to install it and that it comes with drive and installation utilities. That is 2 advantages over most OEM Windows products. I don't know about a drag and drop installation feature being the best idea though.

Originally Posted by idrougge

People tend to fixate on the crap in OS 3.9 instead of focusing on the fact that the core OS has been updated. You can throw out the crap from 3.9 just as easily as you can add it to 3.1.