aros fork?

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bloodline wrote:

now is a good time to decide what we want from AROS... the floor is open...

I have to disagree.  10 years ago would have been a good time to decide.  8 years ago maybe.  But now?  It's been left far too late.

AROS has been badly managed, and heading in various wonky-arsed directions since the start.  The position it is in today is possibly the worst it could be.  Unable to run any of the software that the platform is loved for, while at the same time hamstrung by the same 1980's limitations.  Comparisons to a chocolate teapot would not be completely unfair.

I mean no disrespect to Rob, but I don't think he quite gets the whole Amiga thing, and although I'd welcome a modern Amiga-like OS, I don't think he will be able to deliver.  He admits himself that he is at heart a *nix hacker, and I think this is reflected in his ideas about a new breed AROS, which reads very much like yet another *nix  system.  

To be fair there seems to be a similar movement from within the Amiga community itself, usually presenting itself as 'porting' syndrome, often in the form of "why don't you port X, so we can have ability Y".  All that will lead to is a {bleep} Ami-nix mess that will satisfy no-one.

If someone could create a system where at user level (and by that I mean everything down to the File structure) was as close to AmigaOS 3+ as possible even though it was using existing open source code underneath.  By this I mean something where all the commands in C: that I'd expect are there and behave as their 3.x counterparts, where Graphics.library is really Cairo, but I wouldn't know, where CUPS is used, but I only see printer.device, and I can install drivers by dragging .printer files to devs:printers.  As soon as you start looking at etc folders, cryptic commands, editing bizarre configuration files, and XWindows, you might as well be using linux.

IMO AROS would be best placed to dump the x86 side altogether and re-position itself on 68k.  That might sound backwards, but I think being able to provide an open OS for emulation and classic hardware is much more useful, and more likely to enjoy success in the long run.

Sorry if the above seems mean-spirited.  I honestly respect the amount of work that has been put into AROS, but I must talk honestly about how bad the situation is.

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bloodline wrote:

The AROS source code is there... if anyone wanted to they could take it and get it compling on 68K... Bernd is the only one who has so far with his AFA... that sorce code is not going anywhere, It just takes someone with the motivation to do it...

It's exactly this kind of "meh" attitude that makes me want to get the AROS team and the AROS fanboys a collective slap.  :whack:  Open source is not an excuse to be disorganised and directionless.

I wouldn't care if AROS was a "just for fun" project, but it's always being banded about as the saviour of the platform, the only future.  You can't have it both ways.  You can't declare that you are going to solve everyone's problems one minute, and then pussy out the next because it's a volunteer project.

The 68k issue is a painfully obvious case where no-one thought before they declared that there was no issue.  Every time binary compatibility is mentioned, this holy grail of an integrated EUAE is always put forward as the no-brainer solution, and yet no-one seems to have really thought about how it is going to work in practice.  No-one appears to realised how stupid it is to have AROS, the supposedly completely Amiga-IP-free OS, reliant on Amiga Inc's IP for core functionality (and being able to run Amiga software IS core functionality).

Good open source software has good leadership.  Good open source projects don't turn around to users and say "you do better", they do better themselves.