Available now: AmigaOS 3.1.4

[indigolemon]

Originally Posted by hth313

But now I suspect the same as you... which is very sad, as normal software companies release updates to their customers when they are available, without teasing them by holding it back and rubbing it in.

I would assume that the 1st July for the update, assuming indeed that is what this is, is the date they've set for release - you know, like every other software company does when releasing updates.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by hth313

But now I suspect the same as you... which is very sad, as normal software companies release updates to their customers when they are available, without teasing them by holding it back and rubbing it in.

I'm sorry, nobody is holding anything back. Preparing an update means a little bit more than just pushing an lha out to the public. It also means that FAQs and READMEs and a whitepaper have to be produced, that a final round of checking has to be made. This takes a couple of days, even if the software is final. It also means that we give everyone some time for the final round of testing. I was also on a business trip the last days, so could not prepare everything that needs to be prepared. From the side of the developers, pretty much everything will be done hopefully by tonight. Then, there are still a few days left to move data on the server, and ... just in case ... a critical bug appears, we still may have a chance to fix it.

So, I really wonder why you believe that there are any bad intentions here - not at all. Everybody is working hard to get things out.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by hth313

If we are lucky it is a countdown for the current court case which hopefully will kill Hyperion for good.

And then what? It could essentially mean that all rights for contributions that were collected over time would have to be re-negotiated with their corresponding authors. Many of them are no longer active, and might be hard to contact. Thus, if you believe that this would end a long legal struggle, you might find AmigaOs in an even worse position afterwards. It might mean that a set of components of 3.1.4 would have to be rewritten (yet again) to avoid infringing third party rights, and this might be another horror story.

So, as much as I can understand that Hyperion did not do much for the classic systems all the years, it is not a solution to the problem either. Nothing will automatically go "open source" or "transfer seamlessly" to Cloanto.

[hth313]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

So, I really wonder why you believe that there are any bad intentions here - not at all. Everybody is working hard to get things out.

Thanks for clarifying.

The reason is that in my experience, it is impossible to know the date unless you are truly done beforehand and are just waiting with there release. Maybe some people are better than I am at this, my apologizes in this case.

[quantum8]

Originally Posted by hth313

But now I suspect the same as you... which is very sad, as normal software companies release updates to their customers when they are available, without teasing them by holding it back and rubbing it in.

I don't see the problem with them announcing that they're working on an update, and then working on fixing the bugs they've found....


Ask them if they have any external beta testers if you really want a pre-release update that badly.

[hth313]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

And then what? It could essentially mean that all rights for contributions that were collected over time would have to be re-negotiated with their corresponding authors. Many of them are no longer active, and might be hard to contact. Thus, if you believe that this would end a long legal struggle, you might find AmigaOs in an even worse position afterwards. It might mean that a set of components of 3.1.4 would have to be rewritten (yet again) to avoid infringing third party rights, and this might be another horror story.

So, as much as I can understand that Hyperion did not do much for the classic systems all the years, it is not a solution to the problem either. Nothing will automatically go "open source" or "transfer seamlessly" to Cloanto.

Yes, we have different opinions here, I know.

In my point of view, the problem we have is exactly due to the above, that ownership is fragmented as everyone want to keep their parts secret rather than really open things up and collaborate instead, which preferably should have been done a long time ago.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by hth313

Yes, we have different opinions here, I know.

In my point of view, the problem we have is exactly due to the above, that ownership is fragmented as everyone want to keep their parts secret rather than really open things up and collaborate instead, which preferably should have been done a long time ago.

And, because of that, you want to fragment it more? Look, the problem is that multiple parties already contributed to AmigaOs, at various stages, with individually negotiated license terms. This did not start with 3.9, but even back in CBM times. It is like opening Pandora's box. For example, the narrator.device was never owned by CBM, they only had a binary license for it. Who knows which type of licenses CBM had for ARexx (did not come from CBM) or the Kickstart 2.0 dos.library and shell (did neither come from CBM, but the Software distillery, essentially arp), or CrossDos, or...

Even if Cloanto would want to open it (whatever "it" then is), they hardly could - they would first need to hunt down the individual agreements, if even possible after such a long time. They do not own as much as they might believe, even with Hyperion out of the way.

The whole construction of AmigaOs is from a legal perspective very fragile. There is no "black or white". There are only multiple parties with partially overlapping and partially conflicting interests, and the story would hardly end with Hyperion out of the way. It would rather open another Pandora's box of software licensing, and just another round of struggle.

