Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: olsen on January 02, 2017, 12:14:54 PM
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You may remember that just about a year ago a file "amiga os source code 3.1.tar.bz2" popped up on a web site, was linked to, copied, and the contents even wound up on GitHub for a couple of days. This event was widely publicized, on Twitter, on personal blogs, and it even made the news.
That file would contain pretty much all the AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and plenty of other material which used to be available to Commodore developers back in 1994. It's safe to say that the contents of the archive are now very widely distributed, just not necessarily available to the general public.
Back then there was speculation as to who made the data available, where the data came from, and which consequences the availability would have.
It's been a year now, and I'm curious. What did the availability of the source code make possible?
(Careful: there could be legal strings attached to answering this question, so you might consider your options when posting answers here)
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I think you've answered yourself in the post. Even if some projects gained by having a look into these sources, noone will confirm it.
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You may remember that just about a year ago a file "amiga os source code 3.1.tar.bz2" popped up on a web site, was linked to, copied, and the contents even wound up on GitHub for a couple of days. This event was widely publicized, on Twitter, on personal blogs, and it even made the news.
That file would contain pretty much all the AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and plenty of other material which used to be available to Commodore developers back in 1994. It's safe to say that the contents of the archive are now very widely distributed, just not necessarily available to the general public.
Back then there was speculation as to who made the data available, where the data came from, and which consequences the availability would have.
It's been a year now, and I'm curious. What did the availability of the source code make possible?
(Careful: there could be legal strings attached to answering this question, so you might consider your options when posting answers here)
I do not know if anyone looked inside, I assume some for pure curiosity I stayed away and propably most others too. It is funny how much noise was created around 20 years old sources, you could think future of mankind depends on defending the sources. So answer nothing changed by it. If anyone ever looked inside to get some tips how to do something or simply to see how it was done would be stupid to post it anywhere. You could also ask if someone has the intention to rob someone and expect a honest answer :-)
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as a contributor to aros, however minor my input is i steer clear of such illegal sorces leaks. thats a very honest answer on my part.
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As a result we now have updated C:Sort and C:Wait programs in the "BB3+4", plus some other neatness (trackdisk.device 40.2?) right out of the "box". Especially the Wait update was useful, one can give a file as argument, and wait will sit there till the file shows up. Great! A lot of people have had fun looking at the sources and learning about the inner workings of whatever subsystem they are interested in - I could list names here, but I prefer they rather do it themselves (some have been quite open about on the Amiga Facebook groups), a lot of code has been improved because of this knowledge.
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In my opinion, the cat is out of the bag - AmigaOS 3.1 is to be considered open source, whether one like it or not. The sources are out there, all you need to do is ask. It is merely the legal status that is unclear in the draconian parts of the world, the vast majority of people on this planet live in countries where the concept of "copyright" is not a reality. Why we in "the west" inflict our society with such regressive nonsense is beyond me, I suppose it is our love for bureaucracy and regulations.
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In my opinion, the cat is out of the bag - AmigaOS 3.1 is to be considered open source, whether one like it or not. The sources are out there, all you need to do is ask. It is merely the legal status that is unclear in the draconian parts of the world, the vast majority of people on this planet live in countries where the concept of "copyright" is not a reality. Why we in "the west" inflict our society with such regressive nonsense is beyond me, I suppose it is our love for bureaucracy and regulations.
not entirely true... ancient china killed everybody that tried to bring silkworms outside china or how porzellan is created
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Really hard to believe that there is so much fuss over 20 year old code.
JUST MAKE IT OPEN SOURCE!
When code is available benefits are undeniable.
Pretty simple.
Imagine how much more vibrant and successful Amiga NG would be with open source system.
Oh but no! Our licensing fees... money... bla, bla, bla. Same sad story and same outcome as it was in 90's.
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" vast majority of people on this planet live in countries where the concept of "copyright" is not a reality"
Which does not make it ok does it ? I mean, the ones profiting from it are the big companies that ended up cutting costs to develop software to sell their hardware while coders are less and less paid. Similar situation to the music industry, everybody talking bad about big labels and then they pirate everything including the small bands. Why do you think there are not any decent bands anymore with success ? And don't tell me about youtube or apple music store, they just exploit the artists too.
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Nobody other than a few in the Amiga "world" care about this old operating system and what it does on our old hardware. Nothing to see here.
But c:sort, man..thats one piece of software I've been waiting for.
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I've to ask myself, what I would have gained by looking at these source codes. Short: nothing.
Back in the late 1980/early 1990 I've disassembled parts of the OS in order to figure out, how the involved routines did work and what they did expect.
In addition, looking at professional C coder's source codes is useless for me because they mostly don't document what they want to achieve and what tricks they do apply to do so (their attitude; I'll get paid for programming, not documenting...).
Next to nothing, the OCS/ECS/AGA hardware is very well documented - and even in the late 1980 it was, thus it is no problem to fall back on OS routines only when really necessary (bypassing them if required) and talking instead with the hardware directly.
The part I am curious in is the 3rd party graphic device, i.e. Picasso96, but I am too lazy these days to disassemble and have a look at it. Any other part of the OS is today boring for me, because I already know (or better said, gained enough information) how it works (till and including OS3.1) and how I have to handle it to achieve what I want to.
Besides that, knowing or at least having the source codes of an OS doesn't imply to easily program a software/application for it; two years ago I've spent just a week to program my very first (and in addition, complex) software for Android-OS without knowing any details about Android's OS; achieving that by only using a strong IDE (Android Studio) and visiting 'stackoverflow.com' and studying Android's developer documentation. If I would own a copy of the OS3.1 source codes and would have no knowledge of this OS otherwise, I wouldn't be able to realise this software at all!
So, on my part, there are no consequences at all. Nothing has changed for me. Still using the buggy datatypes system (if I cannot avoid it), still using the Workbench with its flaws and limitations, and still using 'vbcc' and a text editor to develop software for AmigaOS/MorphOS and 'gcc' on the AROS part.
Even the AmigaOS3.1 source codes were one day publically and legally downloadable, I wouldn't spend any second on studying it.
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For me it was an educational experience:
I understood how the modularity approach in development led to some of the third party system extensions, replacements, patchs and hacks that we love and enjoy in our Amigas. But as downside, it also made the build and release process way too complex and less focused with lots of integration issues.
I still think modularity was the right approach for AmigaOS given the hardware it ran on, but I would have chosen a more unified set of tools for its development, with a more strict coding guideline. And a clear roadmap designed with the help of the developers for them to follow in pushing new releases of the OS wouldnt have hurt.
It was also interesting to see what Commodore plans were at the time it went bankrupt.
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@A2666
i guess i don't understand the unhappiness over whether the OS is open-source or not. we have AROS, which is open-source. and API-compatible. and portable. and more advanced. so why not contribute to that project and let the commercial guys keep doing their thing in parallel?
-- eliyahu
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It's been a year now, and I'm curious. What did the availability of the source code make possible?
Apparently, it had no observable effect, except for a general rumble about it. I believe this is obvious for everyone, so I wonder what the purpose of the question is? (except generating another rumble, maybe ;-).
So, there are two possible conclusions:
C: Nobody cares. That is, it did not trigger the generation of any new software of or around the Os because nobody *C*ared enough to attempt working on the sources. In such a case, it is completely irrelevant whether the sources will become available or any updated Os becomes available because there is no demand for it, and nobody willing to satisfy the non-existing demand. Thus, just don't bother.
D: People actually do care about it, though copyright still means something. Despite the claims of some ignorant people, the Os is (then?) not "open", but just "stolen". Note that there is an important difference between these two words! In such a case, replace the "c" by a "d": Nobody *D*ared to make anything available due to potential consequences.
In case option "C" mirrors reality, I wonder why places like this exist. It seems like a contraction to me.
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It's been a year now, and I'm curious. What did the availability of the source code make possible?
Disclaimer: All my opinion.
It made it easier to understand the AmigaDOS Code from Commodore's point of view. That is the primary difference. It cost $$$$$ to be a developer.
It did not necessarily help malware experts to monitor, target, or attack Amiga systems, although it certainly did not hinder that either.
It might have helped some devs create honest software a bit quicker, for both 3.1 and post 3.1 systems, by understanding the 3.1 code.
It made emulating 3.1 hardware systems and designing new hardware systems that could interface with 3.1 a bit easier.
So not a game changer, but an advatnage, an edge, that some people might find useful, and some would scorn, really. It's not like there was huge point in recompiling the source code and knocking out copies in the markets of Singapore (no disrespect intended to people of that city, but you do have a reputation for innovation success against the odds).
Technically, it was a breach of copyright, a leak of private IP. The nature of leaks is, there is no mop up of the spill. Leaked is leaked, And as for who... "The ship of State is the ONLY ship that leaks from the top". ;)
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@eliyahu
Because lack of freedom. Because Olsen, even if wants to, cannot contribute to AROS without risking legal issues for both himself and AROS. And with the sources widely available, who knows who have looked at them or not?
Would you let me contribute to AROS?
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@ThoR:
Many did their small changes and fixes, but it's easier to keep quiet about it and just pass on sources and binaries through social channels.
But anyways, where is the outrage over the content in the BB3+4 update?
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@ThoR:
Many did their small changes and fixes, but it's easier to keep quiet about it and just pass on sources and binaries through social channels.
So, it's not "Open Source", eh?
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So, it's not "Open Source", eh?
It's hardly closed source and fresh as a daisy, either. It was when first developed...
Even some intelligence agencies release some of their old muck, eventually. And that isn't a commercial law deal, that's a national or international security law deal. Big kettles of fish. Not a poxy little one marked "Amiga source code 3.1".
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It is open source the same way BSD licensed software is open source.
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It is open source the same way BSD licensed software is open source.
Oh, really? So, why is this material not "openly shared" and put on Aminet? As for BSD software, for example?
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It's hardly closed source
It's stolen closed source. That doesn't make it open.
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It's stolen closed source. That doesn't make it open.
It is easily available and will remain so, that makes it open.
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Oh, really? So, why is this material not "openly shared" and put on Aminet? As for BSD software, for example?
BSD license does not require you to share whatever changes you do to the sources, that would be GPL, given that you release the binaries. And no license whatever requires you to release software you have built from whatever sources you have.
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BSD license does not require you to share whatever changes you do to the sources, that would be GPL, given that you release the binaries. And no license whatever requires you to release software you have built from whatever sources you have.
That was not my question.
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ThoR: Some of the software _has_ been shared - you should for example pay attention to the BB3+4 project, AmiKit, ClassicWB etc.
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It's stolen closed source. That doesn't make it open.
In terms of declaring it open source and specifically using it as a development resource for public future development, sticking it on a github, etc, you are correct.
However, to childishly stomp your foot and scream "IST VERBOTEN" ignores the fact that the source text used to describe the final object code it's now effectively everybody's, as a point of reference. Not as a true piece of open source development, but as a discarded scrap of abandonware.
If you want to be ignorant about the current situation, that is your choice, and your choice will be respected, by me, at least.
It is easily available and will remain so, that makes it open.
Disagree. Open source as a development root has a specific definition. Source for 3.1 is now a point of reference, a leaked document in the public domain. No more than that, it is too much of a jump to declare it as a true open source OS. It isn't.
Why? Copyright rests with the copyright holder until 70 years (probably longer) after expiration of the copyright holder.
It becomes Open Source 70 years after CBM filed for Chapter 11.
If in the meantime, it gets wholesale conversion to native HEX code, as opposed to being compiled C, then the translated version could be declared as Open source (translated works are not a technical breach of copyright, although they could be used as the basis for an IP infringement legal case - extremely unlikely). However, such a translation would have the same Amiga problem - it would require a custom ROM version for each basic Amiga type. NOT a small task.
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Frankly, I'm of the opinion the whole thing was a big non-event in the first place.
The only people that would find this source code interesting are people still using the OS.
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Frankly, I'm of the opinion the whole thing was a big non-event in the first place.
The only people that would find this source code interesting are people still using the OS.
Not true. I haven't touched the OS for a long time, and a USER of an OS would not care.
A DEVELOPER might care. Indeed, seems to be a little flame war building over the issue, and I hope I've stated some points that might make people THINK a little bit more before ranting.
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Not true. I haven't touched the OS for a long time, and a USER of an OS would not care.
A DEVELOPER might care. Indeed, seems to be a little flame war building over the issue, and I hope I've stated some points that might make people THINK a little bit more before ranting.
So we are all hackers, users/developers... that all kind of blurs after a few decades.
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So we are all hackers, users/developers... that all kind of blurs after a few decades.
You used the term. If your usage of the word "user", short for "end user", was imprecise, not my problem.
In the days when this code was written, CBM developers had a contract with CBM. There was a very big difference indeed, and it cost a lot of cash. Not that CBM gave much in return - they certainly didn't hand out source code to developers just for registering.
If you had been in that position at the time, you might feel angry too now.
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Society is degrading. Amiga source code leaked, dogs and cats living together!
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Kind of reminds me of the whole SCO vs Linux battle, where they were trying to prove that some code from Unix was reused in Linux, even though all they could find was stuff that was already in the public domain.
That is more what the source dump is, pretty much public domain. Guess in less than 50 years the copyright will be up, and all the hardware that it runs on will mostly be dead. Yeah, that makes sense... seriously copyright law for software should change. It was meant to be for those writers so they could make money off their royalties. After 20 years of being out, I can't think of anyone that would purchase software, most 20 year old software won't even run outside emulation or for us nutters who still have an ancient system.
Granted there are still a few commercially supported software packages that I have no problem buying to get continued support. Hell, I even bought OS4 even though I don't have a system (outside of emulation) that will even run it. Maybe one day someone will make a new PPC board for my A4000D that doesn't cost my left nut. But I'm mostly interested in the OS anyhow, and would rather keep my real hardware at 68k.
It's kind of funny though, speaking of old software that people do still buy. Like from GOG.com. Kind of surprised they only do DOSBox wrapped games, and haven't started with UAE wrapped ones.
The only other thing I could think the source code would be useful fo is to maybe be able to modify it a bit to get it working from a VM or better emulation. Maybe someone could port it to the TT030 or Falcon? :P
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Disagree. Open source as a development root has a specific definition.
No, this so called "specific definition" you speak of, was piggy-backed onto what had been going on for quite a few years before when OSI was formed.
Source for 3.1 is now a point of reference, a leaked document in the public domain. No more than that, it is too much of a jump to declare it as a true open source OS. It isn't.
So are you saying AmigaOS 3.1 sources are now public domain?
Why? Copyright rests with the copyright holder until 70 years (probably longer) after expiration of the copyright holder.
That depends where you live. In the same way certain countries decide to ignore treaties they have signed regarding human rights violations, the Geneva convention, the treaty of Rome, the Paris Climate agreement etc, some countries also chose to ignore copyright treaties like the Berne convention. I can assure you that copyrights are ignored in most of the world.
It becomes Open Source 70 years after CBM filed for Chapter 11.
Hardly. First of all, CBM barely had all the copyrights themselves, a lot of the components of OS3.1 was licensed in the first place, and some of if legally dubious already. It is unclear whether all the rights to those licenses were transferrable, or whether they were CBM strictly. As Thomas here can confirm, CBM themselves were not exactly saints when it came to copyrights.
If in the meantime, it gets wholesale conversion to native HEX code, as opposed to being compiled C, then the translated version could be declared as Open source (translated works are not a technical breach of copyright, although they could be used as the basis for an IP infringement legal case - extremely unlikely). However, such a translation would have the same Amiga problem - it would require a custom ROM version for each basic Amiga type. NOT a small task.
I did not understand squat of what you tried to communicate there. You are saying that if you dump a binary as hex, you can declare that hex as "not a copy"? Then there has not been a leak of the AmigaOS 3.1 sources, as it was spread as a tar.gz file, which obviously has no similarities with the original works, but merely is a file describing how the original sources must have looked like :laughing:
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Society is degrading. Amiga source code leaked, dogs and cats living together!
That is a mighty big twinkie you have there! :roflmao:
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So are you saying AmigaOS 3.1 sources are now public domain?
Not everything in the public domain can reasonably be described as open source. The 2 are not interchangable, no matter how badly you want them to be.
That depends where you live. In the same way certain countries decide to ignore treaties they have signed regarding human rights violations, the Geneva convention, the treaty of Rome, the Paris Climate agreement etc, some countries also chose to ignore copyright treaties like the Berne convention. I can assure you that copyrights are ignored in most of the world.
Copyright is a RIGHT. Rights cannot be taken away, no matter how hard you want them to be. Privaleges can be taken away. Not rights. The only country in the world that specifically, constitutionally ignores copyright - is Taiwan. Coincidentally (not) where an awful lot of hi tech companies are HQ'd.
Hardly. First of all, CBM bare had all the copyrights themselves, a lot of the components of OS3.1 was licensed in the first place, and some of if legally dubious already. It is unclear whether all the rights to those licenses were transferrable, or whether they were CBM strictly. As Thomas here can confirm, CBM themselves were not exactly saints when it came to copyrights themselves.
Copyright covers the text of the source code. If parts of that code were PUBLICLY RELEASED, and they were not, things might be different. CBM did not release the code, nor has anyone that bought the IP in the meantime.
I did not understand squat of what you tried to communicate there. You are saying that if you dump a binary as hex, you can declare that hex as "not a copy"? Then there has not been a leak of the AmigaOS 3.1 sources, as it was spread as a tar.gz file, which obviously has no similarities with the original works, but merely is a file describing how the original sources must have looked like :laughing:
I am sorry you are too unintelligent to understand. HEX code is native to the machine - it is viewable by humans in source form as "assembler", but very few humans can easily understand the mechanics of a computer program, purely by looking at a page of HEX.
But that's what the chips really understand. C code, compiled, will never run as fast. That's an old myth.
You can copyright TEXT, ie source. You cannot copyright a number as such, although you can prove the numbers (hex) have a text origin, in the form of source code that will assemble to a given hex code block.
Understand, or do I have to get the book of little words out - The "Caveman Dictionary for Stupid Criminals".
I'm very disappointed in you Kolla. I thought you might actually try the challenge of rewriting an entire OS, for 6 different machines. Seems I was mistaken. Hard work isn't your style, it seems.
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In terms of declaring it open source and specifically using it as a development resource for public future development, sticking it on a github, etc, you are correct.
And that is exactly the point. "Open source" does not mean "I can look at the source". It means that the owner granted me (some sort of) rights to look at the source, and - potentially - even use it for particular purposes.
None of that is the case here. You might look at the source if you can get hold of it, but without the permission of the owner. That does not make it open. It makes it a stoled proprietary closed source piece of software, which doesn't help you in development. In particular, it brings you into a delicate position if you try to develop software from it.
Not as a true piece of open source development, but as a discarded scrap of abandonware.
Though that's an important difference.
If you want to be ignorant about the current situation, that is your choice, and your choice will be respected, by me, at least.
I'm not ignorant about the situation. I'm just getting nuts about people that call it "Open Source", which is exactly *not* what it is. The copyright header in the sources states clearly what you can do with it - Nothing. Don't touch, don't use.
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I'm not ignorant about the situation. I'm just getting nuts about people that call it "Open Source", which is exactly *not* what it is. The copyright header in the sources states clearly what you can do with it - Nothing. Don't touch, don't use.
But it can't legally state "Do not translate". :)
Which wouldn't technically be USING the original, save as a point of reference.
Yes Thomas, I can see you are very angry about this, as a point of principle. And much of what you are saying is valid.
But, points of reference are there to be used - for good, for bad. They are tools. They are not, in themselves, wrong or malign or bad.
Germany has very strong privacy laws, principally there to stop a replay of the National Socialist Partei happening again. Remember, not everywhere is so strict about what might be observed and recorded, quite lawfully. With or without permission.
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But it can't legally state "Do not translate". :)
Depends, some places class the translation as a derivative work and that permission needs to come from the copyright holder in the first instance. Places like the US where the source code is copyrighted.
Back OT, I think we can see what the consequences of the source code release have been - apart from random Amigans arguing about it and getting their post counts up - nothing.
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Depends, some places class the translation as a derivative work and that permission needs to come from the copyright holder in the first instance. Places like the US where the source code is copyrighted.
Back OT, I think we can see what the consequences of the source code release have been - apart from random Amigans arguing about it and getting their post counts up - nothing.
Nope. You cannot legally prevent translation.
You could go into a court and try to argue that a Hex translation into pure MC started as a C source file, but without evidence you'd have no case.
Damned difficult to prove. If the C source compiled to something substantially different, case dismissed. (If if was an exact replica, or could be positively identified as a derivative work, different story).
Even worse, if you could demonstrate the new version was a substantial improvement, you could counter claim for malicious prosecution... and who exactly would be taking you to court? Cloanto? They have a license to sell original ROMs, sure. But they don't lay claim to the code.
Hyperion? Their current offerings don't even run on machines that such a ROM would be aimed at.
Who is left? Who can claim that a new WB3.1 derivative is going to hurt them, financially?
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What did the availability of the source code make possible?
The "Undocumented AmigaOS" document ( http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/UndocumentedAmigaOS.lha ), in the spirit of "Undocumented DOS", etc.
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Nope. You cannot legally prevent translation.
Of course you can, read your EULA.
Even worse, if you could demonstrate the new version was a substantial improvement, you could counter claim for malicious prosecution...
What a load of crap. Improving something you've violated the copyright on doesn't give you any extra rights and admitting it makes you an even bigger target, ffs.
Who can claim that a new WB3.1 derivative is going to hurt them, financially?
Whoever owns the copyright..
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(Careful: there could be legal strings attached to answering this question, so you might consider your options when posting answers here)
LMAO we are sooo scared. Its quite sad that the legacy of Amiga os is being held hostage by a Belgium lawyer.
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Of course you can, read your EULA.
I have no EULA for Kickstart. I was never provided one by the manufacturer.
What a load of crap. Improving something you've violated the copyright on doesn't give you any extra rights and admitting it makes you an even bigger target, ffs.
But it wouldn't be violating the copyright of the C code. It could be proven NEVER to have been a C program.
