Mike Battilana Interview 2019

[kolla]

Why is it, that every time you want to compare AmigaOS against some other operating system, you use Windows, "for example"?

[Phantasm]

From a programming perspective (as in the api provided to use by programmers). Kickstart 2.0 is easily on a par with windows 3.1 and personally i'd say Kickstart 3.0 its a close run against Windows 95.


Some things are better in Windows and some in Kickstart.


Its not until we start seeing extra abstraction layers (like for example the VCL that came with Borland products) that we see the PC development api's start to have major improvements over the Amiga. MUI was a step in that direction for Amiga but it didn't provide a whole integrated development experience.


I still enjoy system level coding for the Amiga although building GUI stuff can be very painful. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter how it compares to anything else. People still enjoy using and working with it.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I'm sorry but I very strongly disagree with that. It's still a far more usable OS than Windows 10 for example.

You compare two very different things here, and you confuse two very different things. First, you compare a GUI design with an operating system. That is not the same. As an operating system, Windows 10 is relatively sane compared to AmigaOs, which is just outdated nonsense. Nobody sane in his mind would write an operating system as AmigaOs is. Second, you confuse "yesterday's users" with "today's users". You grew up with AmigaOs as GUI (not operating system, since you have no clue about it), so you are used to it. Today's users grew up with Windows, so they are used to it as well. For them, from that perspective, Windows 10 is a lot more useful. In fact, it offers such elementary features as multiple users or (gosh!) an internet browser. It would be relatively easy to equip Windows 10 with a GUI that looks like AmigaOs - but nobody would want that today. Ok, except you and a couple of other die-hards, but such people are in the minority.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Well, we've both heard about all the bugs/issues with 3.1.4..

WHAT? I beg your pardon! There are by far less bugs in 3.1.4 than there ever were in 3.1.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

From a programming perspective (as in the api provided to use by programmers). Kickstart 2.0 is easily on a par with windows 3.1 and personally i'd say Kickstart 3.0 its a close run against Windows 95.

Windows 95 already had native support for TrueColor displays and USB. AmigaOs does not. And since then, 30 years passed, and the Windows world was not idle. AmigaOs was, and probably rightfully so. As an operating system, it is a joke as it lacks even the most elementary services. That was kind of ok for a home computer system 40 years ago, but for today, that is just not acceptable by any means. Microsoft got away with it because they more or less threw it out of the window (ehem) with Windows NT and replaced the kernel by something useful. Apple got away with it because they threw their System 7 out of the window and replaced it by something useful (namely NeXT, essentially). There was insufficient interest and insufficient development power to do the same with AmigaOs, namely replace it by something useful.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Windows 95 already had native support for TrueColor displays and USB. AmigaOs does not. And since then, 30 years passed, and the Windows world was not idle. AmigaOs was, and probably rightfully so. As an operating system, it is a joke as it lacks even the most elementary services. That was kind of ok for a home computer system 40 years ago, but for today, that is just not acceptable by any means. Microsoft got away with it because they more or less threw it out of the window (ehem) with Windows NT and replaced the kernel by something useful. Apple got away with it because they threw their System 7 out of the window and replaced it by something useful (namely NeXT, essentially). There was insufficient interest and insufficient development power to do the same with AmigaOs, namely replace it by something useful.

I was comparing Amiga api's to that of it's competitor back in the day. I don't disagree that things have moved on. I disagree that they were a joke though. There was lots of good ideas that were ahead of other systems of the day particularly in the pre win 95 era

Sent from my I3213 using Tapatalk

[kolla]

I would prefer a modern operating system with a user experience that is highly inspired by AmigaOS. But I don't see it happening. It was what OS4 was meant to be, before it was reduced to a "change some compile flags and build for powerpc" project. It was also what MorphOS was meant to be, before qbox "died".

[DofD]

I'll toss my hat into the ring here as well. I pretty much agree with Thomas on the points he makes. With API's and visual representation with Workbench aside, while there were features that were ahead of their time for a home computer in the late 80's and early 90's, AmigaOS (Exec, AmigaDOS, graphics library, Intuition) as it was should have been put in the bin after 3.1 (if not sooner) and redeveloped from scratch with an eye to where OS and kernel design was heading. If you look at the underlying architecture and structure of how AmigaOS is put together, it's not pretty in there and would make anyone familiar with OS and kernel design go "what were they thinking?!". The developers at the time did the very best (and in a lot of cases, above) what they could, given the constraints, resources, and time available to them.

The AmigaOS of course could be redone, but backwards compatibility for software would be limited.

The API's from 3.0 and up in a number of ways I found better than the Win95 API's to work with.

