Official update to OS 3.1 from Hyperion

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Kalamatee

I think this is miss representing what people are saying. I'm pretty sure every one agrees it would be nice to see the "original" code released merely so it can be preserved/referenced.

The problem is most of the _reasoning_ (and indeed the reason for this thread) is to release it so it can be improved.

The question then become - why would someone want to use this modified code that a> no longer originates from commodore/legitimate "developers", b> is no more compatible and takes more effort to get working/improved than using AROS derived code? There are people objecting to creating "all these different versions" of things just like on Linux, and then arguing to do just that.

It seems like foolish/silly logic and crossing two different arguments (releasing the code for posterity/releasing the code to improve things).

I don't think there needs to be a reason other than "free" is probably better than "closed" for everyone. The current owners might disagree, and it's impossible to know if they would be better off or worse off. They could
potentially make an absolute killing if a high profile crowd funding campaign drew support from a large portion of former Amiga owners interested in preservation.

A lot of the arguments that people are making against it being free would equally apply to aros, and I don't see aros having any problems because it is free.

[Kalamatee]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I don't think there needs to be a reason other than "free" is probably better than "closed" for everyone. The current owners might disagree, and it's impossible to know if they would be better off or worse off. They could
potentially make an absolute killing if a high profile crowd funding campaign drew support from a large portion of former Amiga owners interested in preservation.

I'm not sure what your idea of a killing is. A relatively small one off payment?

A lot of the arguments that people are making against it being free would equally apply to aros, and I don't see aros having any problems because it is free.

No one has made that argument - you just keep claiming they do, even when they explicitly say otherwise.

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Kalamatee

I'm not sure what your idea of a killing is. A relatively small one off payment?

You never know with crowd funding. It might be relatively small, it might be significant. We will probably never find out, so I guess it's a moot point.

Originally Posted by Kalamatee

No one has made that argument - you just keep claiming they do, even when they explicitly say otherwise.

You have not made that argument, but some people have:

Originally Posted by tom256

Open source is not good idea. Look a linux, plenty of distribution. Not every package work with another. On the other side plane see at AIX, or MacOS X. Everything working fine there. There is no problem wth compatibility.

The best solution will be when one company will take care of development.

Also I'm not telling here I need features with would require MC68060/100MHz to run OS. Fine enough would be some optimization, better gfx support, support for mouse wheels, USB, HDD above 4GB etc. Just to make AOS more comfortable, and be able to use modern hardware like MC68060, Apollo core, 24bit screens from GFX cards without thousand of patches.

It's a perfectly valid position to take. And I am sure many people would prefer the above situation (owners doing something significant with the products) compared to the current situation (nothing really happening on the m68k side).

[wXR]

@alpine9000

What do you suppose "Not every package work with another" means, and how is that valid? For what it's worth, macOS runs on top of an open-source kernel, and AIX is dead.

@tom256

Without a market to address, nothing happens any faster than a hobbyist is motivated... Because we are in fact talking about the same general pool of people. Thus, funds that would cover it as some kind of commercial endeavor must almost certainly come from angels with a common hobby, overtime pay, or second jobs. Do you honestly think that is better than allowing hobbyists -- again, the same general pool of people -- to create their own patches and changes, and to discuss them in a lively way on a platform such as GitHub?

I'm afraid that already we are well past the age where "companies" take care of everything by themselves. Nearly every single product on the market today is built on a foundation of open source software. Amiga enthusiasts apparently slept through this transition completely, but it's true -- go look for yourself if you don't believe it.

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by wXR

I'm afraid that already we are well past the age where "companies" take care of everything by themselves. Nearly every single product on the market today is built on a foundation of open source software. Amiga enthusiasts apparently slept through this transition completely, but it's true -- go look for yourself if you don't believe it.

Even Microsoft, who used to be the biggest enemy to open source

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by wXR

@alpine9000

What do you suppose "Not every package work with another" means, and how is that valid? For what it's worth, macOS runs on top of an open-source kernel, and AIX is dead.