And for the 2nd time, who is going to target such an innovation? Who can claim a loss from better Kickstarts for old Amigas?
It certainly isn't Hyperion
[Whoever owns the copyright..
So who owns the copyright to the source code? It's labelled CBM, so who got the IP for the source code, bud?
Bearing in mind, the last case to decide this happened in 2014. It's not like it happened 20 years ago.
Also, in the USA, litigation is handled at the State level. Not the national Federal level. So what set of rules is decided by which State the case is fought in. As Hyperion are based in BOTH Belgium and Germany, the laws used would be the ones of the locaiity of the registered World HQ.
If Thomas is right, and that's Germany, then Hyperion have a robust set of laws to defend them. But, they would still need to show evidence of loss or harm to their business.
It would be funny in court to see a classic Amiga trying to run 4.1, their current product. Compared to a classic Amiga running 3.1.
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The thread is a little silly to me. Nobody is going to come after anyone legally unless there is some sort of commercial distro even then i doubt it. My favorite thing on these type of amiga threads are the arm chair lawyers legal opinion. lol
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The thread is a little silly to me
Agreed. I think I've said more than enough. I guess it boils down to people being protective - perhaps overprotective.
YES, I'm guilty of that, just as much as the next Amigan.
I think Cloanto have seen this coming.
Sooner or later the situation will inevitably change (due to the expiration or special exemption status of some copyrights, or because of the quality and diffusion of compatible alternatives, or for other factors), but until then we
https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-122
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But it wouldn't be violating the copyright of the C code.
You don't violate the copyright of the C code, you violate the author's rights.
Ok, this thread has done one thing - it's brought the nutters out of the wood-work who have no idea about copyright.
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You don't violate the copyright of the C code, you violate the author's rights.
You don't unless the person suiing you can prove that your code - came from the C code.
Knowing is one thing. Proving in a court is very, very unlikely. If a dereviative product is not sold, merely distributed, there would be no basis for financial compensation.
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Ok, this thread has done one thing - it's brought the nutters out of the wood-work who have no idea about copyright.
EvilGuy? More like EvilGenius! :lol:
And Olsen is giddy with delight as he runs and squeals all the way back to the asylum! :lol:
Touche!
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LMAO we are sooo scared. Its quite sad that the legacy of Amiga os is being held hostage by a Belgium lawyer.
it wasn't just hyperion which told folks not to link to the archive, by the way. hyperion is not the only claimant to the source copyright.
-- eliyahu
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Well, I think you're a snotty nosed little tosser who couldn't find his dick without a map, a microscope, and some tweezers.
All good Pat, I had your momma helping me the other night, so I'm happy to call it even..
.. and at least I understand copyright law.
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it wasn't just hyperion which told folks not to link to the archive, by the way. hyperion is not the only claimant to the source copyright.
-- eliyahu
Oh, really? I see lots of references to license to distribute, I've seen no references anywhere saying Commodore's copyright to source was ever transferred outside of Commodore.
Tell you what. Before I do anything - look at the source even - I'm going to write, to Hyperion, Amiga Inc, Cloanto, etc, asking them specifically if they lay claim to the code, and if so, what the basis of that claim is, and what evidence they have to support such claim. With the rider that if I don't hear back from them in a sensible time frame, I will assume that they have no such claim.
Until then, I'm shutting up. Eliyahu, if you know anybody else, please PM me so I can ask them, officially.
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Oh, really? I see lots of references to license to distribute, I've seen no references anywhere saying Commodore's copyright to source was even transferred.
i have no idea if it was or not; thankfully i'm not a lawyer. but the emails and PM i got to not allow links to the archive didn't come from hyperion, and i think i'll leave it at that.
-- eliyahu
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@thread
just a heads up that i've already received reports on a couple of posts in this thread. please keep the language appropriate and no personal attacks, please.
-- eliyahu
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So wait, by Pat's logic, if you distribute someone's copyrighted source code, you are in infringement, but if you distribute the binaries (compiled or 'translated'), you are okay? I mean the copyright is on the pre-compiled TEXT according to him.
That would pretty much change everything on how software copyright works. Hell if that logic works, people download compressed (translated into computer 1s and 0s) music and movies that should also not be considered copyright infringement, right?
Not a personal attack, just wondering because if there is a translation clause out there, you could actually argue the difference and maybe push for a more sane copyright on the binaries. Afterall, binaries do become useless after so long, while source code could be tweaked and updated to work with newer ssystems.
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i have no idea if it was or not; thankfully i'm not a lawyer. but the emails and PM i got to not allow links to the archive didn't come from hyperion, and i think i'll leave it at that.
-- eliyahu
I completely understand you protecting aorg from posting links, im in favor of that. But this whole legal threat thing in this community is a sad joke and whats even more sad are the fanboys that echo it.
ps im aware there are copyright holders for 3.1 and they are entitled to their rights im speaking more on the insanity of it all. In particular os4 being held hostage by a holding company in belgium. The BEST thing that could EVER happen to Amiga os would be open source
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ps im aware there are copyright holders for 3.1 and they are entitled to their rights im speaking more on the insanity of it all. In particular os4 being held hostage by a holding company in belgium.
Actually, as far as Os 4 is concerned, the situation is quite clear to me. Hyperion paid for it, and had the rights to run a Os 4 development on top of Os 3.1, so it's their source and their product. So no doubts about it. And "held hostage" is not quite the right term - they own it, they sell it. Buy it - or don't.
In the same sense, Windows is "held hostage" by Microsoft. But that's only fair. They produced it, they own it, and they can do with it whatever they like. If you don't need this product, don't get it. Unfortunately, the latter part is much harder to avoid than Os 4.
For Os 3.1, however, the situation is not so obvious. I've seen what Cloanto actually bought from the bankrupt estate of CBM (yes, really), and that are the ROM images (amongst others), but not the sources. So that doesn't give them rights on the source code, IMHO, despite Cloanto claiming the contrary. I don't thrust them either. All they have are just the compiled binary images, as distributed on ROM. As soon as they would stick to selling exactly that, it would be ok, but they don't.
I haven't seen anything like that for Hyperion, i.e. I do not know what exactly they got. The license to base 4.x development on 3.1 does IMHO not cover enough rights on 3.1 as such. So maybe the compromise settlement after the process with Amiga Inc. does give them that, but to be sure, I would need to read it, which I have not.
However, it gets even more delicate: What about components CBM actually never owned? For example, ARexx? This is copyright Bill Hawes, and as far as I understand, CBM never paid for it, they likely never accquired it. Hence, if somebody is willing to update ARexx, it would probably need a license from Bill, and neither Cloanto, nor Hyperion will likely be able to give you that, neither CBM would have ever been able to.
Worse, what about the components that were generated for Os 3.9? What about those? They went partially to H&P, and partially remained at the authors. Did the authors transfer copyright to H&P? Did Hyperion transfer copyright from H&P to them? Which part of the copyright could they even transfer?
Questions over questions. I don't have clear answers, but I haven't seen the contracts either. I know too little to judge, except that I'm very definitely clear that the source code that is floating around in the internet is certainly not "Open Source" by any means, and thus completely unusable for any type of development.
The BEST thing that could EVER happen to Amiga os would be open source
Given the delicate situation, this is unlikely, and not even desirable.The Os requires a maintainer, not a bunch of hackers. Unfortunately, it is not exactly going to improve the situation by idling, as it currently happens.
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Pff... the OS was made by a bunch of hackers and is currently maintained by a bunch of hackers, such as yourself.
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In the same sense, Windows is "held hostage" by Microsoft.
Did Microsoft blackmail the original rights owner into handing over the Windows rights for free?
I haven't seen anything like that for Hyperion, i.e. I do not know what exactly they got.
The settlement agreement - which details exactly what they got - is publicly available.
Worse, what about the components that were generated for Os 3.9? What about those? They went partially to H&P
None of these components "went" to H&P, the authors sold H&P a non-exclusive license to distribute them with 3.9. These licenses automatically expired after 10 years, which means all the rights have gone back to the original authors years ago anyway.
The only parts of 3.9 H&P ever owned were the stuff they wrote inhouse: The new installer, a few prefs programs (IIRC) and documentation.
certainly not "Open Source"
Absolutely. But since (a) the code has already been floating around since the late nineties, and (b) nobody is going to do anything with it for obvious reasons, I don't see the need to argue about it. As long as it is "for the Amiga", people really don't care about proper licensing. Not too much of a surprise IMHO, given that most of us were socialised by crackers and the warez scene...
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Given the delicate situation, this is unlikely, and not even desirable.The Os requires a maintainer, not a bunch of hackers. Unfortunately, it is not exactly going to improve the situation by idling, as it currently happens.
Thomas, I have to disagree with you here. :-) I think the best thing that could have happened to the Amiga is if the OS had been open sourced early on. People could have forked it and then worked on whatever parts they wanted. Those changes then could be ported back into the main tree if deemed valuable.
I would even argue that had this occurred early on the Amiga might be in a better position today as there was far more interest in it years ago. Open sourcing the AmigaOS could have been an engine of change that sparked both software and hardware. There was a lot of interest in the late 90s and early 2000s when it was still considered viable. The Amiga community was the most valuable asset the machine had.
However, open sourcing the code now is just too late. You are not going to draw anyone into the community now just because the OS is now open. I can understand keeping your code locked up if you are doing development but just letting it stagnate for so long seems narcissistic. Sadly, it seems to be a recurring theme in the Amiga's history.
Just my opinion though...
-P
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Thomas, I have to disagree with you here. :-) I think the best thing that could have happened to the Amiga is if the OS had been open sourced early on. People could have forked it and then worked on whatever parts they wanted. Those changes then could be ported back into the main tree if deemed valuable.
I would even argue that had this occurred early on the Amiga might be in a better position today as there was far more interest in it years ago. Open sourcing the AmigaOS could have been an engine of change that sparked both software and hardware. There was a lot of interest in the late 90s and early 2000s when it was still considered viable. The Amiga community was the most valuable asset the machine had.
AROS has been around since the mid-90s. doesn't that sort of deflate the argument a little? AROS is open-source, and as much as i like it, it hasn't exactly set the world on fire. in fact it's still 3rd in popularity in the amiga world behind the other two closed-source options.
However, open sourcing the code now is just too late. You are not going to draw anyone into the community now just because the OS is now open. I can understand keeping your code locked up if you are doing development but just letting it stagnate for so long seems narcissistic. Sadly, it seems to be a recurring theme in the Amiga's history.
it isn't stagnant at all. it has been continually developed -- albeit not at the pace most of us would prefer -- by H&P and hyperion for more than a decade now.
-- eliyahu
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I ask again - with binaries floating around that were built using the leaked sources - why are the legal owners not doing anything? Maybe it is because not even they care anymore.
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Pff... the OS was made by a bunch of hackers and is currently maintained by a bunch of hackers, such as yourself.
LoL, you compare Cosmos as a Hacker with Thomas as a developper :roflmao:
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in fact it's still 3rd in popularity in the amiga world behind the other two closed-source options.
Based on what numbers exactly?
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LoL, you compare Cosmos as a Hacker with Thomas as a developper :roflmao:
I did not mention Cosmos. Thomas has stated many times that he thinks _all_ open source projects are done by a bunch of hackers and not developers. In his view, there is no such thing as open source developers, developers are people who are hired to do closed source projects.
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@kolla
you're right; that's a fair point. i don't have any solid data to confirm that. i guess i assume that based on interest level on the common forums, third-party software development, number of developers, and interest level at the amiga meetings/shows i have attended. so it's just a subjective feeling. for all we know AROS could be massively popular and just have very quiet users.
-- eliyahu
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I have visited friends and colleagues who wanted me over because of issues they had with some game on WinUAE, and it turned out were using the built in AROS kickstart, which works for quite a few games and demos, but certainly not all. Do such people count as AROS users?
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(Careful: there could be legal strings attached to answering this question, so you might consider your options when posting answers here)
Too bad the good answers will be scared off...
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$ grep Commodore boingbag3.9-3\&4/boingbags3\&4.readme
Cloanto. Likewise, the intended/tested Kickstarts are Commodore/Village
BindDrivers 38.2 -> 42.1 Commodore
Clock 40.1 -> 42.1 Commodore
iffparse.library 40.1 -> 42.2 Commodore
Sort 37.3 -> 42.1 Commodore
Wait 37.3 -> 42.1 Commodore
Film24 monitor driver 40.1 Commodore
led.image 42.2 Commodore
MacPaint datatype 42.1 Commodore
narrator.device 37.8 Commodore
PCX datatype 42.1 Commodore
Say 38.5 Commodore
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So wait, by Pat's logic, if you distribute someone's copyrighted source code, you are in infringement, but if you distribute the binaries (compiled or 'translated'), you are okay? I mean the copyright is on the pre-compiled TEXT according to him.
That would pretty much change everything on how software copyright works. Hell if that logic works, people download compressed (translated into computer 1s and 0s) music and movies that should also not be considered copyright infringement, right?
Not a personal attack, just wondering because if there is a translation clause out there, you could actually argue the difference and maybe push for a more sane copyright on the binaries. Afterall, binaries do become useless after so long, while source code could be tweaked and updated to work with newer ssystems.
Not quite what I wrote. Compiling directly on the unlawfully derived, but released to the public domain, is a no-no, if you want to distribute the final article. You wrote (compiled or 'translated').
Translating, then compiling, different matter. Very hard to prove direct copyright infringement. Some USA States courts you could still be in trouble.
One other thing I noticed, Cloanto claimed all IP made by CBM up to 1993. 3.1 was released (and still being developed) in 1994. So I really will have to write those letters and ask the various claimants to put up evidence of a claim to the source, or at least indicate the route of their claim, from CBM to themselves.
So far, seen nothing, I think all parties assumed the source was destroyed already when they reached their current arrangements. Or, possibly, when CBM was first broken up, the solvency people sold the copyright to the code to an unknown individual or agency. I guess I'd have to check with them for that.
(sigh)
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So far, seen nothing, I think all parties assumed the source was destroyed already when they reached their current arrangements.
Huh, I am curious... where have you been since 1994? It has been quite well established knowledge that the sources have been around all the time.
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Thomas has stated many times that he thinks _all_ open source projects are done by a bunch of hackers and not developers.
Ahh, so I missunderstood ! Sorry!
Thanks for clarification !
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Did Microsoft blackmail the original rights owner into handing over the Windows rights for free?
Do you now the business practise of microsoft? I believe they pretty much blackmailed manufacturers of PCs to stop delivering systems with any other operating system, such as Os/2. Like it or not, this is buisiness, and I don't think the word "blackmail" is correct.
The settlement agreement - which details exactly what they got - is publicly available.
Do you have a source available?
None of these components "went" to H&P, the authors sold H&P a non-exclusive license to distribute them with 3.9. These licenses automatically expired after 10 years, which means all the rights have gone back to the original authors years ago anyway.
Sorry, but contracts were individually negotiated. You certainly do not know my contract, and the contracts were pretty convoluted. As far as completely independent components are concerned, i.e. third party contributions - you are likely correct, except for the time span. For my contributions, the time span is two years. For system component upgrades, however, the situation is much more complicated because you cannot separate the upgrade from the original component, even though the contract tried to do that in some convoluted sense I do not remember exactly. Thus, in particular, *I do not own* the Amiga Shell even though I made contributions to it for 3.9. I neither *own* layers.library.
The only parts of 3.9 H&P ever owned were the stuff they wrote inhouse: The new installer, a few prefs programs (IIRC) and documentation.
That might not be totally correct. As said above, you certainly do not know my contract.
As long as it is "for the Amiga", people really don't care about proper licensing. Not too much of a surprise IMHO, given that most of us were socialised by crackers and the warez scene...
The problem is: You do need to care if you want to make it available public in any particular way. And no, I was never part of "warez" or "kool koderz" in any way.
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IThomas has stated many times that he thinks _all_ open source projects are done by a bunch of hackers and not developers. In his view, there is no such thing as open source developers, developers are people who are hired to do closed source projects.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying exactly what I said above: "AmigaOs needs a maintainer, not a bunch of hackers". And that's exactly going to happen if you open source it.
Look at Linux: It's a nice operating system for developers. It's a poor operating system for end users. The average open source guy develops for his particular needs, and not for the need of the user - which means that anything that is of utter importance for creating a working software infrastructure is ignored: Stability of software interfaces.
The GNU/Linux system - and I do not talk about the kernel interface in particular - changes on a daily basis. If you get a binary from yesterday, you do not know whether it will continue to run today because somebody surely played with the interface of some system library somewhere.
This is not acceptable for an end user product - breaking legacy software isn not an option, and even less so in the Amiga environment which only has legacy software.
Examples? Ok, here are two: Years ago, there was a nice XMMS plugin to play Amiga "chip" tunes through an UAE interface layer. XMMS changed the plugin interface when porting to Audacity for no apparent reason, and the player broke. I took great effort to port it to the "new and improved" Audacity interface then - for my own needs - just to find out that the open source "hackerz" changed the interface *right again*. Why? There was no reason to - it worked the way it was.
Examples? Just got a new SCSI2SD hardware here, with some linux software to install it. System is a pretty stable ("rotten"?) Debian system. Does the software work out of the box? Of course not! It misses "libudev.0", except that Debian runs (since ages) libudev.1, the next version, with a different interface. Why was that breakage necessary? Was it really necessary to create "just another incompatible" interface for udev?
If open source coders had some discipline in keeping their software interfaces stable, linux could be a much better system - but that is not the development goal of open source. The customer is not the user. The customer is the coder.
Now, consider what that means for the Amiga "market"? It means - already - a lot of frustration due to a lot of incompatible software floating around, and a software infrastructure that consists entirely on legacy software.
This sounds like a plan for utter failure for me. If you want open source, nothing beats Linux. I'm using it myself, works for me. But that's a different market with different goals, and that should not be confused with the Amiga ecosystem, which is something entirely different. I *cannot go along* and change the interface of "layers" just for the fun of it, and break old code. It's a big no-no.
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Nice rant about how much distaste you have for Linux, now provide examples of how brilliant closed source products are :)
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Just got a new SCSI2SD hardware here, with some linux software to install it.
Why would this need "special software" btw?
System is a pretty stable ("rotten"?) Debian system. Does the software work out of the box? Of course not! It misses "libudev.0", except that Debian runs (since ages) libudev.1, the next version, with a different interface. Why was that breakage necessary? Was it really necessary to create "just another incompatible" interface for udev?
Yes, udev is part of systemd, you just entered dragon territory.
If open source coders had some discipline in keeping their software interfaces stable, linux could be a much better system - but that is not the development goal of open source.
Wrong, it has _nothing_ to do with open source, it's just not the goal of certain popular Linux distributions.
It sounds me to that you would be much more at home running NetBSD, for example.
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Huh, I am curious... where have you been since 1994? It has been quite well established knowledge that the sources have been around all the time.
Excellent. By whom? Who has claimed that? Where were the sources available from? How long have they been available for?
AFAIK this code was leaked just a year ago. Now you say it was always around. Where from? Who from?
Or was it just passed around the Dark net as a piece of exotic techno contraband? That seems to be what you are talking about, maybe. I doubt it, it would have surfaced a lot, lot earlier if that was the case.
You want 22 years of my personal history? Google is your friend, they say.
EDIT:
The official settlement, which was reached out of court, and rubber stamped by the court in Washington, is here. It seems to make no reference to the fact that AmigaDOS is itself based on a sublicense from Metacomco... which everybody seems to have conveniently forgotten.
https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/148/1.pdf?ts=1261252743
Anyway, I'll study it further. Metacomco were British. Y'all thought everyting Amiga were totally developed in the States? Not quite true. Dr Tim King certainly not. I never met him, but I did get to study some of his 6502 code on a completely unrelated project, legitimately).
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Nice rant about how much distaste you have for Linux, now provide examples of how brilliant closed source products are :)
Installed SCSI2SD on Windows 7. Worked out of the box. No need to fiddle with old libraries. No, I do not use windows on a daily basis, leave alone the spyware windows 10 which we are not even allowed to use in our office due to privacy concerns . But, dislike microsoft as much as you like: Their stuff *works*, and they care about compatibility.
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You may remember that just about a year ago a file "amiga os source code 3.1.tar.bz2" popped up on a web site, was linked to, copied, and the contents even wound up on GitHub for a couple of days. This event was widely publicized, on Twitter, on personal blogs, and it even made the news.
That file would contain pretty much all the AmigaOS 3.1 source code, and plenty of other material which used to be available to Commodore developers back in 1994. It's safe to say that the contents of the archive are now very widely distributed, just not necessarily available to the general public.
Back then there was speculation as to who made the data available, where the data came from, and which consequences the availability would have.
It's been a year now, and I'm curious. What did the availability of the source code make possible?
(Careful: there could be legal strings attached to answering this question, so you might consider your options when posting answers here)
If you have to ask that question, then there have been no consequences.
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Why would this need "special software" btw?
To setup the parameters, for example the SCSI ID by which the device is seen.
Yes, udev is part of systemd, you just entered dragon territory.
Yes. Amongst the other "dragon territories", as such as "which init system do I use today", "which X11 replacement system do you prefer" and "how do I configure my printer with cups".
Wrong, it has _nothing_ to do with open source, it's just not the goal of certain popular Linux distributions.
One comes with the other, and that is the problem you do not (yet?) understand. It is the motivation of the developers. Of course, as an open source developer, I want my code to be nice, clean, orthogonal, and - sorry - I need to change an interface today for that because I did a bobo in first place, %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@! happens. Oh, sorry for the user, just reinstall...
As a paid developer, my motivaton is my pay-check, and this comes from the customer. If the product doesn't work, I'm fired. Full stop. Means, "bad code runs the industry", and AmigaOs is certainly that (to major parts): Bad code. However, it's bad code that works. If you leave this bad code to open source, you might get good code in the end, but no compatibility. BPTRs, BSTRs? Away with this nonsense. Legacy GlobVec initialization in dos.library? Away with this crap. graphics.library workarounds for bad programs? Sorry for them, away with the junk...
All nice and correct from a software engineering perspective, but still a bad decision from the user perspective.