With graphical representation and Workbench, I look at all the tools and utilities people have put together to mimic and replicate the functionality of similar concepts from the Windows and Mac platforms to see that for many (not all) the classic Amiga Workbench experience is lacking in features and functionality.

The Windows OS kernel from WIn7 onward (all the stuff below the presentation layer) is quite well done (with some personal exceptions). Though I find Win10 is getting a bloated.

But I have to applaud Thomas and the group for their work on 3.1.4, and to everyone who puts in the effort to keep making improvements to such an ancient OS for all us die-hard users.

Regardless though, I still enjoy the dabbling I do on my Amiga's, sometimes just because it's not easy to do something.

[E-Penguin]

If it was easy it would be boring.

Amiga OS does have a few nice tricks though. Embedding the file system within the drive itself is a nicer solution than either Windows or Linux have, for example.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

If it was easy it would be boring.

Amiga OS does have a few nice tricks though. Embedding the file system within the drive itself is a nicer solution than either Windows or Linux have, for example.

Its also a terrible idea, loading kernel code on transferring a storage device...


Great way to spread malicious code with removable media.

[kolla]

Not to mention... the filesystem driver is OS/architecture dependant.

The _CONCEPT_ though, may not be so bad. It could be possible to have several filesystem drivers, for the a variety of commonly used operating systems, and the drivers could of course be signed, by their respective operating system vendors. In reality though... no, nah.

[B2k_ad]

Hi.


Just taking the Risk to go on Topic again.


In my honest opinion Cloanto had its share, I don't want to be rude but....
To have there an "Amiga forever" you need to evolve and go on.
He didn't understand some of the technical questions for instance the term accelerated Amigas.... and that said everything.
Yes they did the the 3.x Rom but no 3.x OS.....
And 3.1.4 along with Rom and Os works a lot better than 3.x... at least in my opinion.
I own both.
You can't just go with 3.1 forever.... maybe they should have called 3.1.4 Amiga OS 9 3/4 .... and everything would be fine.
He seems to judge by numbers.


I hope that no helpful things would go under in a Law suit.
and BTW
Fair use is Fair use...... and not: I ask and may or may not get an ok.


Thanks.

[kolla]

Originally Posted by B2k_ad

Yes they did the the 3.x Rom but no 3.x OS.....

Yes they did, the 3.X (not 3.x) OS is on AF - the entire OS 3.X started on AF, and the kickstarts came around after people requested them for running OS 3.X on real hardware.

I own both.

Sounds like you didn't quite know what you bought...

[kolla]

When Cloanto has the ownership of OS 3.1, and half of the binaries of OS 3.1.4 are exactly the same, or at best recompilations from the exact same old sources... it is not often that one hear of companies claiming ownership over software because they were able to recompile the sources.

[IanS]

It seems to me that no matter what the various parties say or do, the Amiga community is never happy. People still spout the same old crap, favouring one side or another, despite the obvious facts staring them in the face. It was the same 20 years ago, and it will likely be the same in 20 years time. Petty squabbles over individual opinions of what should be done and who should do it... and not a lot actually getting done. Maybe, just maybe, if you put your collective brains in to gear and actually supported the idea that someone has to be in charge of the classic Amiga OS and legally owns the rights to it, we might have something concrete to work with. Even if that party wouldn't be your personal choice, at least there would be just ONE party to keep it all together. Maybe you could even accept the idea that they have the right to charge money for something they own, without being condemned as criminals by a load of relatively uninformed but extremely vociferous individuals. After all, believe it or not, Commodore were in the business of making money, and not a charity. This notion of entitlement to everything free of charge is frankly ridiculous.

If you don't like the situation, name calling and accusations, on this or any other forum doesn't help. It just inflames and aggravates. Eventually, those people that can make a difference, just become disillusioned and leave. Amiga history is littered with examples.

Well done folks, keep it up, and feel proud that you contributed to the further decline of the Amiga. :-(

[wawa]

Originally Posted by DofD

The AmigaOS of course could be redone, but backwards compatibility for software would be limited.

it has been redone, and the backwards compatibility on the original platform, the amiga, is satisfying imho. on other platforms, while sacrifying the binary compatibility (out of the box), features such as smp have been proven working at least in concept, others like multiuser could be implementend. however the full mp is probably beyond reach due to shared memory space.

[Steffest]

Originally Posted by kolla

Yes they did, the 3.X (not 3.x) OS is on AF - the entire OS 3.X started on AF, and the kickstarts came around after people requested them for running OS 3.X on real hardware.

Sounds like you didn't quite know what you bought...