I just meant it's a valid position for people to wish that the current owners will improve the OS.

I don't think there is enough interest in developing Amiga OS for there to be a problem with too many incompatible forks if the code were free.

In an ideal world the owners would free the code, and simultaneously manage future releases.

[wXR]

If there is some kind of misunderstanding here, let me clear it up: advocates of certain forks do not de-facto have an adversarial relationship with advocates of other forks. To put it another way, GitHub's convenient "fork" button is not designed to start wars. Forks are useful for evolution and experimentation, whether compatible or not. Typically the whole goal is to resolve differences and come to consensus through experimentation along parallel paths.

@alpine9000

"In an ideal world the owners would free the code, and simultaneously manage future releases."

That certainly would be ideal.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

You have not made that argument, but some people have:

and then you pick stray individual, who said something like what you kept claiming we were saying for whole pages of this thread before..

calm down, finally. you free the sources, you are our hero, simple really.

I don't think there is enough interest in developing Amiga OS for there to be a problem with too many incompatible forks if the code were free.

dont you even think it might be even bettter to have options than to have nothing at all? but even where do you see all these people who would contibute to different forks? its even hard to convince some to contribute to one alternative, such as aros, because they think, it is not a "true" os..

In an ideal world the owners would free the code, and simultaneously manage future releases.

ah you want to have the sorces released and have the entities that claim to own them manage the eventual development? who would that be? ainc? hyperion? you really think its a constructive idea, given their track of record?

open source doesnt mean it is not being managed. btw..

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I just meant it's a valid position for people to wish that the current owners will improve the OS.

I don't think there is enough interest in developing Amiga OS for there to be a problem with too many incompatible forks if the code were free.

In an ideal world the owners would free the code, and simultaneously manage future releases.

I do not believe that there will be many forks because there are no developers left. And there must be good reasons to fork because this has both advantages and disadvantages for the group who wants to do that. I do not see a problem here. Aros also is open source but there is only one fork. Of course there are different distributions with different concepts and desktops who look/feel different but the basics are the same on all distributions. The same would be true for a hypothetic open sourced 3.1, there would be one fork only and the files would be used. I personal even have doubts there would be much development but at least it would give a chance for the people behind vampire/apollo and other projects to get it adapted to new features. But as already written... it is theory and will not happen

[alpine9000]

@wawa

I think you read too much into my comments. I think we probably are actually on the same page regarding most of the stuff we have discussed.

I don't know how it would look if the sources were free, I'm not involved, don't know the parties that are involved. I have said many times that's it's probably legally impossible to achieve anyway, so this whole discussion is really purely hypothetical.

When I talk about "an ideal world", I'm talking about the hypothetical situation where an Amiga loving tech billionaire buys all the rights, frees the source and then becomes the Amiga OS benevolent dictator, looking after the release.

Unfortunately that crazy scenario is probably just as likely as any other scenario that lead to free OS3.1 source.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

@wawa

I think you read too much into my comments. I think we probably are actually on the same page regarding most of the stuff we have discussed.

I don't know how it would look if the sources were free, I'm not involved, don't know the parties that are involved. I have said many times that's it's probably legally impossible to achieve anyway, so this whole discussion is really purely hypothetical.

When I talk about "an ideal world", I'm talking about the hypothetical situation where an Amiga loving tech billionaire buys all the rights, frees the source and then becomes the Amiga OS benevolent dictator, looking after the release.

Unfortunately that crazy scenario is probably just as likely as any other scenario that lead to free OS3.1 source.

then why do you argue? especially acting as if we were opposing you, while apparently you think we are on the same side? do you enjoy quarreling? its much better feeling to put some actual work in improving the situation , i tell you. especially in collaboration with others. which you apparently realize, seeing you in the gcc6 thread ..

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by wawa

then why do you argue? especially acting as if we were opposing you, while apparently you think we are on the same side? do you enjoy quarreling? its much better feeling to put some actual work in improving the situation , i tell you.

I didn't know I was arguing.