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If you leave this bad code to open source, you might get good code in the end, but no compatibility. BPTRs, BSTRs? Away with this nonsense. Legacy GlobVec initialization in dos.library? Away with this crap. graphics.library workarounds for bad programs? Sorry for them, away with the junk...
Implementation and interfaces are two different things. So BPTR/BSTR/GlobalVev should always be part of an open source amigaos, no matter what language it ultimately ended up in. Bonus points if you can pursuade a c++ compiler to create 100% compatible libraries using a simple class and convert BPTR & BSTR to real pointers.
workrounds are always a problem as they are necessary because one thing assumes something about another thing that was never guaranteed. There are workrounds for hardware bugs, which might need changing when you make an unrelated change for example. For that you need to do decent testing, whether it's open source or not won't make a difference to that.
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I ask again - with binaries floating around that were built using the leaked sources - why are the legal owners not doing anything?
Read the settlement. That just states Amiga Group have the right to enforce copyright.
Whether they choose to do so, or are able to do, is a different question. And whether their claim to do is legitimate technically hasn't been tested in a court (yet). That would be the "bottom line", I guess.
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Why would this need "special software" btw?
I was going to ask the same thing, I very rarely see any drivers on a CD for hardware, since almost all of it is handled and is in the kernel.
Yes, udev is part of systemd, you just entered dragon territory.
As you pointed out, why any special software? Copy the udev rules over and you're good to go. Why would this depend on a specific version of libudev? And even if it did, they actually DO use backward compatibility.
Wrong, it has _nothing_ to do with open source, it's just not the goal of certain popular Linux distributions.
It sounds me to that you would be much more at home running NetBSD, for example.
Yeah, not sure what the beef with Linux is that he has. A while ago I bought Heavy Gear 2 for Linux. Guess what? Even though it came out in 2000, it still works on my Debian Sid desktop. That's 16 years ago, for a very much proprietary game. This "Linux changes all the time!" is a mantra that Microsoft and the BSD guys have thrown out there to try to discredit Linux.
Granted, as you said, systemd is a whole different beast. It's still pretty heavy in development, but the api level stuff is all pretty solid, otherwise RedHat wouldn't have put it into RHEL7.
Back on topic; If AmigaOS went open source, even now, it'd help all of the AmigaNG projects, not to mention just improvements all around. Would be nice to get updated kickstarts as well so we wouldn't have to use reboots to get it patched up to newer standards.
Even if no one was interested in hacking on it, it'd be good to be able to look through the code for academic reasons. Personally I like looking at how operating systems are designed and how they're used, so from that perspective having source available is fantastic.
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Back on topic; If AmigaOS went open source, even now, it'd help all of the AmigaNG projects, not to mention just improvements all around. Would be nice to get updated kickstarts as well so we wouldn't have to use reboots to get it patched up to newer standards.
it wouldn't help hyperion since they already have the source; i don't know how it would help AROS or MOS -- and besides, if it's "available" as some posters suggest, then they already have access to it.
if you want updated kickstarts, again, check out the AROS project. open-source, compatible, and under continuous development. everything the crowd who keeps asking for OS3 to open-sourced wants. except the name and the history. and if that's what you want rather than 'open source,' upgrade to AOS4.
-- eliyahu
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I think the sole problem of the AROS kickstarter project is that it's still a reimplementation of the 3.1 API, as the rest of AROS.
You're right about Hyperion not needing it, since they already have it. I figure the AROS kickstart is much like EmuTOS for the Atari's. Open source, but they're still reimplementing things that they wouldn't have to spend as much time on if TOS/GEM had gone fully open source. EmuTOS doesn't have full compatibility with the hardware banging software out there, and neither does AROS' kickstart. That's neither here nor there though, since AROS I believe is a recreation of 3.1, whereas we already have 3.9+BB1-BB4 that updates all of this.
I really should get an burner and try out the AROS kickstart on my A4000D to see how well it works, I've only used it under UAE, but then again I should do the same with EmuTOS.
But (with the exception of Thomas of course ;) ) we have lots of 'hackers' that could/would probably do something amazing with the source if it were actually opened.
But knowing what I do about various licensing, it's almost impossible to do that. For example, even if Linus wanted to shift Linux to GPLv3, he probably couldn't because of the clause where if you want to re-license code, you have to have the okay by the developer. Some of the coders have surely passed on from AmigaOS, so getting things relicensed so that people could reuse it without someone bitching up a storm (whomever that someone is).
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Wrong, it has _nothing_ to do with open source, it's just not the goal of certain popular Linux distributions.
And the need some people have to "upgrade". If you've got a working system that does everything you want, why would you want to upgrade and potentially break things. Just to whinge about how bad open-source is?
This is universal, it applies to open-source and closed-source environments.
It's why people have old DOS boxes still hanging around, or Amiga's controlling heating systems, or C64s controlling machine tools..
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And the need some people have to "upgrade". If you've got a working system that does everything you want, why would you want to upgrade and potentially break things.
Because then somebody else will break the machine for you. Seriously, if you connect a system to the internet today, and you do not keep the system up to date, then you're soon running into trouble.
Just to whinge about how bad open-source is?
It's not about "good or bad", it's about "what is the goal of the development". Open source makes the developer happy. If you are the developer, then that's good for you. If you just need a system to be productive in some other way, it's not good for you.
This is universal, it applies to open-source and closed-source environments.
Actually, the way how the problem is handled is different. M$ spends great effort to write software wrappers around software wrappers to keep legacy software working. This is, from an engineering perspective, not very satisfactory, it makes the system slower than necessary, and more bulky than necessary. For MS, it is important that the system is sold. This type of motivation does not exist in the open source world. The motivation is the "satisfying arcihtecture". Which means that drivers and programs have to be ported and ported over again, from version after version, to adapt to a changing infrastructure. Which is, from an engineering perspective, probably satisfactory, but it leaves users alone with anoying compatibility problems.
With such simple problems I just observed (probably expectedly) with the SCSI2SD installation software. You cannot take a piece of binary executable and expect it to run on your average Linux box. There will always be some form of compatibility issue between some library somewhere. Linux means: The only way how you get software working on Linux is either take it from your Linux distribution, or port it and compile it yourself. With windows, I install the binary and it works.
That's again the experience over and over again - which of the two models is more satisfactory *for you* is then of course another question. If I just want to solve a single problem ("get my SCSISD working"), the windows solution is quicker.
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AROS I believe is a recreation of 3.1, whereas we already have 3.9+BB1-BB4 that updates all of this.
Exactly. I don't know why AROS is considered to be a "NG" AmigaOS when it is just a clone of OS3.1. OS3.5 and OS3.9 have been out for about 17 years now. Still waiting for them to be supported by AROS.
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Exactly. I don't know why AROS is considered to be a "NG" AmigaOS when it is just a clone of OS3.1. OS3.5 and OS3.9 have been out for about 17 years now. Still waiting for them to be supported by AROS.
Just my opinion, but... I can see no advantage in moving up. I mean, I want to run Amiga software. That means, something written for a machine with a 3.1 ROM. Or earlier.
How many full size applications are there specifically for 3.5 or later? Erm... not enough. ;)
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Because then somebody else will break the machine for you. Seriously, if you connect a system to the internet today, and you do not keep the system up to date, then you're soon running into trouble.
Not every machine necessarily needs to be connected to the internet :-)
That's again the experience over and over again - which of the two models is more satisfactory *for you* is then of course another question.
Of course, and in my experience I've seen the most computer-illiterate people use Linux on a daily basis without any of the hassles you're describing. Upgrades and all that mess as well. These people are nowhere remotely close to what anyone would describe as a "developer".
If I really wanted to mess with them, I'd give them an AmigaOS 3.1 machine ;-)
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Not every machine necessarily needs to be connected to the internet :-)
Of course, and in my experience I've seen the most computer-illiterate people use Linux on a daily basis without any of the hassles you're describing. Upgrades and all that mess as well. These people are nowhere remotely close to what anyone would describe as a "developer".
If I really wanted to mess with them, I'd give them an AmigaOS 3.1 machine ;-)
You aren't kidding, even AmigaOS 3.9 has a ton of patches for it.
Granted, it DOES make things much simpler to have a machine connected to either the Internet or networking in general. I use an NFS mount for my Falcon to copy things I've gotten off the net over to it, since I still haven't set up a web browser on it. It's either that or direct FTP which I also use. It is much easier than trying to convert everything over to an .hfe and then install it that way (do that too, but it's annoying).
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Do you now the business practise of microsoft?
I certainly do, and I'm sure they didn't blackmail the original Windows owner into handing over the rights for free. Hence, it's not fair to compare them to Hyperion in this regard.
Not much to discuss here, AFAICT - I was just asking a rhetorical question.
Do you have a source available?
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking - do you want to know where you can find the settlement agreement? A German summary is here:
http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2009-12-00036-DE.html
the actual agreement can be found here:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/147/1.html
Just in case you're wondering what Amiga got out of this deal: according to my sources, this is indeed the only (still) valid agreement between "Amiga group" and Hyperion.
For my contributions, the time span is two years. For system component upgrades, however, the situation is much more complicated because you cannot separate the upgrade from the original component, even though the contract tried to do that in some convoluted sense I do not remember exactly.
You're right on the time span - I mixed that up. Ten years was the lifetime of the license from AInc, IIRC.
As for the rest - it's not complicated at all. You own your code, AInc owned their code. H&P owned neither part, they only had non-exclusive licenses. If your contract said anything else, you either f?cked up or you got paid a lot better than the people I talked to.
Most people could easily relicense their work to Hyperion a decade ago, that should give you an idea about how 'complicated' that whole situation is.
Thus, in particular, *I do not own* the Amiga Shell even though I made contributions to it for 3.9. I neither *own* layers.library.
Nobody ever claimed you did.
The problem is: You do need to care if you want to make it available public in any particular way.
There are people who don't care (you know one of them from discussions on this very forum), they'll release anyway - and 99,9% of the users won't notice. Again: I agree it's not ideal, but I don't think it's a big deal.
And no, I was never part of "warez" or "kool koderz" in any way.
Hence my use of "most of us".
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So we are all hackers, users/developers... that all kind of blurs after a few decades.
Decades???? Iggy, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you Yoda's age? I seem to remember you talking about hacking away on your first computer, the abacus. :roflmao::laughing:
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Print off the 3.1 source code into a physical document. Give it a title, and call it literature.
Then send it to China and have the title translated into Mandarin, get them to code it again. Then it will be free to distribute because nobody cares.
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Print off the 3.1 source code into a physical document. Give it a title, and call it literature.
Then send it to China and have the title translated into Mandarin, get them to code it again.
The Chinese have a compiler for turning pure Mandarin into executable computer code?
Wow! That's some technology! :roflmao:
It's also kind of ironic, because the Chinese got quite a few technology breaks in the late 70s - from the British.
Apparently Mrs T sent over a team of volunteer IT academics to give them some boosters on chip manufacturing and similar "high tech" processes, as part of the Hong Kong settlement negotiations. They didn't arrive in one block - it was a trickle.
I met one of them a couple of years back. He was looking for somewhere to store or operate two container loads of manufacturing robots that he'd acquired in the decades he was there. The Chinese were no longer interested in such retro, backwards technology, as their own designs were far superior.
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What the title of a literary work? Perhaps have another read of what I wrote. Maybe I need to translate it for you.
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I've said this many, many times....
AROS is OS3.1 compatible. This doesn't mean "restricted to".
Exactly the same as MOS or OS4. It has its own advantages and disadvantages vs the other "NG" options, much as the reverse is true.
Some people know this and just like to repeat it like some sort of weird mantra, others simply aren't aware of this.
You all know which group you fall into.
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What the title of a literary work? Perhaps have another read of what I wrote. Maybe I need to translate it for you.
Maybe your English teacher should have told you, that when using the word "it", the convention is that it refers to the last noun OR the first usage of the word "it" in a sentence. The first "it" in that sentence was referring to a noun you had used earlier, "source code".
Or maybe they did tell you, and you ignored them,
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@Olsen
Is there any correlation between the leaked sources and the new 68k kickstart and wb updates?
Kamelito
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please remove double post due too poor connection in the train.
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Print off the 3.1 source code into a physical document. Give it a title, and call it literature.
Then send it to China and have the title translated into Mandarin, get them to code it again. Then it will be free to distribute because nobody cares.
I'll take the gertsy challenge and give it a title. Prince John.... 3.1 is a bit of a traitor. "It" betrays its early kin yet rules its serfs.
Per your instructions I have translated the title to Mandarin - well almost Mandarin... there's no Mandarin language to translate to in Google translate so here it is in traditional Chinese. http://www.google.com/url?q=https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%25E7%25BA%25A6%25E7%25BF%25B0%25E7%258E%258B%25E5%25AD%2590&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjYpsiV_KfRAhUr0YMKHVaJCdkQFggUMAA&usg=AFQjCNHkRTudFdhj9U42JRYVU2fm9u8fEA
LOL.... This post is "open source" and I grant full use to the public. However any changes to this post must segway to subsequent posts. :razz:
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I've said this many, many times....
AROS is OS3.1 compatible. This doesn't mean "restricted to".
Exactly the same as MOS or OS4. It has its own advantages and disadvantages vs the other "NG" options, much as the reverse is true.
Some people know this and just like to repeat it like some sort of weird mantra, others simply aren't aware of this.
You all know which group you fall into.
My point was that if the sources had been available much sooner as open source, AROS could have been spending that time on the 'not restricted to' part of development instead of reverse engineering. AROS making AmigaOS multi-platform has taken a very long time. I would absolutely love to be able to buy AROS ROMs and replace kickstart and have a modern version of AmigaOS running on my A4000D, but I don't think it's possible currently, since it would most likely break some compatibility.
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Oh, absolutely. And I agree there.
I had no qualm with your post at all.
A certain other person however has been spewing the same old crap for years.
It gets tiring given he knows what the story is and does it still for some bizarre reason.
He seems to think (or at least pretends to so he can troll and antagonize) a lack of Reaction in some AROS archs means AROS is 3.1 compatible only with no other ambitions. This is despite the fact he's been told many times that reaction and class act work on 68k AROS, and there's an openreaction that has had little interest shown due to a lack of interest in Reaction apps (and because there's next to nothing that uses reaction that inspires it to be worked on).
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... I would absolutely love to be able to buy AROS ROMs and replace kickstart and have a modern version of AmigaOS running on my A4000D, but I don't think it's possible currently, since it would most likely break some compatibility.
Hmmm... apparently, you can actually take .device files from a further release (designed for the same processor and similar hardware, mind you) and run it on an earlier system.
Not guaranteed, but it does generally work. You want big drive partitions (non boot) on 3.1?
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71766&page=2
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Hmmm... apparently, you can actually take .device files from a further release (designed for the same processor and similar hardware, mind you) and run it on an earlier system.
Not guaranteed, but it does generally work. You want big drive partitions (non boot) on 3.1?
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=71766&page=2
@PtC
Would you say you're totally full of sh!t or just partially? :rolleyes:
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@PtC
Would you say you're totally full of sh!t or just partially? :rolleyes:
Any human being that says they have none of that in them is either lying, or a truly gifted newborn baby.
SO, are you partially full of it? And if you say no and you ain't lying, I've been trying to get hardware working for the past 45 years or so. That's a lot more experience than a truly gifted newborn baby has.
When did you start? And have you actually tried using .device drivers from a release further than the one you have?
Of couse, you are free to ignore my questions. Ignorant people often use such a method. To ignore is to be ignorant.
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Oh, I was well aware of being able to do that, my point was I would rather run an open source operating system that can continually be supported by a community over copying out updated libraries/device files that may or may not get continued support.
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Oh, I was well aware of being able to do that, my point was I would rather run an open source operating system that can continually be supported by a community over copying out updated libraries/device files that may or may not get continued support.
So do I. It's called Linux. The reason I'm interested still in the Amiga is because I've got some old code to throw in the melting point that might just help people if they want to try VJing.
AmigaDOS isn't open source, which is a voluntary sharing by the originator. Anyway, I was talking about using NEWer .device files on older systems. Not older .device files on NEWer systems.
The only way I know of to get GUARANTEED CONTINUED SUPPORT - is to wear a sports bra. Forget it for technology, it's a myth.
Bad move on not admitting you were at least PARTIALLY full of the brown stuff. Unless you are an AI. Met a few of them online.
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@fishy_fiz:
I merely pointed out a shortcoming of AROS x86, and you have responded with a personal attack for some reason. It is a fact and not "spewing crap" that it does not have proper 3.9 support, you can read the same thing on the official pages. No need to get angry and start trolling just because I don't think it is very useful in its current form; surely I have the right to an opinion without being vilified by yourself and/or other AROS zealots.
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I'll take the gertsy challenge and give it a title. Prince John.... 3.1 is a bit of a traitor. "It" betrays its early kin yet rules its serfs.
Per your instructions I have translated the title to Mandarin - well almost Mandarin... there's no Mandarin language to translate to in Google translate so here it is in traditional Chinese. http://www.google.com/url?q=https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hant/%25E7%25BA%25A6%25E7%25BF%25B0%25E7%258E%258B%25E5%25AD%2590&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjYpsiV_KfRAhUr0YMKHVaJCdkQFggUMAA&usg=AFQjCNHkRTudFdhj9U42JRYVU2fm9u8fEA
LOL.... This post is "open source" and I grant full use to the public. However any changes to this post must segway to subsequent posts. :razz:
I like it gizmo.
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Maybe your English teacher should have told you, that when using the word "it", the convention is that it refers to the last noun OR the first usage of the word "it" in a sentence. The first "it" in that sentence was referring to a noun you had used earlier, "source code".
Or maybe they did tell you, and you ignored them,
How anyone could confuse "Translate the title" with anything but.... Whoops just got my own answer, move along.
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As a result we now have updated C:Sort and C:Wait programs in the "BB3+4", plus some other neatness (trackdisk.device 40.2?) right out of the "box". Especially the Wait update was useful, one can give a file as argument, and wait will sit there till the file shows up. Great! A lot of people have had fun looking at the sources and learning about the inner workings of whatever subsystem they are interested in - I could list names here, but I prefer they rather do it themselves (some have been quite open about on the Amiga Facebook groups), a lot of code has been improved because of this knowledge.
This sounds just like the positive outcome I thought might happen :)
Given how large that source code archive is, I expected that any change would happen at the edges: drivers, shell commands, etc.
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Why? Copyright rests with the copyright holder until 70 years (probably longer) after expiration of the copyright holder.
It becomes Open Source 70 years after CBM filed for Chapter 11.
Hm... I think the expiration time for work created in this context is significantly longer.
As a single author (e.g. somebody such as H.P. Lovecraft, whose descendants and/or legal representatives did not renew the copyright for his works after his death), your work (currently) becomes part of the public domain some 70 years after your death.
For material created as work for hire, for a corporation (say, The Walt Disney Company), I recall that the expiration date was 112 years after it was created.
In any case, it is going to be a long time for this to happen. And even if it does, it may not have much of an impact any more. For example, the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel quickly lapsed into obscurity after they died, to be rediscovered and recognized some 100-150 years later.
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So we are all hackers, users/developers... that all kind of blurs after a few decades.
It should.
As a hacker, the point of doing the work is often enough to "scratch an itch". The work starts small, with a specific focus. As time passes, the work grows and you can conveniently carry its design and application around in your head as it evolves.
More time passes, and looking back you may suddenly realize that you crossed a threshold at some point: instead of the "hack" you began with, you now have a system with numerous interdependencies.
That change implies a profound transformation of the work: you've left "hacker space" and entered "management space". One tends to be more fun than the other. Keeping a system in shape and operational means that you've joined the fire brigade whereas before you might have been a firebrand ;)
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LMAO we are sooo scared.
For some people it's a risk to be talking about the matter. I added the note so that you can make up your mind whether or not it's worth taking a risk in the first place.
Looks you already took that advice to heart - at least it got a laugh :)
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If you have to ask that question, then there have been no consequences.
Either that, or they happened in places where you can't easily observe them. That's why I am curious: the current 68k Amiga operating system being what it is, resolving the small and big annoyances might have been enabled by the source code becoming available.
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@Olsen
Is there any correlation between the leaked sources and the new 68k kickstart and wb updates?
Kamelito
No. The only relationship there is is in that both are based on the same operating system source code, last modified in May 1994.
The recent Kickstart/Workbench 3.1 changes use the unified native build which is the foundation for the AmigaOS 4 work. I dragged my 3.1 build out of storage in 2016 and converted it (again) from CVS format, to be usable with subversion instead.
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Not sure what the Big Deal is about OS 3.1 anyway.
Lets face it, A BARE BONES OS 3.1 install is not even a skeleton for a usable operating system.
Anyone who installs OS 3.1 likely has numerous patches, utilities, libraries, datatypes, 3rd part audio and graphics routines, menu systems, docks, icons systems, task schedulers, requestors filesystems just to be usable.
The end result is unrecognisable from the original OS both visibly and functionally
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Just my opinion, but... I can see no advantage in moving up. I mean, I want to run Amiga software. That means, something written for a machine with a 3.1 ROM. Or earlier.
How many full size applications are there specifically for 3.5 or later? Erm... not enough. ;)
Depends. For me as a user with a nice and streamlined AmigaOS 3.9 setup it would be a step backwards. At least when it comes to "real Amigas" or UAE. So no AROS for me.
If you only want to play games - ok. But stuff like an AREXX aware Workbench was one of the OS3.5/3.9 "killer features". And many more little things that made live easier (for me!). Being AmigaOS-3.1-API-compatible could have been 2.1 or 1.3 compatible. I have no use for that. But maybe it's only me...
Fun fact: There are indeed (68k) applications were developed at 3.5 or 3.9 times that run perfectly with my 4.1 setups (Petunia) but won't do so with a 3.1 setup. Of course.
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Fun fact: There are indeed (68k) applications were developed at 3.5 or 3.9 times that run perfectly with my 4.1 setups (Petunia) but won't do so with a 3.1 setup. Of course.
There are a lot of them.....
