Next step for Amiga(like)OS?

[persia]

It's pretty safe to say there is no OS5 outside of Taos Intent (AKA Amiga Anywhere) .   AmigaDev works in dotNet, although they seem to have picked up some Linux skills as well.  They aren't OS developers.  Amiga Inc's website has been devoid of even fake announcements since February.

Amiga Inc are liars, they bid US$20 million to name a stadium when they had no cash on hand, they announced new machines with an individual who doesn't have the facilities to make good on the deal, they send a letter stating that they turned down deals bigger than iPhone because of the court case, a profoundly idiotic thing to say since a) OS4 doesn't work on pocket size devices and b) the amount of money that they and Hyperion are talking about is a relatively small number compared to iPhone and c) nobody who had that kind of money would want to deal with KMOS/Amiga Inc.

If KMOS (AKA Amiga Inc) win the court case, which is not a forgone conclusion, they will take AmigaDos and bury it and that will be the end.  If Hyperion win they'll develop it, but for PPC only, which is a dead end path with little or no choice of hardware.

Any future that AmigaDos or an AmigaDos-like OS has is with us.

[persia]

Let's be straight here, we are talking about CBM IP, much of it beyond the 17 year threshold/shelf life.

There are four questions here

1) None of the original CBM the Original CBM IP related to the Amiga is still legally binding.  There have been derivative works, 3.5 and 3.9 that would protect some of the IP, but exactly how much?  

2) What was the deal that Amino (Amiga Inc Washington) had with Gateway?  Did they get the IP or just use of the IP and name?  

3) When Amino (Amiga Inc Washington) ran away from it's creditors and former employees, it bailed some of the IP it had control over to Hyperion and the majority to KMOS (Amiga Inc Delaware).  What did they bail to Hyperion and what to KMOS?  And, if they didn't actually own the IP but simply had an exclusive lease on it, did they have the right to transfer it at all?

4) What agreements did Hyperion have with KMOS (Amiga Inc Deleware) after the noble escape from the debt accrued by Amino?

It's a tangled web of deceit and lies that may take years to untangle.  We're dealing with three bankruptcies and dozens of different contracts.  We don't have a consistent IP holder over any period of time.  In the end Hyperion could argue that Amiga Inc is nothing but a name badge, much like Packard Bell was, and that if Amino didn't have the right to transfer the agreement with Gateway the whole Amiga name and AmigaOS are abandon ware because Acer and it's subsidiary Gateway have not enforced their agreement with Amino, have not pursued KMOS and generally ignored the Amiga IP and name.

[persia]

Wouldn't it be nice if AROS could get under the Novel umbrella?  Novel would have no trouble swatting an insignificant insect like Amiga Inc/KMOS.  And it would give AROS a credibility amongst developers that it doesn't currently have.

[persia]

Remeber Maui X-Stream VX-30?  They produced CherryOS which when diassembled showed direct lines from PearPC..  They're princple product also shows directly stolen code.  

[persia]

@Aeroman

You are right of course, an OS designed with the original ideas of the Amiga would be a good option, however the Amiga community doesn't seem to have the programmers to accomplish this.  It's scarey that six months have passed and we are no closer to getting OS4 running on a MacMini than before.  

Maybe the only road ahead is to port MOS to Intel...

[persia]

The dream is to move to intel so that we finally have all the choices in hardware...

[persia]

I really don't get this race idea.  there is no race, there is no competition, that took place a decade and a half ago and Amiga lost.  Amiga now is in a place of being something that you use in addition to a PC or Mac,  it's not and never will be a replacement.

Now since this isn't a race it makes sense to have the Amiga run on the same hardware as Macs and PCs.  Especially in this day of virtualisation.  You can have a PC with a virtual Amiga, an Amiga with a virtual PC or Mac.  The hardware should be the same to make this easier.

This whole idea that I even need a computer for each OS is just plain silly.  Why?  Because that's how they did things back in  the 20th Century?  

I have a Mac, I run OS X, XP, Gentoo Linux, one box, one screen, on keyboard.  Intel/AMD equipment is cheap, can you say that about Amiga equipment?  Stuff that you would throw out if it we're Amiga, and you pay 100s of dollarsfor it, where's the sense?  

[persia]

Not everyone's demands are that sofisticated, my 10 year old son does fine on a 700 MHz G4, that's pretty old technology.  My wife have a single core AMD 3200.  Not too sophisticated.  But they don't push the machine, my wife does email, surfs the web, does a little word processing.  My son does similar plus itunes and some games.

I on the other hand do animation, video editing, photo editing, 3D modelling, so I have 8 cores all running at 3.2 GHz.  Having to update is the price I pay for staying on the edge.  

You could always borrow spare computer power from other machines in your house, look up the Condor Project or use X Grid if you just have Macs.

[persia]

Amiga's future is as a retro machine, the people it will attract are the retro hobbyists.  It's like amateur radio or antique cars.  Speed and power mean nothing in that world.  There will never be a modern Amiga because there is no market for one.

[persia]

Mac provided a bridge to allow new software to develop.  Classic can't run on any Mac made in the last 2 years, and no Motorola based software runs on anything made in this century.  The trouble with Amiga is that it's living in a time warp, 20 year old software is still desirable.  This is a problem, the Amiga can't make the jump in one step and in trying to take multiple steps you will use the handful of users that still exist.

Maybe we're just deluding ourselve anyway.  If someone really produced a modern Amiga OS there's still no software, nobody will care.

[persia]

Just making a modern OS isn't the only problem.  If there were a modern Amiga OS it still would lake applications to run on it.  There's nobody to write the OS, nobody to write the killer apps.  Face it, if you had an idea for a killer app you'd develop it to run on MS Windows and OS X too.

I can get 512 MB graphics cards from NVIDEA, you can put multiple cards and combine the processing power of the cards.  I can run dual quad core Xeons in the machine itself.  Who's going to write the OS that can handle all these processors?  And then write an app better than current sate of the art by a mile.  Even then there's no office suite unless you port OpenOffice.  The whole thing is just daunting in the extreme.