Originally it seemed like there was some people suggesting it's not worth even trying to achieve a free OS3.1. I just wanted to make the point that I think it's worth asking the question of the current owners, as the worst that can happen is they say no.

There is so much exciting stuff going on with the Amiga at the moment. We really all should be working on our projects rather than posting in this thread :-)

[OlafSch]

@alpine

I would say it this way... if 3.1 sources would really be open sourced in the future (what would be a wonder) then all good but it should not people hinder to enjoy what they have and contribute what they can :-)

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

I do not believe that there will be many forks because there are no developers left.

I expect I would make my own fork for Exec at least. I want my chipmem to start at $00010000.
(As it does today with my own patched version.)

[ross]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

I want my chipmem to start at $00010000.

Hi NorthWay, $10000 or $1000?

If $10000, why?

Bye,
ross

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by ross

If $10000, why?

Because it traps bad word size assembler math, and also word sized offsets with NULL pointers (last only needs $00008000 start). If you run Enforcer.

I think the Dragon's Lair demo (or was it Space Gun(?) the other animated game) showcased the first, and I have seen the last mostly from C code where the base pointer somehow ended up being 0 (or near enough) and it uses a large offset bigger than $1000 or $4000 which you don't catch otherwise (possibly in SAS/C 6.57).

[ross]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

Because it traps bad word size assembler math, and also word sized offsets with NULL pointers (last only needs $00008000 start). If you run Enforcer.

I think the Dragon's Lair demo (or was it Space Gun(?) the other animated game) showcased the first, and I have seen the last mostly from C code where the base pointer somehow ended up being 0 (or near enough) and it uses a large offset bigger than $1000 or $4000 which you don't catch otherwise (possibly in SAS/C 6.57).

Thanks


PS: Space Ace?

[wXR]

@NorthWay

Have you ever published the diff-patch to exec for that?

[wXR]

If relevant, please kick AROS-related discussion over here:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=87129

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by alpine9000

I didn't know I was arguing.

Originally it seemed like there was some people suggesting it's not worth even trying to achieve a free OS3.1. I just wanted to make the point that I think it's worth asking the question of the current owners, as the worst that can happen is they say no.

I would like disagree with this somewhat hopeful negative course of outcome.

There is a worse outcome, which I expect might be more likely.

As far as I can tell, the current owners (which might just be the Pentti Kouri estate) have been very quiet and restrictive with regard to what may happen to the Amiga-specific parts of the portfolio which they manage.

Amiga's assets are probably just one part of a big lump of investments which need to be managed. My impression was that the Amiga, as well as Tao Group (which produced Elate, as used in the AmigaDE product), were investment bets which did not pay off in Mr. Kouri's life time.

Without the person around who invested the money to make the call that the investment really did not merit hanging onto it, the Amiga assets might just stick around for a very long time until it becomes abundantly clear that they are not generating revenue.

In the mean time the other portions of the portfolio probably are still making money, so there is no immediate need to drop the Amiga assets. Because these investments are still making money, the owners can afford to retain expensive legal counsel and defend something which might not be worth the effort, yet this process accidentally succeeds in strangling any interest of potential buyers. The value of the Amiga assets does not grow, because the owners do not invest enough time and energy to get the measure of, maintain or improve its value.

There is a bit of speculation in here (of course - this is a thread about the "what ifs", after all). My overall impression is that we are dealing with what I would call the "uncaring God scenario".

There is so much exciting stuff going on with the Amiga at the moment. We really all should be working on our projects rather than posting in this thread :-)

If that isn't the truth, I'd like to see an untruth even half as convincing

Seriously, the Amiga operating system is a platform. Even if one were to succeed in making the source code available for scrutiny, modification and development, what makes the whole package work is the application software, the hardware, and what you can accomplish with it.

The Workbench software does not ship with a lot of productivity tools, and nobody boots it just to admire how fine the icons look like, and how responsive the user interface is. The Amiga operating system is a tool, so let's not forget that the hand which wields it gives it purpose. That can be done right now, without waiting for a potential free Amiga operating system to materialize first.