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I would love to invite ThoR to fix my mom's ASUS laptop. It got upgraded to Windows 10 and the built in web camera now insists to record upside-down, much to my mom's (and her friends') frustration when she is on Skype. I went through a large handful of drivers from both Microsoft, ASUS and camera vendor, but only the ancient Microsoft drivers from 2006 (!), that Windows 10 by default insisted on, were able to produce a picture at all. The controllers in the drivers that typically would allow you to set various properties, are mostly all "grayed out", with a few exceptions. Among the grayed out options are those for rotation. So... woop woop for compatible closed source drivers from Microsoft.
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Read the settlement. That just states Amiga Group have the right to enforce copyright.
Whether they choose to do so, or are able to do, is a different question. And whether their claim to do is legitimate technically hasn't been tested in a court (yet). That would be the "bottom line", I guess.
So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download, and for which the ownership is unclear, and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?
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I would love to invite ThoR to fix my mom's ASUS laptop.
Got warranty on it? If so, return it and get it fixed, that's what warranty is good for. If not so, pay for a working software. Quite simple.
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To setup the parameters, for example the SCSI ID by which the device is seen.
I see, well, it is a good thing that this software too is open source - is it not?
In fact the entire SCSI2SD is open source - what _are_ you doing?!
Yes. Amongst the other "dragon territories", as such as "which init system do I use today", "which X11 replacement system do you prefer" and "how do I configure my printer with cups".
I have used openrc for the last 15 years and have no plans on switching.
Bonus feature is that openrc is now also standard on TrueOS.
I do not replace X11, I use Xorg, how long as Xorg been around?
I don't configure cups, I don't even have it installed.
I just tell the software that wants to print, to use a network printer.
Anyhow, cups, though open source, is mainly maintained by Apple developers.
One comes with the other, and that is the problem you do not (yet?) understand.
Excuse me? It is perfectly possible to build entire open source operating systems without having to touch anything Linux. That you prefer Linux as your platform for development is _your_ choice. And it is funny that you are so unhappy about your own choices.
As a paid developer, my motivaton is my pay-check, and this comes from the customer. If the product doesn't work, I'm fired. Full stop.
Many people have been fired because of their crappy code in open source projects as well - just ask Intel.
Means, "bad code runs the industry", and AmigaOs is certainly that (to major parts): Bad code. However, it's bad code that works. If you leave this bad code to open source, you might get good code in the end, but no compatibility. BPTRs, BSTRs? Away with this nonsense. Legacy GlobVec initialization in dos.library? Away with this crap. graphics.library workarounds for bad programs? Sorry for them, away with the junk...
All nice and correct from a software engineering perspective, but still a bad decision from the user perspective.
If you search, you can probably find post by me on USENET from 20+ years ago where I argue for breaking compatibility in favour of progress of the OS. And I am a user. It's not like super-duper compatible 3.1 would disappear, it would always be around for those who need it. And it could be sandboxed it various ways, for example I have a clean 3.1 that I launch with WHDLoad to run certain software.
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Got warranty on it? If so, return it and get it fixed, that's what warranty is good for. If not so, pay for a working software. Quite simple.
I am quite willing to pay. Who do I pay? Can I pay you to fix it?
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That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying exactly what I said above: "AmigaOs needs a maintainer, not a bunch of hackers". And that's exactly going to happen if you open source it.
Look at Linux: It's a nice operating system for developers. It's a poor operating system for end users. The average open source guy develops for his particular needs, and not for the need of the user - which means that anything that is of utter importance for creating a working software infrastructure is ignored: Stability of software interfaces.
Open source projects may start out as a simple hacker tool but as they become bigger/more popular they tend to fall into standard code practices (many of which were developed out of open source projects). For example myself , as an end user of Linux and/or KDE have submitted requests and saw those implemented. On the other hand myself as an end user of a certain closed source OS have paid $200 to open an incident to make a request only to have it denied. So I've found that Open source and Linux works better for end users myself.
The GNU/Linux system - and I do not talk about the kernel interface in particular - changes on a daily basis. If you get a binary from yesterday, you do not know whether it will continue to run today because somebody surely played with the interface of some system library somewhere.
This is not acceptable for an end user product - breaking legacy software isn not an option, and even less so in the Amiga environment which only has legacy software.
Yes the code changes but if your an end user and not a developer your not pulling the daily code changes, your running the stable versions so these changes don't affect you unless you intentionally upgrade portions of the software your running and you should be reading the change logs to see what changes first.
Examples? Ok, here are two: Years ago, there was a nice XMMS plugin to play Amiga "chip" tunes through an UAE interface layer. XMMS changed the plugin interface when porting to Audacity for no apparent reason, and the player broke. I took great effort to port it to the "new and improved" Audacity interface then - for my own needs - just to find out that the open source "hackerz" changed the interface *right again*. Why? There was no reason to - it worked the way it was.
Examples? Just got a new SCSI2SD hardware here, with some linux software to install it. System is a pretty stable ("rotten"?) Debian system. Does the software work out of the box? Of course not! It misses "libudev.0", except that Debian runs (since ages) libudev.1, the next version, with a different interface. Why was that breakage necessary? Was it really necessary to create "just another incompatible" interface for udev?
If open source coders had some discipline in keeping their software interfaces stable, linux could be a much better system - but that is not the development goal of open source. The customer is not the user. The customer is the coder.
Now, consider what that means for the Amiga "market"? It means - already - a lot of frustration due to a lot of incompatible software floating around, and a software infrastructure that consists entirely on legacy software.
This sounds like a plan for utter failure for me. If you want open source, nothing beats Linux. I'm using it myself, works for me. But that's a different market with different goals, and that should not be confused with the Amiga ecosystem, which is something entirely different. I *cannot go along* and change the interface of "layers" just for the fun of it, and break old code. It's a big no-no.
How many examples of the same issues happening to close source software do you want, I can provide just as many as this issue is not specific to Open Source, this issues happens with any software.
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Would be cool to see ThoR switch to DragonFlyBSD, with its "Amiga connection" and all :)
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So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download
Stolen code.
and for which the ownership is unclear
Ownership of that code is clearly defined.
and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?
The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.
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I am quite willing to pay. Who do I pay? Can I pay you to fix it?
How should I know? Ask ASUS, it's their product, after all. If you installed an operating system the system was not designed for, then that's certainly not ASUS' problem and they will tell you. The product probably worked when it arrived at your Mum's home. Did the system come with Windows 10? Probably not. So if you install something on the machine ASUS doesn't give you a warranty for, that's then entirely your problem.
No, I'm not running a windows repair shop, I'm not interested in this work.
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The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.
Really - but they have chosen to avoid the problem by not looking? As I (and others) have pointed out numerous times - the BoingBag3+4 contains binaries built from the "stolen code".
Take action, whoever you are!
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No, I'm not running a windows repair shop, I'm not interested in this work.
So what _do_ you do for a living?
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I see, well, it is a good thing that this software too is open source - is it not?
For *me*, probably, but not for the average user. You cannot expect the average user to compile a program just to get something working.
In fact the entire SCSI2SD is open source - what _are_ you doing?!
Downloaded the binaries from the repository, tried to run them. As simple as that. Did not work. As usual, if you want to run binaries on Linux.
I do not replace X11, I use Xorg, how long as Xorg been around?
Yes, but a couple of distributions did, and more will continue to do.
I don't configure cups, I don't even have it installed.
I just tell the software that wants to print, to use a network printer.
But I have a printer, guess what? I probably want to print from time to time.
Anyhow, cups, though open source, is mainly maintained by Apple developers.
Which means... exactly what? I'm not in the position nor do I have the ability to hack it up. The entire product is way too complicated to the problem it should solve. Overenginered for the average user.
Excuse me? It is perfectly possible to build entire open source operating systems without having to touch anything Linux. That you prefer Linux as your platform for development is _your_ choice. And it is funny that you are so unhappy about your own choices.
I'm not unhappy about my choice. I'm just telling you what the drawbacks of open source are, and that you cannot expect the average user to handle such a system. Open source is for developers. You are a developer, I'm a developer, but my Mum is not. She cannot install a printer with cups - I can. She *probably* could install a printer on windows, but not on Linux.
That's a difference, and that's exactly the difference I want to point out. Amiga used to be a pretty user friendly system. By making it open source, you turn the system inside out. If you want a developer-friendly system, go for AROS, it's more for your needs. I personally do not see AmigaOs in *this* niche because I already have linux if I want to fiddle with open source code.
Many people have been fired because of their crappy code in open source projects as well - just ask Intel.
Well, if intel wants to hire open source developers, that's their choice of course. If they are unhappy about the code quality...
If you search, you can probably find post by me on USENET from 20+ years ago where I argue for breaking compatibility in favour of progress of the OS.
But look, then I do not get your problem. Go AROS, and be fine with it. It's a different system, with different goals, probably goals that are closer to your needs. Why do you wait then for something that is unlikely to happen, and complain about something *you* can change, and that is only your choice?
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Take action, whoever you are!
I don't get that attitude. Several Github repositories and regular downloads have been taken offline after the rights holders (both Cloanto and Hyperion) took action. They do take action, period.
Now you're trying to provoke them into taking down something they apparently haven't noticed yet, potentially hurting the maintainer of the BB3+BB4 projects, and definitely hurting the people interested in these projects. And even if your approach works (nobody takes action so you can shout "told you so, open source, Thomas Richter is a doofus" in a lot of future threads) - it doesn't actually achieve anything: because the code still can not be used legally and thus will only be tampered with by the likes of Cosmos.
Maybe it's just me - but that looks like a massive dick move, doesn't it?
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If you just need a system to be productive in some other way, it's not good for you.
Good that the python using science community ignores this law.
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None.
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How should I know? Ask ASUS, it's their product, after all. If you installed an operating system the system was not designed for, then that's certainly not ASUS' problem and they will tell you. The product probably worked when it arrived at your Mum's home. Did the system come with Windows 10? Probably not. So if you install something on the machine ASUS doesn't give you a warranty for, that's then entirely your problem.
No, I'm not running a windows repair shop, I'm not interested in this work.
Same finger pointing issue I run into I bet. Bought my wife a laptop with windows 8. It got a forced upgrade to 10. Dell says its Microsoft's fault, Microsoft says since it was an OEM windows originally its Dells support issue. Meanwhile wife can't print on legal size or use headphones.
Daughters netbook got forced from window 7 to 10, it takes 28 minutes to boot. I bought her a $200 'refurbished' laptop and put linux on the netbook, took less than 20 minutes to do the whole install.
But users are stuck in the middle, they buy a system, then get a forced (windows) OS "upgrade" and when it doesn't work the OEM points at Microsoft and Microsoft points at the OEM.
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I'm not unhappy about my choice. I'm just telling you what the drawbacks of open source are, and that you cannot expect the average user to handle such a system. Open source is for developers. You are a developer, I'm a developer, but my Mum is not. She cannot install a printer with cups - I can. She *probably* could install a printer on windows, but not on Linux.
The "drawbacks" you list open source are specific to open source, those drawbacks are common to software in general (open or closed source).
Have you tried to install a printer in current versions of windows? Its a lot easier in Linux now a days.
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It got a forced upgrade to 10.
Who forced you? I'm pretty sure I was never forced to upgrade to anything.
Dell says its Microsoft's fault, Microsoft says since it was an OEM windows originally its Dells support issue.
If Microsoft provides an upgrade that doesn't work on your machine, it's Microsoft's fault if the upgrade doesn't work. Unroll the upgrade, and the problem is gone. If Dell claims that this machine supports Windows 10, it's a Dell problem.
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The "drawbacks" you list open source are specific to open source, those drawbacks are common to software in general (open or closed source).
Please check again carefully which point I made. There is certainly a difference. A commercial software vendor makes a living from happy customers, and it's in the interest of the vendor to provide usable and servicable software. Open Source software is driven by the motivation of its developers, whose goals may or may not be identical to those of the users.
That is the difference I want to point out. It means that open source software tends to be much less user friendly, harder to manage, and less compatible to products you buy on the market.
Have you tried to install a printer in current versions of windows? Its a lot easier in Linux now a days.
Insert the CD, click on install. For Linux, I first need to hand-pick a vendor that supports Linux. HP is in general fine, though it requires for new printers not supported by the distribution a binary blob that - typically - does not work out of the box on a given machine, due to incompatible and unstable software interfaces. Been there, done that.
Yes, I got everything working, but it was a hassle.
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Who forced you? I'm pretty sure I was never forced to upgrade to anything.
Microsoft did use some pretty sneaky tactics there, for a bit. For example when they changed the [X] close gadget to an "implied consent" to allow the upgrade to proceed. Even they admit that was a "poor decision" on their part.
Still not the same as "forcing" someone, however.
I don't know, I have very little sympathy for someone who says that their computer runs poorly. Or their car, or the plumbing in their house, or anything else, for that matter. Take the time to understand it and make it better. That's the whole "if you want something done right do it yourself" attitude, lol. :lol:
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Same finger pointing issue I run into I bet. Bought my wife a laptop with windows 8. It got a forced upgrade to 10. Dell says its Microsoft's fault, Microsoft says since it was an OEM windows originally its Dells support issue. Meanwhile wife can't print on legal size or use headphones.
That is the "ease of use" that open-source can't possibly achieve, rotfl.
The die-hard fanatics on either side are completely blinded by their own belief in their One True Way. Thing is, software and hardware is bloody hard to get right when both are static but when one of them keeps changing underneath you the end-user has almost no chance of getting it right.
You've just got to shake your head at those who blame everything on "open-source".
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I don't know, I have very little sympathy for someone who says that their computer runs poorly. Or their car, or the plumbing in their house, or anything else, for that matter. Take the time to understand it and make it better. That's the whole "if you want something done right do it yourself" attitude, lol. :lol:
Amen to that.
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Who forced you? I'm pretty sure I was never forced to upgrade to anything.
If Microsoft provides an upgrade that doesn't work on your machine, it's Microsoft's fault if the upgrade doesn't work. Unroll the upgrade, and the problem is gone. If Dell claims that this machine supports Windows 10, it's a Dell problem.
The forced windows 10 "upgrade" is well known and takes lots of steps to prevent it that are not end user friendly and even 'hackers' have to keep up with the new methods every time Microsoft figured out a way around the other methods of preventing it.
Well unrolling the upgrade now requires me to pop in the CD and spend a couple hours watching windows reinstall then reinstalling all her software. So its not time cost effective to do.
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So... woop woop for compatible closed source drivers from Microsoft.
rotfl, the Win10 upgrade on my mother's ASUS ended up making the audio beep every few minutes. The "official" recommended methods of stopping it was to a) not upgrade to Windows 10, or b) uninstall the drivers for the sound card. Good fun.
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Insert the CD, click on install. For Linux, I first need to hand-pick a vendor that supports Linux. HP is in general fine, though it requires for new printers not supported by the distribution a binary blob that - typically - does not work out of the box on a given machine, due to incompatible and unstable software interfaces. Been there, done that.
Yes, I got everything working, but it was a hassle.
Its windows 10 and an HP laserjet. So inset HP CD, wait for it to install then update itsself from the web and then have her try to print on legal size and it cuts off the print at letter size so we open a case with hp who says reinstall their software.
Or I run linux so I plug HP printer into the network, enter my root password and its done. I then try to print her legal size statements and they print in legal size like they are supposed to.
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So inset HP CD
That's your first mistake. Figure even if you bought something brand new, off the shelf today, that it's been sitting in that box for months and is almost certainly outdated. Never, ever use the CD that comes with a piece of equipment. Always download the latest drivers off the manufacturer's website. Maybe that will help?
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Microsoft did use some pretty sneaky tactics there, for a bit. For example when they changed the [X] close gadget to an "implied consent" to allow the upgrade to proceed. Even they admit that was a "poor decision" on their part.
Still not the same as "forcing" someone, however.
Both systems were running windows 8 and 7 when they went to bed and both had 10 when they woke up, no prompting. And I had did some of the "prevent windows 10" but I hadn't had a chance to see if there were any new methods to prevent the windows 10 upgrade that day.
I don't know, I have very little sympathy for someone who says that their computer runs poorly. Or their car, or the plumbing in their house, or anything else, for that matter. Take the time to understand it and make it better. That's the whole "if you want something done right do it yourself" attitude, lol. :lol:
Thats why I went OS. I can't fix some of windows issues without the source.
I opened a ticket with MS on typeperf.exe. In windows 2000 it was a resource kit tool. It was bundled as part of the OS in server 2003 so it then became officially supported. If you call the cpu % utilization with an * for the CPU/Core # it will sometimes give a - number. I was able to duplicate it and opened a case and MS decided to not fix it instead giving a workaround. So I provided the workaround to the monitoring team and for the next couple years they hated me because every time they put an invalid cpu % utilization ticket in my queue I'd send it right back to them with MS's workaround (which wasn't feasible to implement BTW).
My point is that every 'fault' of open source is in reality a 'fault' with software development in general no matter if the source is opened or closed.
For every open source developer that doesn't value their users input there are just as many that do. Likewise there are close source developers who think they know what the end users needs/wants better than what their users do (Apple/Microsoft).
I seem to recall Commodore developers were often called out for not listening to what their users needed/wanted. But when it comes down to it if you get stuck with a close source package that has unresponsive developers your stuck. If you use an open source package and the developers are unresponsive then you can simply say fork it and make it the way you think it should be. You don't have that option with close source.
I wish they would just OS the code and let us work on it. For now AROS is the next best and when I don't have an application in AROS I need Linux works best. I don't have to check for the daily trick to prevent upgrade with either.
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That's your first mistake. Figure even if you bought something brand new, off the shelf today, that it's been sitting in that box for months and is almost certainly outdated. Never, ever use the CD that comes with a piece of equipment. Always download the latest drivers off the manufacturer's website. Maybe that will help?
replace cd with download software, whatever.
Either way its been uninstalled, reinstalled, etc multiple times and still won't print legal size.
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replace cd with download software, whatever.
Either way its been uninstalled, reinstalled, etc multiple times and still won't print legal size.
Try installing it on a different Windows PC. Isolate if it's an issue with the printer or with the software. My guess then is that it's a stuck setting somewhere. Sometimes they're buried several layers deep.
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Try installing it on a different Windows PC. Isolate if it's an issue with the printer, or with the software. My guess then is that it's a stuck setting somewhere. Sometimes they're buried several layers deep.
Daughters netbook was the only other windows 10 pc. We've managed to keep the rest at 7 which works fine.
Her netbook was useless in 10, took 28 minutes to boot to a login and then was so slow as to not be usable, don't know why they would even try to push it. She had a chromebook and used it until I found another good deal on a 'refurbished' latitude and she uses it now.
Just not worth the time to troubleshoot anymore, I just hand her a Linux laptop when she needs to get work done. Windows it pretty much just a game os anymore.
Mine all have Linux from my current Latitude E6230 down to the Latitude C400.
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So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download, and for which the ownership is unclear, and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?
Such are referred to as leaked documents. Not open source. Just because something is IN the Public Domain does not make it Open Source. Open source has been voluntarily forwarded and made available to the end user for examination. There was no such voluntary disclosure.
As to "what are they doing about it", legal action does include communication of many sorts, and the moderator Eliyahu has received some. Legal action does not start in a court, but it is such places that do reach outcomes of legal action. Eventually.
Now you might call it bogus, or whatever, but it's not your balls on the line, and it's not your .org exclusively on the the line either. I have answered your questions and given input as clearly as I can, trying to be factual and unprejudiced on a whole set of awkward issues. Trying to see both sides of the argument and explore possible alternatives.
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You are a developer,
Actually I am not, I am a system administrator :hammer:
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I don't get that attitude. Several Github repositories and regular downloads have been taken offline after the rights holders (both Cloanto and Hyperion) took action. They do take action, period.
Well, they clearly do not bother typing in "amiga os source code 3.1.tar.bz2" in google very often.
Now you're trying to provoke them into taking down something they apparently haven't noticed yet, potentially hurting the maintainer of the BB3+BB4 projects, and definitely hurting the people interested in these projects.
What are you suggesting?
And even if your approach works (nobody takes action so you can shout "told you so, open source, Thomas Richter is a doofus" in a lot of future threads)
Nah, I am having way too much fun watching Thomas "defend" Windows now. Thomas is not a doofus, he is smart as heck, he just has some very outdated views on how software is made and used.
It doesn't actually achieve anything: because the code still can not be used legally
Are you now callow BB3+4 illegal? Which is it?
and thus will only be tampered with by the likes of Cosmos.
The likes of Cosmos rarely bother with sources, they tamper binaries.
Maybe it's just me - but that looks like a massive dick move, doesn't it?
I am flattered :)
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Such are referred to as leaked documents. Not open source.
But, they are sources, you can compile them and build binaries.
Just because something is IN the Public Domain does not make it Open Source.
In my country, we do not have the concept of "Public Domain", and I very much doubt that the sources we speak of qualifies as Public Domain anyways.
Open source has been voluntarily forwarded and made available to the end user for examination. There was no such voluntary disclosure.
"Open source" has no strict definition, you prefer to look at it as defined by OSI, but they do not own the term, it has been around for much longer. What I have been saying is that when sources are so easily available, they are for all _practical purposes_ open sources - nobody knows who have them, who have seen them, who have used them, and what for, unless they just admit it. Some do so openly, and it has had zero consequences for them so far.
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What I have been saying is that when sources are so easily available, they are for all _practical purposes_ open sources - nobody knows who have them, who have seen them, who have used them, and what for, unless they just admit it. Some do so openly, and it has had zero consequences for them so far.
And again: No. Do you call "publishing a program" or "deriving your own work from them" a "practical purpose?". I do. And no, that's exactly what you *cannot* do. The consequences are that your program will be taken down, by a call to order, and exactly that happened to the sides that hosted the stolen source.
So please, stop the nonsense.
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And again: No. Do you call "publishing a program" or "deriving your own work from them" a "practical purpose?". I do. And no, that's exactly what you *cannot* do. The consequences are that your program will be taken down, by a call to order, and exactly that happened to the sides that hosted the stolen source.
Oh, but taking down stuff would be "a massive dick move" and hurt people, you know.
