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GPL MorphOS?
« on: April 04, 2003, 10:53:41 PM »
Seeing as Genesi are giving MorphOS away for free (as in beer) already, I think it would be advantages for them to completely corner the Amiga market by releasing the source under the GPL licence.  It would increase adoption of the OS considerably.  Maybe a merger with the AROS code?

Is there any legal reason you can't do this BBRV?
 

Offline Kronos

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2003, 11:13:01 PM »
Why should they ?

All people who have a clue about OS-coding in this market
allready work for them or on AROS which shares some sources
  :-P  :flame:  :quickdraw:  :shocked:
(should be enough grim-balls).

MorphOS is their main piece of capital and without control
about everybody could just use it in a way that wouldn't bring
in money.

Making MorphOS mandatory with every Pegasos makes sure it gets
disrtibuted and used by 3rd party developers.

Releasing a free version for the Phase5-HW would gain MOS a quite
big market-share against OS4. If they manage to release it before
OS4 it might even be the last punch to make OS4 fail.

But that is not the main reason for making it free, AFAIK they
have decided that releasing a commercial OS for the AA-Amigas (and
worst of it th A1200) with all the hacks and add-ony, the ageing
HW, the obscure SW .... would be a GIGANTIC support problem, and
in that case they would be forced to secure a working OS for
every config, while a free OS is just a "if it don't run it
won't run " affair.
1. Make an announcment.
2. Wait a while.
3. Check if it can actually be done.
4. Wait for someone else to do it.
5. Start working on it while giving out hillarious progress-reports.
6. Deny that you have ever announced it
7. Blame someone else
 

Offline iamaboringperson

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2003, 11:21:04 PM »
Quote

mdma wrote:
Seeing as Genesi are giving MorphOS away for free (as in beer) already, I think it would be advantages for them to completely corner the Amiga market by releasing the source under the GPL licence.  It would increase adoption of the OS considerably.  Maybe a merger with the AROS code?

Is there any legal reason you can't do this BBRV?


oh, I would LOVE to have the source code to morphos!!!
I would really benefit - im sure i would!  :-P

however, do you think the creators would get anything out of it? more sales? more profit? more anything??

certainly, if i had my own OS i would not give the source away! it would put me out of business!!!

 :-o
 

Offline Paul_Gadd

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2003, 11:31:08 PM »
Giving away MorphOS for free is one thing but to release the source code is suicide.
 

Offline zacman

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2003, 11:57:12 PM »
>I think it would be advantages for them to
>completely corner the Amiga market by releasing
>the source under the GPL licence.

Genesi has to pay its full time developers.

>Maybe a merger with the AROS code?

They already do code sharing.
 

Offline KennyR

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2003, 12:31:01 AM »
Quote
Maybe a merger with the AROS code?


AROS code is rather broken and isn't very useful in praxis. AFAIR, MOS coders looked at AROS as a potential starting point for MOS in the very beginning. They rejected it as unworkable.

Edit: That's not exactly true - they used it for some parts of the code as a starting point - but had to mostly rewrite and fix it.
 

Offline zacman

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2003, 12:54:39 AM »
>AROS code is rather broken and isn't very useful in
>praxis

MorphOS uses AROS code. The advantage for the
AROS team is that their source code gets tested
using real applications.
 

Offline Dan

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2003, 11:38:16 AM »
Quote
Seeing as Genesi are giving MorphOS away for free (as in beer) already, I think it would be advantages for them to completely corner the Amiga market by releasing the source under the GPL licence. It would increase adoption of the OS considerably. Maybe a merger with the AROS code?

Is there any legal reason you can't do this BBRV?


Why should they realese the MOS source?
It would be suicide.
But releasing the improvements they might have done to the AROS parts they are using would be a good thing.
Apple did it right the first time, bring back the Newton!
 

Offline Kronos

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2003, 11:43:10 AM »
Quote

Dan wrote:

But releasing the improvements they might have done to the AROS parts they are using would be a good thing.


MorphOS is fully complying with the AROS-licence, which means
they allways released any changes made to the used AROS-
modules and feeded them back to AROS.
1. Make an announcment.
2. Wait a while.
3. Check if it can actually be done.
4. Wait for someone else to do it.
5. Start working on it while giving out hillarious progress-reports.
6. Deny that you have ever announced it
7. Blame someone else
 

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #9 on: April 05, 2003, 12:50:16 PM »
Why would it be suicide?

Q. What would they lose?
A. Nothing.

Q.What would they gain?
A. Massive market share, and all the benefits of the OSS community.

For example
Why buy AOS4 when you can download MOS-GPL for free.  Run it on your old hardware for a while.  Then, when it comes to buying new hardware, you buy a Peg2/3/4/5 (or whatever) as you are used to using MOS and all your software is written for MOS as it has the biggest user base.   Is it suicide for RedHat, SuSE, et al releasing their code? No it isn't.

It would kill AOS4 dead if they released the code.
 

Offline falemagn

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2003, 01:18:52 PM »
Quote
AROS code is rather broken and isn't very useful in praxis.


Care to elaborate?

Quote
AFAIR, MOS coders looked at AROS as a potential starting point for MOS in the very beginning. They rejected it as unworkable.


Funny, since MOS uses a lot of AROS code...
 

Offline olegil

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2003, 01:19:03 PM »
I really don't see why releasing the code is so much more of a holy grail than having a free binary download. An OS is NOT something you change and recompile on a daily basis. I suspect it's already quite easy to get access to the codebase for someone who wants to port it to other systems or help out improving it.

Please stop acting like RMS is god and all applications should be © FSF, ok?
I actually prefer a real open source license, like the BSD license. With the deletion of the advertising clause this license is pretty much perfect. Personal interpretation: "Use it, modify it do whatever the hell you want. But I made the original version, and I want credit for that."

Flames go, as usual, to NIL:
 

Offline Dietmar

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #12 on: April 05, 2003, 01:31:14 PM »
>Q. What would they lose?
>A. Nothing.

What about money ? They want to sell their hardware and if the OS is released with its source code, every other manufacturer out there could use it for their own agenda (manufature a set top box or whatever is Genesi's goal).
 

Offline falemagn

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #13 on: April 05, 2003, 01:32:49 PM »
Quote
I actually prefer a real open source license,


There are a lot more of "real open source" licenses than the BSD one, and I think you'll be surprised to know that GPL, for instance, is a "real open source" license.

FREE CLUE.
 

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Re: GPL MorphOS?
« Reply #14 on: April 05, 2003, 01:47:37 PM »
Quote
There are a lot more of "real open source" licenses than the BSD one, and I think you'll be surprised to know that GPL, for instance, is a "real open source" license.


Well said.

I think that AROS is poised to be much more widely used than MOS due to it's OSS licence.

Amiga died due to being closed.  You can't argue with that.