[Thomas Richter]

..6..

[shaf]

ARexx was from William S Hawes, I know because i have a non CBM copy when it was a commercial product before WB 2.0.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I hope it's a surprise for "everyone" and freely distributed, for sure the whole world Amiga would be happy.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by shaf

ARexx was from William S Hawes, I know because i have a non CBM copy when it was a commercial product before WB 2.0.

Yeah, that's the easy bit - running RexxMast under later OS versions where it was included even announces as much. The problem is more about what sort of licence it is, and is it open for renegotiation. Presumably it covers binary inclusion with Amiga OS from 2.0 onwards, which might cover Amiga OS releases by other companies under the Amiga brand, but we don't know for sure. My understanding is that Hawes was treated poorly by Commodore back in the day when it was included with OS 2, and thereafter refused to have anything further to do with Amiga. That's why ARexx has been essentially unchanged since then, up to and including OS4.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yeah, that's the easy bit - running RexxMast under later OS versions where it was included even announces as much. The problem is more about what sort of licence it is, and is it open for renegotiation. Presumably it covers binary inclusion with Amiga OS from 2.0 onwards, which might cover Amiga OS releases by other companies under the Amiga brand, but we don't know for sure. My understanding is that Hawes was treated poorly by Commodore back in the day when it was included with OS 2, and thereafter refused to have anything further to do with Amiga. That's why ARexx has been essentially unchanged since then, up to and including OS4.

Yes, that is more or less what happened.

There are many other third party contributions like for example:

The commodities.library and subsystem.
The Agfa compugraphics fonts.
The amigaguide system.
The default system icons.
The boot images of many machine roms.
All the work that went into the dark period of 1994-1999 (from CBM bankruptcy to just before AmigaOS 3.5)

And the list goes on and on.

[Thomas Richter]

..5..

[Ian]

Back on topic now boys and girls.

[grelbfarlk]

For a fantasy feature of 3.1.5 I'm wondering what the feasibility of ROMnifying some subset of P96 so it could be loaded (and intialize the RTG card), so Early Startup and Boot without Startup Sequence could go through an RTG card. I realize this is a tall order but I wonder whether it's all possible or feasible or if anyone had an idea how it could be done.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

For a fantasy feature of 3.1.5 I'm wondering what the feasibility of ROMnifying some subset of P96 so it could be loaded (and intialize the RTG card), so Early Startup and Boot without Startup Sequence could go through an RTG card. I realize this is a tall order but I wonder whether it's all possible or feasible or if anyone had an idea how it could be done.

Around zero. First, P96 is owned by someone else, and second, it would require the drivers of many cards on board, and third, none of them including the rtg.library are ROM-able, and forth, there is not enough space in ROM anyhow, and fifth, this is the wrong direction - components should be removed from ROM rather than integrated into the ROM.

[Thomas Richter]

..4..

[grelbfarlk]

I didn't mean necessarily "be put in the kickstart" but say a system where a user could loadmodule individual components like rtg.library, their #?.card driver, picasso96settings, and if necessary their bus driver like pci.library.

The part where you would come in, in the imaginary universe where these libraries were romable/loadmoduleable, Early Startup Screen and lets say dos.library (probably more) were patched/rebuilt to come up on boot after restart on the RTG display.

Or maybe an achievable goal would be an after-boot version of Early Startup Screen that could be run in Workbench to select boot device, no startup-sequence and so on.

I don't know how OS4 does it, but on Classic I thought it was possible to get to the OS4 early startup screen on the Voodoo.

*Mods sorry this should have gone in the AmigaOS 3.1.4 successor wishlist.*

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

I don't know how OS4 does it, but on Classic I thought it was possible to get to the OS4 early startup screen on the Voodoo.

OS4 loads all the extra parts you're thinking of as "Kickstart Modules", so in essence they're a Kickstart that's loaded from disk. That's how things like RTG and USB are available for the early startup, and how they can easily be enabled, disabled and updated without swapping chips. I guess such an approach could be done under OS3 too, but it would make for much longer boot times and soak up a lot of RAM.

An alternative option might be to use one of the flash module that stores extra modules that are loaded as part of AutoConfig. There are a couple of Zorro cards that do this for big-box Amigas, but nothing that I'm aware of for the smaller models.

[ExiE]

..3..