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I would love to invite ThoR to fix my mom's ASUS laptop. It got upgraded to Windows 10 and the built in web camera now insists to record upside-down, much to my mom's (and her friends') frustration when she is on Skype. I went through a large handful of drivers from both Microsoft, ASUS and camera vendor, but only the ancient Microsoft drivers from 2006 (!), that Windows 10 by default insisted on, were able to produce a picture at all. The controllers in the drivers that typically would allow you to set various properties, are mostly all "grayed out", with a few exceptions. Among the grayed out options are those for rotation. So... woop woop for compatible closed source drivers from Microsoft.
OT:
This was a common issue with Asus built in webcams (i suppose they're mounted upside down and the software flips the image). I worked at a small computer store for a few years whch sold Asus laptops and i saw that problem quite often, just download the correct drivers from Asus to fix it.
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just download the correct drivers from Asus to fix it.
Nope, they did not fix anything, they made the camera not work at all with Windows 10 - not work as in.. no software would find any camera, despite it being there the device list, and according to Windows, working.
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Are you now callow BB3+4 illegal? Which is it?
I'm not "calling" them illegal, they are. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not into redefining reality until it suits my needs either.
This conversation is pointless, obviously.
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I'm not "calling" them illegal, they are. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not into redefining reality until it suits my needs either.
Ah, you do not care about whether something is legal or not, ok.
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Stolen code.
Ownership of that code is clearly defined.
The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.
The 3.1 Amiga OS source code is defacto open source.
The GNU OS source code is dejure open source.
One is legal, one isn't (In some jurisdictions but not all) but they are both open source.
https://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/blog/legal-english-de-factode-jure/
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replace cd with download software, whatever.
Either way its been uninstalled, reinstalled, etc multiple times and still won't print legal size.
My experience with HP printers specifically and printers in general is that if they are supported in CUPS, they WILL work a lot better under Linux than under Windows. Windows has always had a really crap printing system. I mean it's just absolutely terrible.
I recall having to do some weird voodoo to get my mother's printer to even work after it randomly stopped printing. All with install drivers, make sure it's not plugged in, plug it in when it tells you, oh wait, it didn't detect, okay unplug, reboot, remove drivers, reboot again, install drivers, plug in printer.. oh is going to work? Nope, try again...
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Nope, they did not fix anything, they made the camera not work at all with Windows 10 - not work as in.. no software would find any camera, despite it being there the device list, and according to Windows, working.
That's because they're already watching you through it... Device in use.. :laughing:
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A commercial software vendor makes a living from happy customers
You mean a company like Red Hat (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-reports-second-quarter-results-fiscal-year-2017) ?
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Nope, they did not fix anything, they made the camera not work at all with Windows 10 - not work as in.. no software would find any camera, despite it being there the device list, and according to Windows, working.
Ok, Windows 10 was not release by then, so i only tried it in Win7 and probably Win8.
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You mean a company like Red Hat (https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/red-hat-reports-second-quarter-results-fiscal-year-2017) ?
Red Hat definitely keeps their customers happy. On the other hand, Microsoft are successful by a lot of strong arming of OEMs and generally shady, cut throat deals. Granted Atari and Commodore were far too concerned with each other to open their eyes up in time to notice that the IBM compatibles were sweeping in to take over.
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And no, that's exactly what you *cannot* do. The consequences are that your program will be taken down
You can do what ever the hell you want, and depending on what you're doing, no one might ever find out that you based your work on someone else's work.
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Okay, no one has really come out and said it... but.. does it actually compile?
I seem to recall when it was leaked that people were having a hard time getting it to compile anything, and that sources were missing. But then it was long enough ago that I could be remembering something else.
Can you compile it with gcc?
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Okay, no one has really come out and said it... but.. does it actually compile?
I seem to recall when it was leaked that people were having a hard time getting it to compile anything, and that sources were missing. But then it was long enough ago that I could be remembering something else.
Can you compile it with gcc?
How can anyone say "Yes" without making it blatantly obvious that they have tried to do so?
Bear in mind, it isn't designed to produce directly executable code exactly like other programs. It's designed to run from a ROM chip, at startup.
Also, I really don't know which compiler it was designed for. Probably Lattice, but that is a guess.
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My experience with HP printers specifically and printers in general is that if they are supported in CUPS, they WILL work a lot better under Linux than under Windows. Windows has always had a really crap printing system. I mean it's just absolutely terrible.
I recall having to do some weird voodoo to get my mother's printer to even work after it randomly stopped printing. All with install drivers, make sure it's not plugged in, plug it in when it tells you, oh wait, it didn't detect, okay unplug, reboot, remove drivers, reboot again, install drivers, plug in printer.. oh is going to work? Nope, try again...
Ohh, the whole plug it in, unplug it, plug it in again thing is because USB is crap in windows too.
This is a network printer though.
But I've setup other printers in Windows too and its still too much work in Windows compared to Linux.
So I mentioned earlier that software changes affecting you are not just an issue in open source but also close source.
Many years ago I tested Office 2010 in my company and they asked for feedback so I took the time and wrote up all my issues and then rolled back to 2007 and a couple weeks later got an e-mail claiming all the issues I reported didn't exist as both my helpdesk and Microsoft had thoroughly tested office 2010. When SP1 for Office 2012 was released I found all of my reported issues in it as fixes. So I have to at least give them credit for fixing those even though they denied they existed. I still have a couple old KB numbers that haven't been fixed.
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Yes. Amongst the other "dragon territories", as such as "which init system do I use today", "which X11 replacement system do you prefer" and "how do I configure my printer with cups".
CUPS was the end of printer configuration, at least for me. Since CUPS it's been a matter of 1) plug in the cable, 2) press CTRL-P, and 3) click the "Print" button. Maybe I'm just lucky with printers, although previous experience with copiers would not indicate this.
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Okay, no one has really come out and said it... but.. does it actually compile?
I seem to recall when it was leaked that people were having a hard time getting it to compile anything, and that sources were missing.
Building the code is difficult, as most of it requires an Amiga-native compiler/assembler to create something that fits on the disk/into the ROM and does what it's supposed to. On top of that, hardly any two components of the operating system are built in the same manner, using the same set of makefiles and scripts.
Tinkering with the code is more like archaeology, when what you do involves sifting through layers of dust, ashes and earth before you can even begin to reconstruct the organization and systems as they were when they were still functional.
Can you compile it with gcc?
Not really.
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@Olsen
Isn't it simpler in the long run to just backport AmigaOS 4.1 for Classic 68k Amiga without PPC?
It will surely be slower but as HW and Software simulation/emulation go faster in the long term it will be fast enough I guess and one code base is better than 2.
Kamelito
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@Olsen
Isn't it simpler in the long run to just backport AmigaOS 4.1 for Classic 68k Amiga without PPC?
It will surely be slower but as HW and Software simulation/emulation go faster in the long term it will be fast enough I guess and one code base is better than 2.
Kamelito
I don't believe that this would be the easier option, even in the long run.
The "threshold" when backporting code from AmigaOS4 to AmigaOS 3.x could still be accomplished with reasonable effort (time and manpower) was crossed in about 8-9 years ago. Ever since then new data structures and APIs have been added to AmigaOS4 which significantly increase the difficulties of backporting code.
This happened at Commodore, too, when Kickstart/Workbench 2.x was under development. The toolbox became larger (double the ROM space, double the leverage afforded to software developers), and it became more and more difficult for Commodore to provide the same tools to developers who wanted to use them both in 1.x and 2.x applications.
There weren't many such tools (I remember "amigaguide.library" and the Installer), and there were some 3rd party solutions such as a disk-loaded "gadtools.library". But inside the operating system, the new APIs and data structures created more tightly-coupled code, saving ROM space and allowing for more robust code to be written.
Backporting such code at some point means porting practically everything, because you cannot always conveniently resolve the new interdependencies. Even if you tried, you'd run into practical problems for a hypothetical AmigaOS4 for 68k: AmigaOS4 is designed for a platform with much more RAM. As these things go (Moore's law, etc.) it also requires a more powerful CPU to run smoothly than a 68k platform could deliver (unless you consider emulation a target platform that makes good business sense). Finally, that complex port would have to be tested as well, which is no small challenge to begin with.
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How can anyone say "Yes" without making it blatantly obvious that they have tried to do so?
Clearly someone managed to compile parts of it at least, the parts that you can find in BB3+4, the parts with major version string ... 42 :)
To build the whole thing is not what people are interested in either, each person has his/her point of "itch" that has been bothering them.
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I don't believe that this would be the easier option, even in the long run.
The "threshold" when backporting code from AmigaOS4 to AmigaOS 3.x could still be accomplished with reasonable effort (time and manpower) was crossed in about 8-9 years ago. Ever since then new data structures and APIs have been added to AmigaOS4 which significantly increase the difficulties of backporting code.
This happened at Commodore, too, when Kickstart/Workbench 2.x was under development. The toolbox became larger (double the ROM space, double the leverage afforded to software developers), and it became more and more difficult for Commodore to provide the same tools to developers who wanted to use them both in 1.x and 2.x applications.
There weren't many such tools (I remember "amigaguide.library" and the Installer), and there were some 3rd party solutions such as a disk-loaded "gadtools.library". But inside the operating system, the new APIs and data structures created more tightly-coupled code, saving ROM space and allowing for more robust code to be written.
Backporting such code at some point means porting practically everything, because you cannot always conveniently resolve the new interdependencies. Even if you tried, you'd run into practical problems for a hypothetical AmigaOS4 for 68k: AmigaOS4 is designed for a platform with much more RAM. As these things go (Moore's law, etc.) it also requires a more powerful CPU to run smoothly than a 68k platform could deliver (unless you consider emulation a target platform that makes good business sense). Finally, that complex port would have to be tested as well, which is no small challenge to begin with.
in one sentence: os4 as a whole has become incompatible with amiga. which is actually the case for what i know. there is apparently less hassle to backport a good deal of aros software to genuine amiga system, not only because it guards the original concepts, it actually runs on 68k, because things like necessary functions are still register parametrized, library interface is interchangeable, hook syntax is apparently the same like the original one and last but not least aros has in comparison to the features it offers a reasonable memory footprint, comparable to original kickstarts.
what an irony..
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Clearly someone managed to compile parts of it at least, the parts that you can find in BB3+4, the parts with major version string ... 42 :)
To build the whole thing is not what people are interested in either, each person has his/her point of "itch" that has been bothering them.
Kolla, I haven't ever looked at the source code of an operating system written in C. C isn't one of my primary coding languages. I can adjust a C program's data, stuff like getting an Arduino system running. That isn't the same as an operating system.
Both the leaked 3.0 (?) and 4 partially or completely rewritten in C, but certain parts of the leaked source must be derived from the BCPL ancestor, TripOS, that was ported to the Amiga. And really, no one has ever attempted a full translation of AmigaDOS, into hand coded assembler. For any kind of Amiga hardware. At least that I'm aware of.
Bits of the operating system can be coded in assembler, and ideally, an OS evolves tailored to the hardware available.
It's amazing how like AmigaDOS TripOS is. Because TriPOS is still in use, networked distros that cost money, by a lot of British insurance companies. :)
Here's a very short overview, with regard to similarities like drivers and libraries. Parts of the leak might well date from a much earlier BCPL ancestor. That isn't true of AmigaOS V4 and later. That's all been redone, which is probably partly WHY V4+ is so greedy on 68K machines for resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPOS
Anyway, I haven't looked at the code. Lattice is mentioned in a lot of publicly available Commodore works, and I bought a few, so it's reasonable to assume that was the dev tool used to put the leak together in the first place, V3.0 was a CBM software and firmware release. Isn't that right? I don't know.
Unless, perhaps, it isn't genuine in all respects. That's one possibility, with an internet dissemated file.
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Both the leaked 3.0 (?) and 4 partially or completely rewritten in C, but certain parts of the leaked source must be derived from the BCPL ancestor, TripOS, that was ported to the Amiga.
The development path of AmigaOs is somewhat convoluted. AmigaOs used to be a mixture between assembler in its core parts, C and BCPL. In 2.0, the BCPL parts were replaced by C, though most of the replacments came into living by the "arp" (Amiga Replacement Project) project of the "software distillery". Thus, many of the commands in C: are reworked versions of the arp commands, and not directly ported from BCPL.
And really, no one has ever attempted a full translation of AmigaDOS, into hand coded assembler. For any kind of Amiga hardware. At least that I'm aware of.
AmigaOs is already hard to maintain as of today. Translating it into assembler makes it even harder to maintain, and harder to upgrade. Not a good deal if you ask me. Assembler code might be quick, streamlined efficient, but also bug-ridden, and "not yet quite ready, sorry."
It's amazing how like AmigaDOS TripOS is. Because TriPOS is still in use, networked distros that cost money, by a lot of British insurance companies. :)
AmigaDos is historically almost completely Tripos. If you look at Tripos basics, it seems even likely that some of the exec components were derived from or inspired by Tripos. Exec devices and the device interface looks very much like the device interface of Tripos.
Parts of the leak might well date from a much earlier BCPL ancestor.
Not much of the original Tripos interface were left in AmigaOs 2.0 and later. It's only a thin compatibility layer that remained. AmigaOs 1.3 still had the Tripos loader (aka "LoadSeg") in dos.library, along with the GloVec constructor used by all the BCPL commands in C:. Tripos libraries are substationally different from amiga libraries, and the "OpenLibrary" function is there actually part of the loader ("LoadSeg"), and not the responsibility of the program itself as we have it today. That is, 1.3. LoadSeg() had the ability to open libraries for the code.
This stuff still worked with the 1.3 Tripos "dos.library", though was removed for 2.0. You find more details on this in Ralph Babel's "Guru Book".
The bad part is that this magic actually only works for the dos.library as the calling convention required for library linking through LoadSeg() is different from the usual calling convention.
That isn't true of AmigaOS V4 and later. That's all been redone, which is probably partly WHY V4+ is so greedy on 68K machines for resources.
Not really. Tripos was already gone in 2.0 except for a couple of assembler stubs for compaibility.
Lattice is mentioned in a lot of publicly available Commodore works, and I bought a few, so it's reasonable to assume that was the dev tool used to put the leak together in the first place,
AmigaOs is based on three compilers, based on the development time of the components. Lattice C 5 for many legacy components. Newer components were compiled with SAS/C, and some of the old code was ported to SAS. Intuition is a bit special as it required the Greenhill compiler, as only component. 1.3 was Lattice and BCPL.
V3.0 was a CBM software and firmware release. Isn't that right? I don't know.
Lattice C 5 came from Lattice, not CBM. The SAS institute bought it later on and released version 6 as SAS/C.
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The development path of AmigaOs is somewhat convoluted.
AmigaOs is already hard to maintain as of today. Translating it into assembler makes it even harder to maintain, and harder to upgrade. Not a good deal if you ask me. Assembler code might be quick, streamlined efficient, but also bug-ridden, and "not yet quite ready, sorry."
Well yes, translating all of the code into assembler will take quite some time. But, key components can be translated one at a time and tested for compatility. I take your point about exec, the only part you can't really mess with a lot without breaking something somewhere is exec and intuition. That has to be present at the turnkey stage, ie, burnt into a ROM, or sideways ROM mapped in a 32 bit Amiga.
Lattice C 5 came from Lattice, not CBM. The SAS institute bought it later on and released version 6 as SAS/C.
Didn't know that, like I said, C isn't my thing. Yeah, I recall arp.library being a seperate component. I guess the whole history is different exec's and family sets of Workbench and KS resources being used, some shunted in, some shunted out.
I just find it fascinating that you can recode bits of it and shunt different versions of libraries and devices into and out of a system by copying files and reboot. With differing levels of success for getting things working, it would seem. Or load a different module device or library to replace the one started with from the KS ROM.
Oh yeah, Thomas, respect for looking at the 68040 library. I played with one once, reviewed it as a current draining, hot beast, but I didn't click that the 68040.llibrary was eating memory as it ran. I put it down to hardware issues, not a software problem in the 68040.library. Then again, I only had it a couple days. Not like I really had much time to check. Respect for sorting that issue out. :)
EDIT: I think I get the point about dos.library really calling the tunes as far as smartly using the right library without the end user being aware of it. But, it seems to me that rather than the program choosing the library for WB2 and later, it's more a case of the programmer chooses roughly what will be used, and the end user has to find and slot in the best fit of device and library and maybe handler for their system and application, if the one they are using doesn't do the job properly. That was always true, very few people ever bothered with loadseg. I didnt. I haven't looked at Ralph Babels book, seems he is upset at an early public release in English so just sticks with the German for the current release. Ignorant? Well, I'm a bit busy right now, will try to catch up later on an 800 page technical document written in German.
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Kolla, I haven't ever looked at the source code of an operating system written in C. C isn't one of my primary coding languages. I can adjust a C program's data, stuff like getting an Arduino system running. That isn't the same as an operating system.
Er... ok?
Both the leaked 3.0 (?) and 4 partially or completely rewritten in C, but certain parts of the leaked source must be derived from the BCPL ancestor, TripOS, that was ported to the Amiga. And really, no one has ever attempted a full translation of AmigaDOS, into hand coded assembler. For any kind of Amiga hardware. At least that I'm aware of.
Bits of the operating system can be coded in assembler, and ideally, an OS evolves tailored to the hardware available.
It's amazing how like AmigaDOS TripOS is. Because TriPOS is still in use, networked distros that cost money, by a lot of British insurance companies. :)
Here's a very short overview, with regard to similarities like drivers and libraries. Parts of the leak might well date from a much earlier BCPL ancestor. That isn't true of AmigaOS V4 and later. That's all been redone, which is probably partly WHY V4+ is so greedy on 68K machines for resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPOS
Anyway, I haven't looked at the code. Lattice is mentioned in a lot of publicly available Commodore works, and I bought a few, so it's reasonable to assume that was the dev tool used to put the leak together in the first place, V3.0 was a CBM software and firmware release. Isn't that right? I don't know.
Unless, perhaps, it isn't genuine in all respects. That's one possibility, with an internet dissemated file.
I don't understand - why are you talking about OS4?
(And why do you write so much that is not at all relevant here?!)
Maybe you do not know the AmigaOS version string conventions? OS 3.0 was largely "version 39", as in most binaries in OS 3.0 had major version 39. In OS 3.1, these were bumped to 40 and maybe a few 41. In the OS 3.1 leaked sources, there are a few things that have developed further, to version 42.
This has _nothing_ to do with OS4.
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Er... ok?
I don't understand - why are you talking about OS4?
(And why do you write so much that is not at all relevant here?!)
Maybe you do not know the AmigaOS version string conventions? OS 3.0 was largely "version 39", as in most binaries in OS 3.0 had major version 39. In OS 3.1, these were bumped to 40 and maybe a few 41. In the OS 3.1 leaked sources, there are a few things that have developed further, to version 42.
This has _nothing_ to do with OS4.
Well, if you checked the TripOS link, you would have noted that it lists Amiga V4 as being totally written in C, and earlier versions as being only partially written in C to a certain extent, but not much reference to which libraries and devices are optimized for a given class of Amiga hardware, and also which bits of pre V4 are just slightly altered BCPL to compile on a C compiler. I would guess, not many. :)
As for the leaked source being 3.1, I didn't know that, I thought it was 3.0.
I'm not convinced many people would recognize bits of TripOS in the source code, if it is 3.1. I doubt there is much there, apart from the underlying conventions. On the other hand, BCPL coded into C doesn't look like BCPL anymore. C optimized for C is a different story again.
(sigh)
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Well, if you checked the TripOS link, you would have noted that it lists Amiga V4 as being totally written in C
Oh, I know very well about TRIPOS, so I didnt't feel a need to read wikipedia about it - not surprised some Amiga zealot have dumped in some misinformation about OS4 in there, don't know how many time I have removed bogus information about Amiga from wikipedia (such as IBM getting code to Workbench for use in OS/2 in exchange for CBM getting ARexx - you know, completely nutty "stories")
As for the leaked source being 3.1, I didn't know that, I thought it was 3.0.
No, it is 3.1 allright, and quite a lot more too. Not sure if it also contains things that were worked on under Amiga Technologies, such as stuff for the Walker, but I don't think so, I believe it must be a dump from someone's hard drive at Commodore.
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Oh, I know very well about TRIPOS, so I didnt't feel a need to read wikipedia about it - not surprised some Amiga zealot have dumped in some misinformation about OS4 in there, don't know how many time I have removed bogus information about Amiga from wikipedia (such as IBM getting code to Workbench for use in OS/2 in exchange for CBM getting ARexx - you know, completely nutty "stories").
Yeah, like saying AmigaBasic was a Microsoft development.
It wasn't, it was a Metacomco development based on MS source. It's a crying shame how disinformation like that gets put on the internet...
:laughing::laughing::laughing:
If you think TripOS and Metacomco were and are irrelevant to the Amiga, you are wrong. In a big way. I did say it was a short read. I didn't say it was 100% accurate, but don't you think it can be useful to take a different perspective sometimes, rather than insisting that your own perspective is the only perspective?
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in one sentence: os4 as a whole has become incompatible with amiga. which is actually the case for what i know. there is apparently less hassle to backport a good deal of aros software to genuine amiga system, not only because it guards the original concepts, it actually runs on 68k, because things like necessary functions are still register parametrized, library interface is interchangeable, hook syntax is apparently the same like the original one and last but not least aros has in comparison to the features it offers a reasonable memory footprint, comparable to original kickstarts.
what an irony..
AmigaOS4 still uses fundamentally the same system architecture (warts and everything) which you would find, for example, on page #7 of the 3rd edition RKM "Libraries". The philosophy of keeping the layer between the APIs and the underlying hardware (e.g. Exec, the CPU and memory) thin, so as to deliver the most power to the user, still applies, too.
Beyond that you're bound by the rules imposed by the development of the target hardware platform over the last 15+ years: ABIs, "glue" logic, off-the-shelf components and how the companies which cast all this into a mainboard you can buy and build a system from.
These hardware dependencies, and the new degrees of freedom they afford you are bound to change how the operating system goes about its business. This doesn't fundamentally restrict code written for that platform to be ported. What does make things more complicated is in how the dependencies through APIs evolve.
