Call for Amiga Developers from A-EON Technology

[OlafS3]

Trevor in his speech says " 14 developers engaged under NDA..." Which is common in the software industry so I see no problem here.
Kamelito

it depends on what is in the NDA. Most devs left have their own projects and are active on other platforms.

[OlafS3]

I sincerely believe A-Eon wants to encourage Amiga development albeit with a focus on AmigaOS 4 and PPC. They need to convert more 68k Amiga users and developers to expand their user and developer base. I doubt that the AmigaNG is competitive enough to attract many outside users and developers.

amiga api is very different to what people learn and use today. There are no outside devs with experience with it except perhaps some old ones but I doubt that they want to get involved again

[OlafS3]

The Raspberry Pi was a new system with weak CPU performance (~300MHz Pentium II single core performance) and now has thousands of developers, good "official" compiler support and about 30 operating systems have been developed for it. Cheap hardware attracts users and users attract developers. Learning new APIs and hardware doesn't seem to be a problem when there is plentiful cheap and standard hardware.

Yes cheap hardware sells and that creates a market but... anything custom PPC related will be much more expensive than Raspberry is. In my view porting AmigaOS to another ISA like ARM would have made more sense economically than building new PPC boards that have to be expensive because low sales have to cover high development expenses.

[OlafS3]

@Acill

Yes of course.

this press release is a little vague to attract anyone...

what projects are open, what conditions are offered, what contracts have to be signed? Most devs left have projects and are active on different platforms. Forcing them only to develop for AOS in future is certainly not interesting to them

[OlafS3]

Where is anyone being forced to only work on AOS?

Thomas Richter has told that... he is not allowed to do anything on Aros 68k because of signed contract

[OlafS3]

You have to remember we attended many shows around the world and have met many developers prior to this face to face discussing many details.

For example, I met Acill personally at Amiwest and after talking with him would be happy to work with him on projects.

the number of active developers in the community is pretty limited. Why not simply contacting them and offering them specific tasks?

[OlafS3]

Is that contract with A-Eon or with Hyperion? Is he working on applications or on AmigaOS itself? There could be differences in his situation vs this thing from A-Eon now.

perhaps I have only some mistrust there... but I am not their goal group anyway

As I wrote... the active devs left are known. They could simply contact them directly, offer them vacant jobs and conditions (what to sign, payment and so on) and then someone will take a job or not

[OlafS3]

I've messaged A-Eon on there website saying that I'm interested. Do you know when I'll get an answer and how long it takes for them to respond? Thanks.

just wait two more weeks

[OlafS3]

From the front page, "This is the AmigaOS Documentation Wiki. Here we collect all information for users and developers of AmigaOS version 4.0 and beyond."

If you want material prior to version 4 of AmigaOS then you will likely need to talk to Cloanto. Cloanto has been buying up all the rights to previous versions of AmigaOS and Michael is very interested in preservation. Michael has been pushing the preservation idea at every single Amiga 30th event this year so I'm surprised you guys missed that.

Back on topic, I think some people's dogmatic idealism is getting in the way of getting things done. A-EON is doing a fantastic job of getting new software products to market by paying developers so don't complain when they want to protect their copyright at the same time. If you don't like it, stop the endless talking and start a bounty to buy the rights from A-EON and make it "free" or get out of the way because they aren't slowing down for a few hippies.

they do not need to slow down for anyone, if they make a offer that is interesting then people will buy it, if not they will loose money with it

[OlafS3]

Or grumpy old men, in the case of this forum.  :lol:

you look in the mirror? :lol:

[OlafS3]

@ matthey

But its REAL Amiga OS (OS4), they don't have time for, uh real...Amiga...OS.
Huh?

And A-eon doesn't depend completely on Hyperion, except for their entire primary OS.
They could depend on MorphOS (at least until that fragments into support for two ISAs with the emphasis on the newer one).
But, then there is the challenge faced when deciding whether or not to support that new stink bomb they dropped with Tabor.

Legacy guys don't really care about all this (especially those that think WarpOS is going to come racing back to their rescue).

But its an interesting point.
A lot lies on Hyperion's continued existence.

I don't want to see them going anywhere.

I know that you prefer NG but I have a good reason for "classic": users and thus potential customers

I recently joined the closed facebook group "CommodoreAmiga"

pure "classic" and almost 11.000 users

and that despite by far not everyone uses facebook for different reasons

[OlafS3]

After reading this whole thread.  

AmigaOS 4 for 68k is pointless because 68k is too slow.  

Fastest avaible real 68k cpu has 486 level performance.  

AROS 68k developers try to do it, they failded AROS 68k is too slow on real 68k.    

Yes, many years ago  gunnar von boehn promise that his wonderfull natami/apollo outrun powerpc processors but after many years of lies and false promises, fastest avaible 68k 68060 is still slower than first pentium, and hundred times slower than powerpc processors.  

68k users have to accept that making software for real 68k has no sense because because 68k is too slow.

you seem to pollute every forum...

PPC is as retro as 68k in todays world just that 68k has more geek factor. You see that when you look where companies invest in new processor generations. But this is not the topic of the thread.

[OlafS3]

A-Eon don't own the OS.

If I owned the OS would only consider providing it as part of the default install if A-Eon paid me a huge up front sum, which would reccur yearly and also a minimum of a 60/40 split of any profits from sales. The 60% being my cut.

Wouldn't you?

Why should A-eon pay a huge sum?

A-eon develops and sells the hardware and pays for the OS licenses. Normally they can simply preinstall the OS and the store with the hardware. The same for Acube. You think of Apple but Apple both develops and sells hardware and the OS.