And as usual every attempt to a meaningful conversation ends up in petty fussing about details ...
Kolla keeps on pushing buttons because ... well, why exactly? What do you get out of it? Not judging, honest question. I completely don't understand your mindset.

Anyway. You can't possible compare the concept of 3.X to 3.1.4
Cloanto didn't "DO" 3.X - that's just a name they invented because AF contained some (licensed) files from 3.5 and 3.9 versions and they very specifically did NOT wanted to be seen as a company distributing 3.5 or 3.9 (again: licensing ...) so they just named that collection 3.X

That's the bottom line, right? Everything is so tangled up in licensing that those knots never will be untangled and we will still be bickering in 20 years time.

[kolla]

Originally Posted by Steffest

.

Kolla keeps on pushing buttons because ... well, why exactly? What do you get out of it? Not judging, honest question. I completely don't understand your mindset.

Pushing buttons? How is it pushing buttons to point out that OS 3.X was not _just_ a set of kickstarts? Is pointing out BS and errors "pushing buttons"?

Anyway. You can't possible compare the concept of 3.X to 3.1.4

And I didn't.

Cloanto didn't "DO" 3.X

And Hyperion didn't "DO" 3.1.4

that's just a name they invented because AF contained some (licensed) files from 3.5 and 3.9 versions and they very specifically did NOT wanted to be seen as a company distributing 3.5 or 3.9 (again: licensing ...) so they just named that collection 3.X

Correct, and as you write here, 3.X is more than just a kickstart.

That's the bottom line, right? Everything is so tangled up in licensing that those knots never will be untangled and we will still be bickering in 20 years time.

Yes, that is what Amiga is all about already.

It is now more than 6 months since 3.1.4 was released, just two more weeks before the bug fix release... is it pushing buttons to point this out?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by kolla

When Cloanto has the ownership of OS 3.1, and half of the binaries of OS 3.1.4 are exactly the same, or at best recompilations from the exact same old sources... it is not often that one hear of companies claiming ownership over software because they were able to recompile the sources.

You don't know, so you should better shut up. I haven't counted "how much are the same", but you can do that yourself. Whatever has a version number V45 or above is quite a bit more than a recompile, and just to give you an idea how much time it takes to update such old sources: I spend my entire Christmas vacation 2016 to setup the build system and patch up vamos (a result you can actually look at, it is - gosh - open source), my entire Christmas vacation 2017 to fixup graphics, and my entire Christmas vacation 2018 for something you do not yet know which is not related to 3.1.4.1. Not to count all the days between Christmas where everything else happened, but with a less intense work program.

So you should better be a bit quiet about the work that went into all this - which is not quite comparable to 3.X which is - as far as I understand - a set of binary patches that have likely been applied by a monitor, and a set of repackaged binaries from other sources, based on works from years ago (including mine, or course).

No, I'm not mad at Cloanto, really. That was work done years ago, I don't really mind. But 3.X and 3.1.4. are not exactly comparable.

3.1.4.1 is moving out, I'm taking care of it, but as long as beta testers are testing, and there are things on the table that are not quite as they like them to be, it is under preparation. We are at release candidate #2 at this time, just if you care. How many release candidates we need I do not know.

[IanS]

I have no doubt that a lot of time and effort went in to updating the OS. It is fantastic that there's people out there that are not only talented enough, but are also prepared to put so much of themselves in to finding and fixing bugs etc. We should applaud them. They deserve our respect and to be rewarded for their efforts. If their work is being sold, they should be rewarded financially or in kind.

But the real question is whether those who instigated the changes and are selling 3.1.4 as a commercial product, have the right to do so?

Whether the legal owners of the software that was updated, had ever intended to update it or just leave it be, isn't important. Whether their own efforts are as technically efficient or as time consuming isn't important. Like it or not, what matters is whether the 3.1.4 product is legal and above board.

If It isn't, then there's no doubt it shouldn't be sold, no matter how good it is. If it turns out that Hyperion are in the wrong, I have no doubt Cloanto will take the changes and incorporate them, as would be their right. I also suspect they would acknowledge the work of those involved and encourage them to continue. Hopefully with some financial incentives. That after all these years of doing nothing, suddenly Hyperion take an interest in the classic Amiga OS, is suspicious to say the least.

I for one would be pleased to see everything under one roof. At least then there's one place to look, one place to heap praise or criticism, and only one direction. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, it may not please some people. But considering the debacles of the past and the long term stagnation of the Amiga product, it will be an improvement.

But nothing will stop the haters from hating, scaremongers from scaremongering and big egos from being dented. Only Amiga makes it possible.

[malko]

@Thomas Richter (& others involved): Thank you !