For example, how the dos.library in AmigaOS4 has evolved is a result of the "traditional" shortcomings of the dos.library design. These being global, public data structures with strange layout, cryptic labeling, simplistic protocols for avoiding clashes between concurrent access, and of course how file systems fit into this picture. It was hard to tell a "hack" from a "best practice" when interacting with dos.library and its data structures.
The dos.library in AmigaOS4 assumes more responsibilities than was the case in previous versions, in which file systems and client software was left to fend for themselves. The old way of doing things required a file system to implement an inane/insane number of operations, accessing crufty data structures according to very underdocumented rules, and this in turn led to stability issues. It was hard to write a robust file system, but poisonously easy to get it subtly wrong with dire consequences, for which it was extremely difficult to figure out what exactly caused them.
So, for example, dos.library now cares about how file change notifications work, how you would change the volume or device list after a medium change. This sounds like the most pedestrian thing to mention, but what goes on under the hood in dos.library V40 (and below) in these areas is a highly complex and error-prone process. Now there are well-documented and well-defined APIs for dealing with such tasks which are easier to use and far less error prone than what was possible before (new APIs and responsibilities, of course, required a more complex implementation, which the more powerful hardware platform certainly enabled).
Consequently, the crufty code which relied on the old methods was replaced, one component at a time, saving space and leading to a more stable and robust system. The Workbench, the shell commands, etc. were modified to use the new APIs.
You could backport such code, but you'd have to drop in replacements for the new API functions found in dos.library. The same relationship exists between the other "pillars" of the Amiga operating system, such as exec.library, graphics.library, intuition.library and the remainder of the operating system.
This is nothing new. It happened during the transition between Kickstart/Workbench 1.3 and 2.04. Even the Commodore developers themselves came to consider the tools (APIs, data structures, etc.) available in the 1.x days as very crude, compared to what 2.04 and beyond would deliver.
Portability of operating system code is not high on the list of things to keep an eye on when creating a new operating system release. If you find that AROS code makes for better backporting, it is likely because the APIs which the code to be ported relies upon, are extremely similar to what existed in 1994. This is not what AmigaOS4 was designed to deliver: it offers API compatibility, extending to data structures in the same way as Kickstart/Workbench 2.04 did to its precursor.
If you've read so far, congratulation! As you might have concluded by now, I do not subscribe to the idea that what makes an Amiga what it is would be strongly connected to how close it is to the operating system design or target hardware of AmigaOS 3.1.
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I'd be more interested in a 68k backport of MorphOS than OS4 as it's more "Amiga-like" in many aspects. OS4 for 68k would still be nice though.
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I don't believe that this would be the easier option, even in the long run.
The "threshold" when backporting code from AmigaOS4 to AmigaOS 3.x could still be accomplished with reasonable effort (time and manpower) was crossed in about 8-9 years ago. Ever since then new data structures and APIs have been added to AmigaOS4 which significantly increase the difficulties of backporting code.
This happened at Commodore, too, when Kickstart/Workbench 2.x was under development. The toolbox became larger (double the ROM space, double the leverage afforded to software developers), and it became more and more difficult for Commodore to provide the same tools to developers who wanted to use them both in 1.x and 2.x applications.
There weren't many such tools (I remember "amigaguide.library" and the Installer), and there were some 3rd party solutions such as a disk-loaded "gadtools.library". But inside the operating system, the new APIs and data structures created more tightly-coupled code, saving ROM space and allowing for more robust code to be written.
Backporting such code at some point means porting practically everything, because you cannot always conveniently resolve the new interdependencies. Even if you tried, you'd run into practical problems for a hypothetical AmigaOS4 for 68k: AmigaOS4 is designed for a platform with much more RAM. As these things go (Moore's law, etc.) it also requires a more powerful CPU to run smoothly than a 68k platform could deliver (unless you consider emulation a target platform that makes good business sense). Finally, that complex port would have to be tested as well, which is no small challenge to begin with.
OS4.1 runs nicely on a poxy 603 with 256MB RAM and RTG, no reason why it shouldn't perform just as well or better on an Apollo core with more/faster RAM and faster RTG.
Especially if/when the Apollo is available in ASIC form.
Majsta talked about creating an entire computer at some point in the future, would be great if it ran a 68k back port of OS4.1.
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Yeah, like saying AmigaBasic was a Microsoft development.
It wasn't, it was a Metacomco development based on MS source. It's a crying shame how disinformation like that gets put on the internet...
Are you sure?
Metacomco shipped ABasiC (written in 'C') before Microsoft's AmigaBASIC was ready.
As far as I know AmigaBASIC is strongly related to Microsoft BASIC for Mac. As was common at the time, Commodore licensed Microsoft BASIC for the Amiga, with Microsoft creating the Amiga port. Commodore kept paying Microsoft for fixing implementation bugs over the years, but development work ceased by May 1991.
The AmigaBASIC we know from the Kickstart 1.x days had problems on 32 bit systems, e.g. using the 68020 and 68030 CPUs. On the Apple Macintosh it used to be common practice to make use of the restricted address space of the 68000 CPU, with the most significant 8 bits of an address pointer being ignored. Those 8 bits could be used for "pointer tagging", which the 68000 Macintosh operating system employed for memory management uses.
It's possible that the Kickstart 1.x version of AmigaBASIC used the same techniques, or at least assumed that it could tinker with these 8 bits without ill effect. Making AmigaBASIC work robustly on a 32 bit system might have been too expensive for Commodore.
It's also possible that AmigaBASIC was discontinued (I recall Dr. Peter Kittel mentioning that there was a version which ran fine on the Amiga 3000 and worked correctly with Kickstart/Workbench 2.0) because the need for a home computer to ship with BASIC was no longer a given. It certainly was about a decade ago.
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No, it is 3.1 allright, and quite a lot more too. Not sure if it also contains things that were worked on under Amiga Technologies, such as stuff for the Walker, but I don't think so, I believe it must be a dump from someone's hard drive at Commodore.
As far as I know the contents of the archive covers the data which all AmigaOS developers could access through the network.
The NFS client software which was part of AS225 was used to connect the Amigas of the developers to the NFS servers which would contain the operating system source code and the material archived/maintained by CATS.
Speculation: I suspect that one of the engineers took a last snapshot of everything before he left Commodore for a related job, e.g. at NewTek, Scala or 3DO. The time stamp of the last file modified is very, very close to the day when Commodore went bancrupt.
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It's also possible that AmigaBASIC was discontinued (I recall Dr. Peter Kittel mentioning that there was a version which ran fine on the Amiga 3000 and worked correctly with Kickstart/Workbench 2.0) because the need for a home computer to ship with BASIC was no longer a given. It certainly was about a decade ago.
The Software Upgrade manual that shipped with 2.04 (and 2.1?) mentions that Amiga Basic has been removed from the OS but that it's available separately. I don't think the standalone Basic ever made it to commercial release, but if it was in development internally until 1991 then what he's saying about 2.0 and 32bit compatibility makes sense.
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Are you sure?
Metacomco shipped ABasiC (written in 'C') before Microsoft's AmigaBASIC was ready.
As far as I know AmigaBASIC is strongly related to Microsoft BASIC for Mac. As was common at the time, Commodore licensed Microsoft BASIC for the Amiga, with Microsoft creating the Amiga port. Commodore kept paying Microsoft for fixing implementation bugs over the years, but development work ceased by May 1991.
The AmigaBASIC we know from the Kickstart 1.x days had problems on 32 bit systems, e.g. using the 68020 and 68030 CPUs. On the Apple Macintosh it used to be common practice to make use of the restricted address space of the 68000 CPU, with the most significant 8 bits of an address pointer being ignored. Those 8 bits could be used for "pointer tagging", which the 68000 Macintosh operating system employed for memory management uses.
It's possible that the Kickstart 1.x version of AmigaBASIC used the same techniques, or at least assumed that it could tinker with these 8 bits without ill effect. Making AmigaBASIC work robustly on a 32 bit system might have been too expensive for Commodore.
It's also possible that AmigaBASIC was discontinued (I recall Dr. Peter Kittel mentioning that there was a version which ran fine on the Amiga 3000 and worked correctly with Kickstart/Workbench 2.0) because the need for a home computer to ship with BASIC was no longer a given. It certainly was about a decade ago.
So much for the myth of the Boing demo being written with a Microsoft product, eh... :) AFAIK, all MS did was sign a license and supply some source. They never actually "developed" AmigaBasic, so it was more a case of porting that ontop of the original Metacomco version. I did badger and probe Microsoft US about updates, back in the day, and was referred back to CBM with no response. Which was like being referred to the Wailing Wall, or the Ka'aba, really.
Anyway, ARexx was a much better choice, in my opinion. An ideal fit for a multitasking OS. Much much much more sensible than any version of Basic. Be able to talk and control between different running applications. That was a much more powerful tool than a programming language aimed at beginners.
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Yeah, like saying AmigaBasic was a Microsoft development.
AmigaBasic *was* a Microsoft development, no doubts about it. Look at the demos. It clearly says "Microsoft Basic"...
It wasn't, it was a Metacomco development based on MS source. It's a crying shame how disinformation like that gets put on the internet...
You are confusing two products. ABasic, which was shipped probably with the 1.1 version of workbench (I still might have it somewhere), which was from Metacomco, and AmigaBasic, which is a Microsoft development.
The two are *very* different, not even related, leave alone compatible in any way.
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The Software Upgrade manual that shipped with 2.04 (and 2.1?) mentions that Amiga Basic has been removed from the OS but that it's available separately. I don't think the standalone Basic ever made it to commercial release, but if it was in development internally until 1991 then what he's saying about 2.0 and 32bit compatibility makes sense.
If you search through the CBM bug database (which you probably don't have), you'll notice that there were at least three versions of AmigaBasic (all from Microsoft, of course). The version 1.2, which was shipped on the Extras disk of Workbench 1.2.
Then, internally, there are some traces of a version 1.3 and some test reports about some critical bugs being fixed.
Then, if you dig further, there are also test reports about an AmigaBasic 2.0 version which was tested at least by Doc Kittel (you'll find his test report in the bug database), which fixed more bugs, but certainly not all. It still had the bug that the German U-Umlaut in strings broke "IF-THEN" conditions, a very similar (if not identical) bug being present in the 1.2 release.
The saying is - from Doc Kittel - that CBM did not include the 2.0 release with Kickstart 2.0 because it would have cost them 1$ additional licensing cost per shipped disk, and they didn't want to pay that. Probably also because it was no longer fashionable nor necessary (as in the C64 times) to include a Basic with a machine.
Well, instead they decided to include Arexx. Unlicensed, BTW, as far as I know.
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Speculation: I suspect that one of the engineers took a last snapshot of everything before he left Commodore for a related job, e.g. at NewTek, Scala or 3DO. The time stamp of the last file modified is very, very close to the day when Commodore went bancrupt.
Indeed, but I did not look, I used logic. The last known complete source distro of 3(.1) was CBM. Therefore, the leaker was once a CBM employee.
Thank you for helping to confirm my suspicions. I'm pretty sure I know who now. :)
The following may offend atheists, so look away now...
... God blesss 'em, and all their leaks. :)
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So much for the myth of the Boing demo being written with a Microsoft product, eh... :)
Said demo is not Basic, and is completely unrelated to Amiga Basic. Amiga Basic included a "boing balls" demo, which is just a small window with the text "Microsoft Basic" (*sig*!) and two orange balls jumping around the window. But that's not the famous demo the "Boing Ball" is derived from. It's a short Basic demo to test the animation system.
AFAIK, all MS did was sign a license and supply some source. They never actually "developed" AmigaBasic, so it was more a case of porting that ontop of the original Metacomco version.
Hardly, and I wonder where you got this from. ABasic and Amiga Basic are very different, unrelated to each other. ABasic is Metacomco, a very bare-bone basic interpreter, and Amiga Basic is very much like the Apple version of Microsoft Basic (yes, I've seen this as well), with pretty much the same design - and the same flaws.
As Olaf already pointed out correctly, early versions of Mac Os used the upper eight bits of pointers for resource administration (whether a "handle" is locked, loaded in memory etc..., see "Inside Macintosh", Volume I) and MS apparently used the same system in their Basic, then just ported over to Amiga. Metacomco was never in the game for this dialect of Basic.
I did badger and probe Microsoft US about updates, back in the day, and was referred back to CBM with no response. Which was like being referred to the Wailing Wall, or the Ka'aba, really.
Because CBM licensed for Amiga, so it would have been their responsibility. As said, there was some enhancements on the road, but in the end, CBM did not license them.
Anyway, ARexx was a much better choice, in my opinion.
At least a much cheaper. 1$ per disk as opposed to 0$ per disk is an easy decision to take. However, unlike Basic, ARexx is not a beginnner's language, and it did not include an editor, or a GUI, or support for graphics... nothing like that. It's an entirely different type of product, thus hardly comparable.
Whether that's powerful or not is another question, but at least it did not help users to program their system. But back at this time, Basic users were in the minority anyhow. Actually, I would believe most Amiga users were in gaming, not programming, so whether it was Amiga Basic or ARexx would have been utterly irrelevant for most of them in first place.
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Well, instead they decided to include Arexx. Unlicensed, BTW, as far as I know.
Interesting. I never got feedback from IBM on Rexx. William (Bill?)l Hawes should know, one wasy or the other.
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Interesting. I never got feedback from IBM on Rexx. William (Bill?)l Hawes should know, one wasy or the other.
While Rexx is certainly a language designed by IBM, Bill is in no relation to IBM. ARexx was a re-implementation of Rexx in 68K assembler (urgh!). In the same sense, Basic is not a Microsoft property, even though Microsoft made a lot of money by providing Basic implementations to many platforms (amongst them the C64 and the Amiga.) But other Basics exist, for example the Atari Basic, which is an unrelated implementation by SMI (which became later Oss).
Thus: ARexx != Rexx, except for the language fundamentals, and Bill != IBM.
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At least a much cheaper. 1$ per disk as opposed to 0$ per disk is an easy decision to take. However, unlike Basic, ARexx is not a beginnner's language, and it did not include an editor, or a GUI, or support for graphics... nothing like that. It's an entirely different type of product, thus hardly comparable.
This is why they charged for replacement floppy sets, of course. Most people were like "it's a disk, it costs pennies". They did not appreciate that the content was actually valuable and had cost money to develop.
Would it have really been sensible to keep funding a rival OS, purely to keep using the same Basic? I think CBM were smart. They knew alternative Basics would appear, having studied how software chains develop. They also knew that, for serious development of applications, Basic was very very limited.
You have a bleeding edge product. You want to attract developers. You do not include crap development tools with the base machine unless there is no alternative.
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Thus: ARexx != Rexx, except for the language fundamentals, and Bill != IBM.
Rexx = IBM. Arexx = Amiga implementation of Rexx. Therefore, to certain degree, Bill has a relationship with an IBM product, in that he developed an Amiga implementation of an IBM product. He didn't do it blindfolded. :)
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If you search through the CBM bug database (which you probably don't have), you'll notice that there were at least three versions of AmigaBasic (all from Microsoft, of course). The version 1.2, which was shipped on the Extras disk of Workbench 1.2.
I didn't know they had a bug database. I thought they just had a shredder for that sort of thing. CBM were principally known as a hardware provider. Any issues with software were kept very, very close. Bit like Apple in many respects.
If you weren't a registered developer (and I could not be) then they didn't talk to you. They certainly did not talk to me about jack %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@! that was technical. I had to find everything out from day one pretty much on my own, but at least I could make phone calls without worrying about the cost of that.
Reason I couldn't be a registered developer? Conflict of interests. You cannot sign a Non Disclosure Agreement and yet be a responsible, independent journalist who puts their readers first, last, and always. That was my problem to deal with, and I ended up giving up journalism. I made some cool Amiga toys instead. Now excuse me, I'll start digging them out for y'all.
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If you've read so far, congratulation! As you might have concluded by now, I do not subscribe to the idea that what makes an Amiga what it is would be strongly connected to how close it is to the operating system design or target hardware of AmigaOS 3.1.
Well, I beg to differ. I've a very pragmatic approach to this definition, which is the "duck principle". "If it talks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it is a duck".
The problem with the mentioned changes - as good and well-motivated they really are (Tripos volume and lock handling is a mess, "ACTION_EXAMINE" is a mess) no argument! - is that they cause incompatibilities with existing software (file systems, for example), and hence violate the "duck principle". If I cannot run Amiga software on the machine, it's something, but not Amiga.
Even CBM did great care in the introduction of 2.0 that software would remain working. Even as of 3.1, the 1.2 BCPL command line tools (the stuff in C:, e.g. C:copy) works correctly (well, almost "Ed" is an exception, details follow if needed), as even v40 of dos.library includes a compatibility layer for Tripos.
That is, CBM tried their best to follow the "dug principle". Os4 did not. Different CPU, compatibility not as prime principle.
Unfortunately, legacy software is all what exists on the Amiga, so introducing something incompatible - no matter how good that is - will leave some software behind, and shrinking the already existing software basis is not exactly a good move.
I believe this is the point where Os4, Morphos... got it wrong. The systems tried to establish a new platform, even though the days where you could gain customers through a convincing platform alone were over already. The market changed considerably, and the Os became uninteresting for users.
Very quickly: The "Home computer area" was dead at this time. Amiga is a retro platform these days, and *this* market works differently.
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I didn't know they had a bug database.
CBM had a professional developer program, called CATS. Unfortunately, it costed money to join, and no, I never joined. I just bought the books (RKRMs, AmigaDos manual) and did some reasearch of my own.
If you weren't a registered developer (and I could not be) then they didn't talk to you. They certainly did not talk to me about jack %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@! that was technical.
Right, and correct. I also wrote letters to CBM, they probably went into the same paper waste as yours. I believe everyone disliked the CBM "management" in all its glory. Customer relations costs money, and CBM was always short of money. Instead, ask developers to *pay* for your platform. I as a hobby developer did not buy into this type of marketing.
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CBM had a professional developer program, called CATS. Unfortunately, it costed money to join, and no, I never joined. I just bought the books (RKRMs, AmigaDos manual) and did some reasearch of my own.
Well, at least I called CATS. They kind of had different levels, for different pockets. I never registered either though. Some journalists did register, but you had to go out of the office, couldn't be staff, for that. I saw that as unprofessional and so did the magazine management generally. If you are keeping commercial secrets that you cannot disclose, then you can't have true freedom of expression.
Right, and correct. I also wrote letters to CBM, they probably went into the same paper waste as yours.
I never wrote to CATS. Never wrote to Commodore. Never had time, I had thousands of other words to write, constantly.
I believe everyone disliked the CBM "management" in all its glory. Customer relations costs money, and CBM was always short of money. Instead, ask developers to *pay* for your platform. I as a hobby developer did not buy into this type of marketing.
Well, they DID pay on Marketing. They paid Future to have Amiga Format "Get you Started" guides in the boxes. They were a sodding nightmare, in some respects. And I know they paid for that, because that was an out of house commission. But it did ease the journey for noobs. They could start having fun quicker.
Then CBM released the A500+ without even telling us. Gee, thanks guys. Really clever. "Oh, THAT new machine... Yes, we're not doing upgrades for WB2 for earlier Amigas for a couple years yet". In other words, they were going to keep control of the Dev and Release chain, and still not tell anybody how to use the bloody thing properly. Maybe they were too scared to talk at all. I read Dave Hs pieces on the period, and his releases. The prototype AA3000s were going up in smoke and falling apart, and nobody knew why exactly. Lot of conspiracy theories about that one. I think it was just a failed board run on a new production system, but there you go. It might have been intentional sabotage. Who knows?
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s.
The dos.library in AmigaOS4 assumes more responsibilities than was the case in previous versions, in which file systems and client software was left to fend for themselves. The old way of doing things required a file system to implement an inane/insane number of operations, accessing crufty data structures according to very underdocumented rules, and this in turn led to stability issues. It was hard to write a robust file system, but poisonously easy to get it subtly wrong with dire consequences, for which it was extremely difficult to figure out what exactly caused them.
So, for example, dos.library now cares about how file change notifications work, how you would change the volume or device list after a medium change. This sounds like the most pedestrian thing to mention, but what goes on under the hood in dos.library V40 (and below) in these areas is a highly complex and error-prone process.
All very true. A classic OS will either work or lock everything up in this respect, and typically non developer systems don't have a hardware "quit" on a program to interrupt the softcrash. Mind you, if everything is talking to each properly, it doesn't happen. But out of control software, unstable software, is an issue with the Classic AmigaOS.
It's an issue with all OS, mind you. :) I hear you are a very nice and helpful Amiga guy who does nice things with networks. You've probably done scads more Amiga, like Thomas. Thank you.
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CBM had a professional developer program, called CATS. Unfortunately, it costed money to join, and no, I never joined. I just bought the books (RKRMs, AmigaDos manual) and did some reasearch of my own.
...
Customer relations costs money, and CBM was always short of money. Instead, ask developers to *pay* for your platform. I as a hobby developer did not buy into this type of marketing.
Exploring this subject a bit, I'd argue that Commodore's approach to third-party development was much nicer than what Apple and other walled-garden vendors are offering these days.
With Commodore, my take on it is that, essentially, if you could get a functional product you could distribute it as you see fit. If you needed to distribute it with OS components (e.g., 1.3-era products that included Workbench on the program disk) you paid a license. And if you bought into CATS you got phone/email support from a real human, access to various software betas, and a line directly into the development office for the platform. Not being a developer myself I don't have first hand knowledge of this, but from what I've read over the years, registered developers formed mutually beneficial working relationships with their CATS reps and were very happy with the service. And CATS was justifiably proud of the service the provided.
Nowadays, with Apple and co., everything is "free" but the vendor controls your distribution channels. They take a cut of your profits and they can lock you out entirely for some perceived slight against them. I can hardly imagine an iOS developer having a productive conversation with someone inside Apple, let alone Apple taking the development community's concerns seriously or inviting them to suggest product improvements.
With the size and scale of software development in the larger industry today, I don't know whether something like CATS would be logistically possible for a modern vendor, but I think that CATS was a very important option to have available back in the day, and that it's a big part of why the Amiga has survived as long as it has.
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Rexx = IBM. Arexx = Amiga implementation of Rexx. Therefore, to certain degree, Bill has a relationship with an IBM product, in that he developed an Amiga implementation of an IBM product. He didn't do it blindfolded. :)
A friend of mine wrote Regina, the free implementation of REXX, he too, has no relations to IBM. You see, REXX is a _language_, anyone can implement interpreter for it.
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The NFS client software which was part of AS225 was used to connect the Amigas of the developers to the NFS servers which would contain the operating system source code and the material archived/maintained by CATS.
Do you have information on how AS225 from CBM became I-Net225 from Interworks? And can you confirm that it should be able to connect to Internet (albeit IPv4) using SANA-II ethernet device even today? :)
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Do you have information on how AS225 from CBM became I-Net225 from Interworks?
Part of it may have been licensed/acquired/etc. from Commodore. The authors of "I-Net 225" (Michael B. Smith & Jim Cooper) were part of the networking group at Commodore, who developed the original "A225", "Envoy", "AS225", etc. Commodore (of course!) disbanded the group.
It's possible that both "I-Net 225" and "Envoy" became commercial products because Commodore just didn't see any sense in that Internet thing, local networks, etc.
Commodore certainly lacked the in-house resources to make anything out of the code base, so maybe (I'm speculating) the networking group members were permitted to keep their work and commercialize it.
The "ReadMe" file on the "I-Net 225" installation disk acknowledges the origin of parts of the package.
I quote:
Parts of the "I-Net 225" package were based on a TCP/IP package released by
Commodore Business Machines, Inc. The original Commodore package (AS225)
was
Copyright © 1990-1993 Commodore Business Machines, Inc.
End of quote.
I was part of the team which created the "Amiga Surfer" package at Amiga Technologies GmbH back in the winter of 1995/1996. It was built around the Amiga Internet application software available at the time, which included "I-Net 225" and, for example, Oliver Wagner's early "Voyager" browser (bless him). We didn't realize how far ahead of its time this project was when it was under development.
My part of the work concerned the dial-up connection to the Internet, which would use the infrastructure IBM had set up for OS/2. You first had to sign up for an IBM account, and then the access information would be written out as configuration files for "I-Net 225" to use. I wrote the program which sets up the modem, the serial device driver, and which performs the IBM account setup.
Once the configuration files were in place, you could go online by launching the "StartInet" program, if I remember correctly.
And can you confirm that it should be able to connect to Internet (albeit IPv4) using SANA-II ethernet device even today? :)
Yes. I personally used "I-Net 225" to connect my work machine (an Amiga 3000 UX) to a different Amiga 3000 running NetBSD, with both using "Ariadne" Ethernet cards, back in 1997/1998. I did not connect this setup to the Internet because back then this required a dial-up link, rather than the much more convenient DSL gateway router setups we use today. Had a gateway router been available to connect to the Internet back then, changing the default route to use that router would have easily allowed the "I-Net 225" setup to access the Internet.
The version of "I-Net 225" which I knew did not support DHCP (or BOOTP/RARP), which means that you have to edit/create certain configuration files, knowing exactly which information to enter into them. That's a challenge all by itself.
Setting up the network, however, works differently in "I-Net 225" than in "AmiTCP" or "Miami". Configuration files are stored in "S:", and in "ENV:". The documentation explains how all the pieces need to be set up, it's just that it requires a lot of prior knowledge to put it all together.
In so many words: "I-Net 225" is much harder to set up than the Amiga TCP/IP stacks we use today, but it does get the job done, eventually, if you see it through. "I-Net 225" was the only part of the "Amiga Surfer" package which gave us no trouble at all, and that's saying something.
One more thing: the "I-Net 225" API is different from the one used by "AmiTCP" (and "Miami", "Roadshow", etc.). Back in the early days, application software would support both the "AS225R2"/"I-Net 225" API and the "AmiTCP" API, but nowadays it's unlikely that anything but the "AmiTCP" will be supported. So even if you managed to set up "I-Net 225" correctly, you might be restricted to use the shell commands and applications which ship with "I-Net 225".
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@olsen
Thank you for extensive reply, as usual!
My first ethernet card was the I-Card PCMCIA card, also from Interworks (an slightly different incarnation of http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=923). We were a handful of students who bought them in a bulk order from IAM for our A1200s at the univ computer club, where we had direct access to Internet, and everyone using public addresses.
We had one minor problem with those cards on the A1200 - the common reset issue. Then we had one major problem with them, they would sometimes lock up the machine and _flood_ the ethernet with packages, essentially DOSing the LAN and making life miserable for everyone on it. We tried all the TCP stacks that were available in hopes of getting those cards to work more reliable, but in the end, after disassembling and debugging the SANA-II driver itself, there was no question what was at fault.
We contacted both IAM and Interworks about our issues, but it never resulted in any improvements. Our work-around was to break up our LAN into smaller segments, and have one just for the Amiga computers, so any berserk I-Card would just affect the other Amiga systems. Later on came the open driver for the NE2000 PCMCIA cards, and we threw the I-Cards in the bin. Life became much easier :)
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A friend of mine wrote Regina, the free implementation of REXX, he too, has no relations to IBM. You see, REXX is a _language_, anyone can implement interpreter for it.
Sure. And if you do that for the WRONG operating system, and release it for sale, IBM will sue your arse off.
Just because Rexx has public versions, doesn't make all of Rexx open source and free to develop for, on any platform.
Try making and selling a product that uses HPGL. Hewlett Packard will have a few things to say, like "cease and desist or pay us lots of money". You can develop such a product, use it, give it away, no problems. Try selling it, different story. Not a smart thing to do.
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Sure. And if you do that for the WRONG operating system, and release it for sale, IBM will sue your arse off.
No, you are wrong.
Just because Rexx has public versions, doesn't make all of Rexx open source and free to develop for, on any platform.
Rexx is an ANSI standard (X3.274), and Regina is an open source implementation of a Rexx interpreter, since 1992 (and it isn't even the only one):
http://regina-rexx.sourceforge.net
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No, you are wrong.
I'll give you a clue. Try it on a mainframe...
... you ain't got one. Ain't that a shame...
http://regina-rexx.sourceforge.net[/URL]
Yes, Regina is open source. Rexx isn't. If was, It would be somewhat easier to google the source code for it an IBM mainframe.
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I'll give you a clue. Try it on a mainframe...
... you ain't got one. Ain't that a shame...
You have no idea what my job is and what I have access to.
Yes, Regina is open source. Rexx isn't. If was, It would be somewhat easier to google the source code for it an IBM mainframe.
What - are you googling?
Again - just like with C, Rexx is the language, for which there are multiple implementations, some commercial, some not. IBM have their implementations, but they do not stand in the way of others doing theirs. It is quite common for them all to name the interpreter available in the command path "rexx". IBM has a long history with Rexx, since the language was born at their turf (by the hands of Mike Cowlishaw), and IBM has used it through-out their products, on mainframes as you say, and on OS/2 and elsewhere. They also have worked closely with and contributed to the Rexx Language Association, with funding of development as well as source code of their own development.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rexx/opensource.html
And what a surprise (not), William S. Hawes took part in the standardisation, his name is in the technical committee...
http://www.rexxla.org/rexxlang/standards/j18pub.pdf
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You have no idea what my job is and what I have access to.
Yeah, sure, and you take the mainframe home with you in your backpocket at the weekend. I don't care whose mainframe it is, I don't care if the it's the NSA backbone machine, it's not yours.
What - are you googling?
Again - just like with C, Rexx is the language, for which there are multiple implementations, some commercial, some not. IBM have their implementations, but they do not stand in the way of others doing theirs. It is quite common for them all to name the interpreter available in the command path "rexx". IBM has a long history with Rexx, since the language was born at their turf (by the hands of Mike Cowlishaw), and IBM has used it through-out their products, on mainframes as you say, and on OS/2 and elsewhere. They also have worked closely with and contributed to the Rexx Language Association, with funding of development as well as source code of their own development.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/rexx/opensource.html
Yes, and hell will freeze over before they release their mainframe source. Or rather, they will have a highly evolved replacement before they release it as open source. In the meantime, please stop repeating the same assumption, that because there is a "free and open" version, all versions are "free and open".
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Yeah, sure, and you take the mainframe home with you in your backpocket at the weekend. I don't care whose mainframe it is, I don't care if the it's the NSA backbone machine, it's not yours.
What does that have to do with anything? Do I have an IBM S/390 in my apartment? No. Why would I, I prefer to not bring work with me home.
Yes, and hell will freeze over before they release their mainframe source. Or rather, they will have a highly evolved replacement before they release it as open source. In the meantime, please stop repeating the same assumption, that because there is a "free and open" version, all versions are "free and open".
I notice that things are tipping over for you, gone is the polite tone - maybe because it so hard for you to admit that you are wrong?
Again - Rexx is a _language_, for which there are _many_ implementations, not just the ones - plural- that IBM had for their various mainframes, AIX and OS/2 up through the years. IBM never chased anyone around for doing other Rexx implementations on whatever architectures. IBM released Rexx sources to the RexxLA. These are the sources we discuss here, if at all, not the sources to z/OS or whatever you seem to think. IBM is in general quite active with open source, especially if your field is within HPC/HPN, security and monitoring. They support development of both Linux and *BSD on their hardware, both metal and virtualised, by offering developers hardware. And they also work on bringing features from the mainframe world to Linux and the BSDs.
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As pointed out on http://rexxinfo.org:
Rexx is standardized by the 1996 ANSI standard and is not controlled by any one company or individual.
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On the topic of Rexx and truthiness...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
IBM licensed the Amiga GUI from Commodore in exchange for the REXX language license. This allowed OS/2 to have the WPS (Work Place Shell) GUI shell for OS/2 2.0 a 32-bit operating system.
With reference to two links, of which one is just a pointer to the other:
https://web.archive.org/web/20121020022353/http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html
a deal was made with Commodore. Commodore licensed IBM's REXX scripting language for inclusion in their AmigaOS, and IBM took many GUI design ideas from the AmigaOS for their new GUI
True? False?
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True? False?
Completely irrelevent to the Amiga. If you want to write Rexx for the Amiga, I have to point out, it's been done.
If you want to write Rexx for something else, that is also irrelevent to the Amiga.
If you just want to hold up Rexx as an example of something completely and utterly Open Source, I suggest you phone IBM in the morning and ask them how they feel about it. It's theirs, their call. Not mine. As you are a tech working on an IBM mainframe, this should not be a problem for you.
Quite frankly I'd have better things to do with my time, but if you really want to prove a point, I won't stop you. It might be CLM, a Career Limiting Move, professional suicide for you maybe, but that's not my concern. Or you might be correct, IBM mainframe Rexx is completely open source. Amazing. That doesn't mean Arexx is open source though. Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind.
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Completely irrelevent to the Amiga. If you want to write Rexx for the Amiga, I have to point out, it's been done.
Yes, several Rexx interpreters have been written for, and ported to Amiga.
If you just want to hold up Rexx as an example of something completely and utterly Open Source
I never did - I just point out that.. sigh... Rexx is a language, today defined by an ANSI standard, for which anyone can write an interpreter, commercially closed source, or open source - it does not matter - and sell, or give away or whatever. And IBM would not care one bit. Would IBM care if someone stole sources for a closed source interpreter they have? Sure. But that was never the issue here.
That doesn't mean Arexx is open source though.
And I never said it is, as I have mentioned so many times now, there are many Rexx interpreters, both commercial closed source and open source ones. ARexx clearly is a property of Willam S. Hawes, and not licensed to Commodore by IBM.
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If you just want to hold up Rexx as an example of something completely and utterly Open Source, I suggest you phone IBM in the morning and ask them how they feel about it.
There seems to be some confusion here. Rexx is a standard, and standards are, by very definition, open. It would be contradiction in terms if a standard would be held closed - the very purpose of standards is that they can be implemented by other parties. What could be the case, though, is that implementing it requires some IPs of its creator (IBM, in this case), and in such a case, one should study under which conditions IBM provides access to its IPs.
No matter what, "Open source" is a term that applies to implementations, not to standards. Standards can have both open and closed source implementations, and open source implementations may follow a proprietary protocol that is not standardized. It's really orthogonal.
Or you might be correct, IBM mainframe Rexx is completely open source. Amazing. That doesn't mean Arexx is open source though. Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind.
Whether IBMs Rexx implementation is open source I do not know. ARexx, certainly, is not open source. That, however, has no implications on the standard (or vice versa). Everyone can implement Rexx, which is probably why IBM has standardized it.
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Anyway, ARexx was a much better choice, in my opinion. An ideal fit for a multitasking OS. Much much much more sensible than any version of Basic. Be able to talk and control between different running applications. That was a much more powerful tool than a programming language aimed at beginners.
It's a pity Lua wasn't around back then.
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@thread
just to clarify something: if someone wants to create a 'regina' for z/OS, z/VM, or z/VSE, they are certainly welcome to. i can't imagine why anyone would want to replace the IBM environments for REXX on those operating systems, but the company certainly wouldn't sue. you couldn't call it 'REXX/VM' or anything like that, since that term is copyrighted, but nothing prevents anyone from creating a new interpreter. the one thing you wouldn't be able to do would be replace the hooks in TSO/E to use your software, but since that's not something someone outside of IBM can do anyway (for technical reasons), no issue there.
i'm not sure why this is even in question. the company has encouraged REXX development on a variety of platforms for the past three decades. indeed it even released the source code behind the object rexx runtime some years back. as a mainframer, the use of REXX to control applications was a major factor in my deciding to purchase my first amiga. i use it every day. :)
-- eliyahu
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Actually, as far as Os 4 is concerned, the situation is quite clear to me. Hyperion paid for it, and had the rights to run a Os 4 development on top of Os 3.1, so it's their source and their product. So no doubts about it. And "held hostage" is not quite the right term - they own it, they sell it. Buy it - or don't.
In the same sense, Windows is "held hostage" by Microsoft. But that's only fair. They produced it, they own it, and they can do with it whatever they like. If you don't need this product, don't get it. Unfortunately, the latter part is much harder to avoid than Os 4.
For Os 3.1, however, the situation is not so obvious. I've seen what Cloanto actually bought from the bankrupt estate of CBM (yes, really), and that are the ROM images (amongst others), but not the sources. So that doesn't give them rights on the source code, IMHO, despite Cloanto claiming the contrary. I don't thrust them either. All they have are just the compiled binary images, as distributed on ROM. As soon as they would stick to selling exactly that, it would be ok, but they don't.
I haven't seen anything like that for Hyperion, i.e. I do not know what exactly they got. The license to base 4.x development on 3.1 does IMHO not cover enough rights on 3.1 as such. So maybe the compromise settlement after the process with Amiga Inc. does give them that, but to be sure, I would need to read it, which I have not.
Hyperion nor Cloanto own the source code for 3.1. Amiga, Inc. owns the source code. Hyperion owns the source code to Amiga OS4 and has a license, not ownership, to use 3.1.
Hyperion Entertainment holds an exclusive, world-wide, perpetual source-code license to the intellectual property of AmigaOS 3.1 and additional content as documented in the publicly available settlement agreement between Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. which has taken the form of a stipulated judgement (https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/148).
~ http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/news/38-corporate/167-amigaos-31-source-code-leak-official-statement
Cloanto owns trademarks to AmigaForever and Workbench. They also only have a license, not ownership, to use 3.1 source code and Amiga trademarks in their AmigaForever package.
In conclusion, Amiga, Inc. is the one pulling the strings. They're never going to open-source 3.1, as they can still profit off of it through Hyperion and Cloanto. Trademarks and licenses are all Amiga, Inc has to profit off of as Bill McEwen couldn't invent his way out of a paper bag quite possibly due to being mildly retarded. His whole AmigaDE vision before the dotcom bubble crash was pretty hilarious. It would be nice to see Bill McEwen try to claim damages from something he himself declared dead. However, just because something seems morally right, doesn't make it legally right.
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AmigaDE was a nice idea, but the market went to cross platform framework instead of it.
Kamelito
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In conclusion, Amiga, Inc. is the one pulling the strings. They're never going to open-source 3.1, as they can still profit off of it through Hyperion and Cloanto.
Amiga Inc can't make a penny from Hyperion since all the licenses granted to Hyperion in the settlement agreement are royalty free. I don't know what Cloanto's arrangement is and whether Amiga Inc can collect royalties from them. For the OS to become open source it would require an agreement between Amiga Inc and Hyperion, and possibly Cloanto too.
Amiga Anywhere/DE was Fleecy's idea and not McBill's. The idea of the same code running on different CPU architectures without recompilation was ProDAD's intention with p.OS. I wonder if Fleecy ever contacted ProDAD since p.OS was actually intended as a standalone OS compared to TAO's Intent which was simply a media layer. I seem to recall that either Thomas or Hans-Jörg had told Amiga Inc that Intent was totally unsuitable to be used as a standalone OS.
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I don't know what Cloanto's arrangement is and whether Amiga Inc can collect royalties from them.
Cloanto paid $1.00 for "all Amiga Copyrights in the Universe" (yes, that's really what the contract says), and there are no regular license fees to be paid. So at this time, we are in the situation that Hyperion has a license agreement on the 3.1 sources, and for the development of 4.0, and Cloanto has (at the same time) a copyright on Kickstart and workbench up to 3.0 binaries, but probably not the sources.
This reads to me as if Amiga Inc at this time does not own anything anymore which would ensure a regular income, all assets have been sold or licensed, and as it seems, probably even sold twice.The only party that could release AmigaOs sources is probably Amiga Inc, but even there I would not be clear because the copyright might have been transfered to Cloanto, even though it does not appear in the asset list, because it is "some copyright in the universe". Oh well.
For the OS to become open source it would require an agreement between Amiga Inc and Hyperion, and possibly Cloanto too.
Correct. Hyperions Settlement agreement includes that Hyperion has to report breaches of Amiga Inc's interests and has to protect the sources. They cannot be made open source by them. Cloanto, on the other hand, does not seem to have rights on the sources anyhow. The list of assets for which copyright is transfered includes "Kickstart ROM Programs" up to 3.0, but not a source code. Whether Amiga Inc could transfer "the entire Amiga copyrights in the universe" to another party while first licensing the souces to Hyperion is another fascinating question.
Amiga Anywhere/DE was Fleecy's idea and not McBill's. The idea of the same code running on different CPU architectures without recompilation was ProDAD's intention with p.OS.
Another nonsense that came to an end. It was a "me, too!" product targetting the same market as Java, and was too little, too late. Even Java did not make it. Who is using Java on the desktop these days, anyhow? Successfully killed by Oracle.
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Amiga Anywhere/DE was Fleecy's idea and not McBill's. The idea of the same code running on different CPU architectures without recompilation was ProDAD's intention with p.OS.
No the "idea" was to put just enough lipstick on someone elses SW to lure investors into an IPO scam that never came to pass.
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Amiga Inc can't make a penny from Hyperion since all the licenses granted to Hyperion in the settlement agreement are royalty free. I don't know what Cloanto's arrangement is and whether Amiga Inc can collect royalties from them. For the OS to become open source it would require an agreement between Amiga Inc and Hyperion, and possibly Cloanto too.
Amiga Anywhere/DE was Fleecy's idea and not McBill's. The idea of the same code running on different CPU architectures without recompilation was ProDAD's intention with p.OS. I wonder if Fleecy ever contacted ProDAD since p.OS was actually intended as a standalone OS compared to TAO's Intent which was simply a media layer. I seem to recall that either Thomas or Hans-Jörg had told Amiga Inc that Intent was totally unsuitable to be used as a standalone OS.
It was a bit more than just a media layer, the idea of Intent wasn't too far removed from what we see in Android today really.
Interesting recent-ish post from one of the Tao developers here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607
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Hyperion Entertainment holds an exclusive, world-wide, perpetual source-code license to the intellectual property of AmigaOS 3.1 and additional content as documented in the publicly available settlement agreement between Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. which has taken the form of a stipulated judgement (https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/148).
~ http://hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php/news/38-corporate/167-amigaos-31-source-code-leak-official-statement
Untested in court. It was settled out of court, the court just rubber stamped it... and Amiga Inc never showed a direct path between CBM and themselves, in regards to the copyright on the source code.
I'm not saying there isn't such a direct path of transfer, but I think anybody trying to demonstrate proof of ownership to the copyrighted sourrce code is going to have a hard time of it - they'd have to show an agreement with the CBM liquidators, who were based in the Bahamas, as a starting point, which would include the term. If it wasn't included in the break up of CBM, it was never transferred from CBM.
Without that, nobody has a claim to it, but it's still copyrighted (to CBM).
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Folks...
One thing to remember, we are all getting old. Please make sure you pass on your Amiga beliefs to your kids. We need these battles to rage on after we are all gone. LOL. If your kids dont have an AO account, please have them register. hahahahha
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Amiga Inc can't make a penny from Hyperion since all the licenses granted to Hyperion in the settlement agreement are royalty free. I don't know what Cloanto's arrangement is and whether Amiga Inc can collect royalties from them. For the OS to become open source it would require an agreement between Amiga Inc and Hyperion, and possibly Cloanto too.
Amiga Anywhere/DE was Fleecy's idea and not McBill's. The idea of the same code running on different CPU architectures without recompilation was ProDAD's intention with p.OS. I wonder if Fleecy ever contacted ProDAD since p.OS was actually intended as a standalone OS compared to TAO's Intent which was simply a media layer. I seem to recall that either Thomas or Hans-Jörg had told Amiga Inc that Intent was totally unsuitable to be used as a standalone OS.
The royalties are free but the licensing fees aren't.
AmigaDE was McEwen and Fleecy's idea.
Question: In January 2000, you have bought all the Amiga Rights and Licences to Gateway, Why ? What were your real motivations with Fleecy Moss (your Vice President - Development) ? Bill McEwen: The Real motivations?? We never had the chance under Gateway to execute our plans and strategy. We believed in our mission and goals, and the only way that these were ever going to happen was if we purchased Amiga, and continued moving forward the strategy that we had laid out.
Source : http://www.boingball.net/AMIGA_FOR_EVER/Textes/Interviews/Interview_Bill_McEwen_mail2
Their plan of course was their failed attempt at a programming language that would be cross platform compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. They called this AmigaDE, which had as much to do with Amiga as C=USA's computers had to do with Commodore. Actually, less than C=USA as at least they had the decency to try to replicate the cases for Commodore's computers. AmigaDE wasn't Amiga, it was an idea two idiots had for a software program they thought they could sell by calling it Amiga after buying the trademarks and copyrights from Gateway.
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The royalties are free but the licensing fees aren't.
That sentence doesn't even make sense. Perhaps you need to reword it but I think what you're trying to say will still be incorrect.
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That sentence doesn't even make sense. Perhaps you need to reword it but I think what you're trying to say will still be incorrect.
You're right, that wasn't worded properly. I apologize. The license agreement that Hyperion has with Amiga, Inc. allows them to use certain copyrights and trademarks without paying royalty fees for each program sold. However, Hyperion still has to pay licensing fees to Amiga, Inc.
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I'm not saying there isn't such a direct path of transfer, but I think anybody trying to demonstrate proof of ownership to the copyrighted sourrce code is going to have a hard time of it - they'd have to show an agreement with the CBM liquidators, who were based in the Bahamas, as a starting point, which would include the term. If it wasn't included in the break up of CBM, it was never transferred from CBM.
It supposedly was....
http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/escombuys.html
"The transaction includes all rights to intellectual property"
I'm sure there will be a paper trail somewhere.
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I'm sure there will be a paper trail somewhere.
There is a trail in the contract between Amiga, Inc. and Cloanto. This contract includes an asset list of copyrights that have been transfered from Amiga Inc to Cloanto - which perhaps surprisingly - does not include source code or the 3.1 ROMs.
It also mentions that "all Amiga copyrights in the universe" are transfered to Cloanto.
The interesting question is now: Where is the copyright to the 3.1 ROMs? Is it included because it is "an Amiga copyright in the universe", or is it not, because its copyright has been transfered as part of the settlement agreement between Hyperion and Cloanto.
Depending on this question, either Cloanto or Hyperion is selling 3.1 ROMs without copyright.
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Depending on this question, either Cloanto or Hyperion is selling 3.1 ROMs without copyright.
So here is an interesting entry in the US copyright database:
http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=1&ti=1,1&SAB1=Amiga&BOOL1=all%20of%20these&FLD1=Title%20%28TKEY%29%20%28TKEY%29&GRP1=AND%20with%20next%20set&SAB2=System&BOOL2=as%20a%20phrase&FLD2=Title%20%28TKEY%29%20%28TKEY%29&CNT=25&PID=C5ZaPJyM4eUj90Y5OcwZK6m5rnO&SEQ=20170115041432&SID=9
Sorry for the lengthy URL. You can find it yourself at http://cocatalog.loc.gov, then go to "advanced search", and enter as search terms "Amiga" and "System" in title.
So, according to this entry, the copyright on the 3.1 AmigaOs has *not* been transfered to Cloanto, neither Hyperion, but is still owned by Amiga Inc.
Thus, I really wonder under which rights Cloanto and Hyperion are selling ROMs?
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Amino were willing to relinquish most of their IP for $1?
I am sure the Amiga community could have raised a bounty for $2 for "every Amiga copyright in the universe"...surely McBill would have wanted to raise as much cash as possible? Something strange here...
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Thus, I really wonder under which rights Cloanto and Hyperion are selling ROMs?
Probably under no right whatsoever, but as there is no entity to legally sue them, they can have it their way and also threaten/deter anyone else from doing the exact same thing.
Additionaly, they can show/throw old contracts or lawsuits, which have nothing to do with this particular subject, which can trick the average Joe into their scheme.
We are royally f*cked!
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Folks...
One thing to remember, we are all getting old.
This is something that is much too often forgotten.
Please make sure you pass on your Amiga beliefs to your kids. We need these battles to rage on after we are all gone. LOL. If your kids dont have an AO account, please have them register. hahahahha
Working on it ;)
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Probably under no right whatsoever,
Probably. At least for Hyperion, there is the "Settlement Agreement". A contract is a contract, it does not require testing in court. However, in this settlement agreement, the parties also agreed that Amiga Inc registers Hyperion as copyright holder on 3.1., and also provides the right to Hyperion to register themselfes as copyright holder after 25 days if Amiga Inc. doesn't do it.
This is clause 1d) of the agreement. One way or another, this copyright hand-over never happened, and Amiga Inc. is still registered at the US copyright office. See above for the link.
Then, we have Cloanto, which in the contract have "all Amiga copyrights in the universe", but probably their universe is smaller than mine. The copyright on 3.1 has not been handed over to Cloanto either. It is not listed in the asset list, and neither is Cloanto registered as copyright holder for this particular component.
So, what does that all mean? Amiga Inc. failed to hand over the copyright, Hyperion failed to register the copyright themselves, Amiga failed to hand over the copyright to Cloanto, and Cloanto failed to notice that they have no copyright on 3.1?
We are royally f*cked!
That's the short version of my long version. Probably someone tries to buy the copyright on 3.1. from Amiga Inc for $2?
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This is clause 1d) of the agreement. One way or another, this copyright hand-over never happened, and Amiga Inc. is still registered at the US copyright office. See above for the link.
The US hasn't required registration since it joined the Berne convention in 1989 (not requiring registration is one of the requirements of signing up to the Berne convention). You CAN register with the copyright office if you want everyone to know who to contact. However in terms of copyright ownership, it's largely irrelevant. You don't need to have registered your copyright to issue a DMCA takedown. Supposedly to get awarded damages in court you need to have it registered, but that goes against the Berne convention (especially for owners outside the US).
Neither Hyperion or Cloanto are US companies. So they are unlikely to worry too much what the US copyright office or supreme courts say especially as I don't think Hyperion or Cloanto are going to take anyone to court in the US to get damages from them, while their agreements and previous case rulings are enough to protect themselves in court.
Amino were willing to relinquish most of their IP for $1?
It's hard to transfer legal ownership without consideration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration_under_American_law
If two parties are suing each other and want to escape from the court case then they will often do deals like this where property changes hands. A famous example is DEC suing Intel and when they settled in 1997 and Intel agreed to buy StrongARM from DEC for $700 million https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-digital-settle-suit/. The money was essentially damages for the technology that Intel stole, but DEC also got to offload StrongARM as they weren't able to make money out of it. Intel kept it going for a while, but in 2006 they sold it to marvell for $600 million.
Amiga Inc agreed to sell it to a specific person for as part of a bigger deal, a random stranger wouldn't have been able to jump in and offer $2.
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The essential issue is that Amiga Inc. never had rights to CBM/Escom property, they only had rights regarding the brandname. So for example, they could build/sell/license cellphones or tablets with the Amiga name, but that was it (they had no rights regarding any former software or hardware design asset).
The CBM/Escom property still belongs to Gateway (well, to the series of companies that bought Gateway). This property was never transfered to Amiga Inc. and probably is now a dossier in some archive room in a technology company that doesnt give a damn about the Amiga, and worst of all, doesnt even know it has it in the first place.
At the time, there was concrete evidence of the brandname transfer from Gateway to Amiga Inc. I remember that the Amiga community was screaming out loud and complaining that AmigaOS and its 68k hardware designs were not transfered and Bill Mc Ewen, who was a man hungry for the quick buck, saw the opportunity to capitalise on this market, and then rectified former statements and claimed they also got the software and hardware design rights. It was just his unsubstanciated claim, nothing else, and no real evidence of property transfer ever surfaced. So Hyperion can claim the favourable court judgement, but Amiga Inc. had no rights regarding AmigaOS 3.1 to begin with. It is only just a contract judgement due to unfullfilled obligations of a party but not a proof of ownership whatsoever.
Cloanto only had a licence to distribute AmigaOS for emulation purposes. Nothing else despite their claims and attempts to register every Amiga related jargon as a brandname of their property. They certainly dont have rights to sell burned kickstart roms for real hardware, or floppies for real Amiga systems, but then who is going to challenge what they are doing?
Both CBM and Escom based their business around selling hardware. AmigaOS was, from a businees point of view, seen just as a hardware accesory or even as an additional feature, not their main revenue income by far. Getting a license to build and redistribute AmigaOS during those days was pretty easy and affordable for the average developer. If I remember well enough, as a developer you could get a license to redistribute AmigaOS with your own software by paying CBM just $50 a year. So it was not an issue.
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okay, so since the situation is completely unclear and none has proven their rights to whatever part of it with enough certanity, then its simply public domain and everybody can mess with it at will. fine with me, please proceed. simply dont take all these court cases apart yet again, it is sooo boring to witness..
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okay, so since the situation is completely unclear and none has proven their rights to whatever part of it with enough certanity, then its simply public domain
No, it does exactly not mean that. Public domain means that somebody - the rights holder - had waived his rights. It requires an explicit declaration to do so. But as you neither know who the rights holder is, nor whether he has or has not waived his rights, it remains at worst an abandoned piece of software. But that does not mean that you have the right to modify it, or derive works from it.
It means that you can be hit on the hat quite hardly should the rights holder could attempt at any time to execute his rights.
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The essential issue is that Amiga Inc. never had rights to CBM/Escom property, they only had rights regarding the brandname. So for example, they could build/sell/license cellphones or tablets with the Amiga name, but that was it (they had no rights regarding any former software or hardware design asset).
Where do you know this from? At least in the Cloanto contract, a chain of ownership is provided which goes from CBM Electronics to ESCOM, from ESCOM to Amiga, and from there to Cloanto. How valid and correct all these papers are I cannot judge (IANAL), but at least, there is more than nothing.
The CBM/Escom property still belongs to Gateway (well, to the series of companies that bought Gateway). This property was never transfered to Amiga Inc. and probably is now a dossier in some archive room in a technology company that doesnt give a damn about the Amiga, and worst of all, doesnt even know it has it in the first place.
There seems to be other evidence here. How do you know? Any traces?
Cloanto only had a licence to distribute AmigaOS for emulation purposes.
That might be then another contract I do not see. What I see here is something that claims transfer of copyright from Amiga to Cloanto, unrestricted, not limited to emulation.
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The US hasn't required registration since it joined the Berne convention in 1989 (not requiring registration is one of the requirements of signing up to the Berne convention). You CAN register with the copyright office if you want everyone to know who to contact.
I do not know - probably. However, one way or another: Something makes me very suspicious here: You can check for the assets mentioned in the Cloanto-Amiga deal, that is, Kickstart 1.3, Kickstart 2.02, Kickstart 2.04 and some other random junk, including VC-20 and C64 manuals. If you check for *those* at the US copyright office, you'll find that they have all, indeed, been transfered to Cloanto. The entries have been properly updated, see my link above. There is, however, at the same office also an entry for AmigaOs 3.1 - and for this particular entry, Cloanto *is not* listed.
Is that just coincidence?
At least, it should make you scratch your head.
Neither Hyperion or Cloanto are US companies.
Not so. The transfer goes, according to these papers, from Amiga Inc, a US based company in Delaware, to "Cloanto Corporation", a US based company in the state of Nevada, and from there again to Cloanto Italia, srl.
The settlement with Hyperion, indeed, seems to be between the Belgium Hyperion and the US Amiga Inc in Delaware.
If two parties are suing each other and want to escape from the court case then they will often do deals like this where property changes hands.
I do not doubt that, but that doesn't make the deal less valid in any particular way. A contract is a contract.
Amiga Inc agreed to sell it to a specific person for as part of a bigger deal, a random stranger wouldn't have been able to jump in and offer $2.
Oh, certainly. Nobody can force them to sell anything, but as it seems, they are at least potentially still the copyright holders of 3.1 (and not Cloanto), and if they sold everything to Cloanto for $1, let's just double the price for 3.1 and see where that goes... (-; The costs for the attorney for this trade where also pretty reasonable, so anyone wants to jump on this?
One way or another, the whole story is pretty hilarious.
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Yes, the current copyright scheme is hilarious, and very little about what copyrights were originally about. First of all, originally you had to be a person to hold copyrights, companies were not in position to do so. And copyrights were originally for a _much_ shorter time. The draconian system currently in place is there very much because of Walt Disney, who had no second thoughts about taking public domain fairy tales and turn them into Disney property, or even screwing people over regarding copyrights (from the top of my head, Milne over Winnie-the-Pooh and Barrie over Peter Pan.) It is still possible AFAIK within the Berne convention and treaty of Rome, possible to not recognise companies as legal entities who can have copyrights. I know this was the case for Russia for a long while after USSR broke up.
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@Thomas Would that not mean you could be hit legally even if you would have agreements with Cloanto and/or Hyperion? That would mean that Aros Rom Replacements are the only legal safe way to use? I know that you prefer to use 3.1 as base f.e. for Vampire/standalone devices but would your preferred way not be very risky for any commercial vendor?
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That would mean that Aros Rom Replacements are the only legal safe way to use?
It is not at all legally safe for anyone who worked on any original AmigaOS to work with AROS.
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It is not at all legally safe for anyone who worked on any original AmigaOS to work with AROS.
I will just leave this here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
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It is not at all legally safe for anyone who worked on any original AmigaOS to work with AROS.
Yes who did? Me not I do not know anyone who worked with AmigaOS and now with Aros. Reimplementation without using original sources or looking in those just based on behavior is legal.
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@Thomas Would that not mean you could be hit legally even if you would have agreements with Cloanto and/or Hyperion?
Yes, such a risk exists, in principle. It all depends on whether Amiga Inc was ever in posession of the copyrights (likely, but not necessarily), and even then, a permission from Hyperion might mean nothing if Cloanto is the owner on 3.1 (it does not seem so, but who knows?), and a permission from Cloanto means nothing if Hyperion is the owner (which is currently my most plausible assumption, but who knows?). Then we have components that were developed under contract of H&P, which means that H&P may have some rights, and components developed for H&P under 3.9 for which the rights may or may not have went back to the individuals that contributed.
So, at this point, I'm completely unclear where the rights for FFS or SetPatch are located. The headers say "(c) Heinz Wrobel". It was done for 3.9, so is it "(c) H&P"? Or did Heinz regain rights on them after a two years period? Or did Hyperion bought the rights for that from H&P? It all depends on the individual contracts that had been negotiated between parties back then, and into which I do not have any insight.
So yes, it is complicated.
That would mean that Aros Rom Replacements are the only legal safe way to use?
No, certainly not. If you bought your system with 3.1, you can use those ROMs without any danger. If you bought the 3.1 ROMs back then in a shop, copyright was fairly clear, and there is no danger either.
If you buy a 3.1 ROM from Cloanto these days... well, who knows? If you buy a 3.1 ROM from Hyperion these days... well, who knows?
It is highly unlikely that any of these players will reach out to individuals as there is no money to be made, so no worries. But if you *distribute* masses of such ROMs, you may become a problem. That is, either stand alone, or as part of another product, you may be in trouble - potentially.
So, for example, the vampire depends on 3.1 ROMs from Cloanto. Do they have actually rights on this ROM? Honestly, I do not know, but at least their copyright is not registered (which is likely not necessary), but it's at least a bit strange that the copyright for all other Kickstarts *are* registered for Cloanto, and you may wonder why.
I know that you prefer to use 3.1 as base f.e. for Vampire/standalone devices but would your preferred way not be very risky for any commercial vendor?
I would not call it "very risky", especially the "very" part, but at least there is a potential risk given the highly unclear situation.
Then again, has any individual contributing to AROS has ever had a look at the Amiga Os sources? If so, please add the "risk part" here, too. Not the "very" part.
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I wonder what the REAL truth is...
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I wonder what the REAL truth is...
Well... as often in legal matters, the question is whether something like this even exists. Everybody of course believes that his believe is right, and unless a decision is made in court, you do not know who is right. Even then, it is only a decision, and not a "truth".
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Well... as often in legal matters, the question is whether something like this even exists. Everybody of course believes that his believe is right, and unless a decision is made in court, you do not know who is right. Even then, it is only a decision, and not a "truth".
Lawyers seldom care about truth, only whatever they can away with passing off as 'truth' without getting caught.
Probably the main reason I don't trust a word Hyperion ever say. ;)
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It is not at all legally safe for anyone who worked on any original AmigaOS to work with AROS.
It's totally safe. They just can't receive money for working on AROS. That would be unsafe.
You cannot legally stop somebody from doing voluntary work without breaching their civil rights ("freedom of expression"), and any contracts signed with CBM are long, long void.
A right cannot be forfeited. A privalege can be forfeited, but NEVER a right. They are non-removable. 1689, Bill of Rights. This goes back to even before America was born.
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As a matter of interest, who leaked the code ?
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@Pat
You cannot legally stop somebody from doing voluntary work without breaching their civil rights ("freedom of expression")
I'm interested in this assertion. Do you have precedent for this in the US?
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It's totally safe. They just can't receive money for working on AROS. That would be unsafe.
I highly doubt this. Otherwise, I could take the AmigaOs sources and provide them for free using the same arguing. Whether AROS does or does not violate AmigaOs copyrights I do not know, but if it does, you cannot go around it by just making it available free of charge.
That AROS is provided free of charge just means that it is pretty unattractive to attack.
You cannot legally stop somebody from doing voluntary work without breaching their civil rights ("freedom of expression"), and any contracts signed with CBM are long, long void.
It's not a matter of a contract. If you take code from somebody else's work, you violate the right of this person.
A right cannot be forfeited. A privalege can be forfeited, but NEVER a right. They are non-removable. 1689, Bill of Rights. This goes back to even before America was born.
Which still doesn't give you the right to steal somebody else's work. Again, I'm not saying anything about whether this happened with AROS (probably not), but if it happened, then the Bill of Rights does not help there.
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A right cannot be forfeited. A privalege can be forfeited, but NEVER a right. They are non-removable. 1689, Bill of Rights. This goes back to even before America was born.
The Bill of Rights was and is not universal, not even in England.
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It's totally safe. They just can't receive money for working on AROS. That would be unsafe.
No need to receive money to harm the owner's rights.
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@vxm You amiga guys should do more productive things than discussing legal issues, expecially if noone really knows the situaton and is attorney. Clean-room implementations are legal, even big companies with certainly lots of good attorneys had to accept that. If now over the years someone has contributed who looked at the leaked sources or had any access to it is pure speculation and it would be impossible to proof. At least Aros is the only chance to have something legal on 68k including the roms. Even though I do not really believe that anyone would be sued, even when using original roms from a illegal source simply because the small market would not be worth the money needed.
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How is development of CLI for AROS and MorphOS coordinated with what Thomas here is doing with OS3.x shell?
My guess - not at all :)
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How is development of CLI for AROS and MorphOS coordinated with what Thomas here is doing with OS3.x shell?
My guess - not at all :)
Given that the shell functionality itself is founded on the weird and the wonderful of what the Tripos kernel could provide, I doubt that a coordination would be fruitful. The shell's architecture and its place in AmigaDOS impose constraints which do not (or at least should not) exist in AROS or MorphOS. Not exactly ball and chain, more like aircraft carrier and chain ;)
Now, shell commands, that's a different story, as long as they use public dos.library APIs and data structures.
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Given that the shell functionality itself is founded on the weird and the wonderful of what the Tripos kernel could provide, I doubt that a coordination would be fruitful.
Unfortunately, yes. Would I ever had to implement a shell, I wouldn't do it this way. What I currently attempt is a minimally-invasive cleanup of the legacy structures, with any extension I make coming from POSIX whenever possible or feasible (such as "<<" and "*>" and "&").
The Tripos legacy adds at all levels of the shell, unfortunately. Should I start with the highly inconsistent (and up to recently mostly undefined) syntax? Or the interoperation between the Shell and script execution ("Execute" and all its wierdos)? Or the amounts of black magic in the Shell start-up? Which are, for good reasons, undocumented. It spares the reader a real headache.
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Should I start with the highly inconsistent (and up to recently mostly undefined) syntax? Or the interoperation between the Shell and script execution ("Execute" and all its wierdos)? Or the amounts of black magic in the Shell start-up? Which are, for good reasons, undocumented. It spares the reader a real headache.
I know of maybe 10% of what you refer to. Personally I would miss such things, being one of those "Execute weirdo" types, but then again you are kind of in a no-win situation with that stuff. You can't please everybody even if you did nothing. You can't please everybody with what you release.
So at least you are doing something positive by trying something new that works better, even if some people miss the old black magic. They can still have it, but they have the old limitations too, and miss out on new features added.
The biggest kind of "black magic" I can think of was the official CBM line on the phrase "compatibility". It is the most nonsensical gibberish I have ever read in the English language, barring perhaps a Windows or MS-DOS EULA. :furious:
Do your best, Herr Richter, anybody and everybody involved in Amiga development work. No one can expect you to do more. They might moan and complain, but the real honour lies with the person who takes up challenges and meets them, as best they can.
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@vxm You amiga guys should [...]
It seems that you have misinterpreted my intervention.
I thought it was reasonable to report legal evidence.
So I put out of context a somewhat dangerous statement.
I have not reported any opinion regarding any initiative or on the legal situation of the Amiga.
NB: Business law was part of my studies.
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AmigaOS 3.1 source code "leak"
Hey, can I get a copy?!
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Hey, can I get a copy?!
Those evil pirates at Google have it Tone. ;)
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=amiga+os+source+code+3.1.tar.bz2
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OS 3.1 source has such niche value that for all intents and purposes it is non-existent. Opportunities to commercialise are even fewer.
20 years ago it would've been awesome, 10 years ago there might have been some residual commercial interest.
Today? It is just a mere curiosity.
Even enterprising entities within the tiny Amiga marketplace have no plans to directly commercialise their licensed access to the 3.1 source.
Negative consequences? None.
Positive consequences? I've wanted access to the source for a very long time, and I have even approached Hyperion about licensing it. But there is very little I could have done in one year even if I had everything primed.
It's cool to see that some have been able to make improvements to their software by having access to the source.