Terrasoft shelves MAI Logic motherboards

[Seehund]

Let's just say that Seehund might find out that Hyperion/Amiga/Eyetech are not the only ones wanting to charge money for the privilege of running an operating system.

Well duh! Is this Obvious Day?

The problem is not wanting to be payed for the software one sells. I thought everyone agreed on this much at least. The problem is IMO how one expects to sell as many copies of the software as possible, and inventing an "Amiga hardware" market for third party hardware that has nothing to do with the company|ies publishing/making AmigaOS, and making sales of AmigaOS dependent on such a thing, and that unlike Windows, AmigaOS is not a commercially attractive enough OS for hardware vendors to even consider getting a license - with all the prerequisites there are for that - only to be "allowed" to compete on such a miniscule, restricted and saturated "market".

At least we only want to charge A1 users and our OS is proprietary and developed by ourselves.

(It would of course be better if you only wanted to charge AmigaOS users regardless of whom they buy their hardware from, but I think I've said that before... )
So why did you write that? Does TSS want to charge YDL users of other hardware than Teron boards, or what?


Field day? Yeah, you'll hear an I-told-you-so or two but Schadenfreude (that word is used in English too, right?) isn't my cup of tea, at least not when it would be because of bad things happening to something I wish to be successful - AmigaOS.

[KennyR]

Dammit. Amiga + x86 - Windows = Problem Solved. What's so hard to understand about that?!

And make the Amiga just another PC? *shudder* You might as well tell all your developers to f'k off now, since the Pegasos would get the prime pick of them anyway. What's hard to understand about the fact many people just won't use x86 machines?

[HyperionMP]

I meant to say that you'll discover that we're not the only "bad guys" in your eyes.

Let's face it, AmigaOS is a proprietary OS developed by Hyperion.

Only people who specifically want AmigaOS will need to pay for it.

Linux is GPL and charging everyone who owns a board capable of running it (even when they have zero intrest in doing so) through the producer of the boards is well, insane.

[System]

Linux is free, no one can charge you for it. Anyone who tries to, deserves to fail.

Who/what is Seehund?

[System]

Ahh ok, I figured out who Seehund is. Some guy on ANN.lu.

(I hardly use these forums  :-) )

[Seehund]

HyperionMP:

TSS is a VAR/distributor for the Teron boards, right?
TSS sells the Teron boards including a pre-installed, retail version of the supported YDL distro, right?
TSS charges for these bundled copies, just as they charge for separately sold copies of the distro, right?

What do you mean with "charging through the producer of the boards"? "Capable of running it"? Surely you mean every board shipped with the supported retail YDL distro?

That sounds like Mai, not TSS alone, has decided for YDL as the default distro to be sold with all Teron boards (instead of like before TurboLinux or whatever it was from the beginning), and if these  are retail copies supported by TSS (i.e. equal to if you bought a copy of YDL, not downloaded the "unsupported" ISOs). TSS can't force anyone to ship the "commercial" YDL distro with any hardware on their own. Mai could just as well have decided to ship the boards with YDL (or any other distro) for free and unsupported by TSS. I see no "bad guy" tendencies on TSS' part (nor on Hyperion's part, for that matter).

[Seehund]

> Who/what is Seehund?

The Pinnipaedia family and a mini-submarine.

[Seehund]

> Only people who specifically want AmigaOS will need to pay for it.

The bummer for AmigaOS's and prospective users' sake is that only people who already own an Amiga and a PPC board or people interested in a simultaneous purchase of a Teron board sold only via Eyetech can pay for it...

[HyperionMP]

>What do you mean with "charging through the producer >of the boards"? "Capable of running it"? Surely you >mean every board shipped with the supported retail YDL >distro?

No, I mean EVERY BOARD capable of running it including the A1 and regardless of whether or not they are actually shipping with YDL or not.

Call it a "Linux tax" if you like.

[ikir]

........

I want my new Amy :-(

........

I can't wait anymore :-(

[JurassicCamper]

I can't wait anymore

Cancel your order.

Does anyone know if Eyetech are still selling SE's and are people taking delivery of them.

[jd997uk]

see here for a very good reason as to the delays. I believe it will be worth waiting for. I suspect Eyetech to follow this up in a few days with a lowdown on what's happening and a revised timetable.

-john

[JoannaK]

Yep.. Looks good on paper, and has apparently caused 2-3 weeks of delays with no  information beforehand. I really wish these companies someday learn to make decent announcements in time. Ah well.. it's their product.

[Seehund]

No, I mean EVERY BOARD capable of running it including the A1 and regardless of whether or not they are actually shipping with YDL or not.

So, was I right in assuming that Mai and TSS have an agreement to make YDL the "default distro" of the Teron boards? That would be like Hyperion and Mai have an agreement to make the open source U-Boot with your modifications the default Teron firmware for which you (hopefully) get payed by Mai (i.e. a cost included in the producer's hardware price) regardless of whether some distributor decides to ship their boards pre-flashed with another firmware.

In what instances are you saying that the boards would not be shipped with YDL (if the assumption above is correct) yet have it included in the price? Wouldn't that require the decision of a distributor (other than TSS - i.e. currently Mai themselves, Inguard, and Eyetech AFAIK) to not supply their end-customers with YDL, which the distributors have already payed for? I can't find what distro Eyetech plans to ship (they keep referring to "LinuxPPC" which is an ancient distro, but I assume they simply mean "some PPC Linux distro").

I have a hard time being upset about this, really. Mai, like e.g. Apple and Genesi, would apparently have decided to include one particular OS in the price of their own hardware. So the Terons would have become more like "YDL hardware" so to speak, instead of "Turbo Linux hardware" or whatever they shipped with before regardless of what the individual end-users wanted to use. Big deal.

Call it a "Linux tax" if you like.

It doesn't seem to be as much of a TSS/YDL "Linux tax" (c.f. "Microsoft tax") as it would be a "Teron tax". In the Microsoft tax case it's the software vendor controlling the hardware vendors (through Windows' market domination and its commercial appeal/necessity), but in this case TSS can't control Mai in the same way (Mai and the Terons aren't dependent on YDL). Instead of making this arrangement, Mai could just as well have gone with e.g. Debian or even shipped the free "unsupported" YDL with their boards,  or Mai themselves or someone else could've modified and supported YDL, without Mai becoming a commercial paria - imagine Dell losing their ship-with-Windows-OEM license! No extortion here AFAICS. The wonders of the GPL.

I'm also an YDL user, and as long as TSS doesn't try to tell me who I'm allowed to buy my hardware from I'm happy with that distro, and looking forward to 3.0...

[HyperionMP]

I think you don't fully understand.

Are you saying that you are okay with the fact that EVERY AmigaOne owner including those who have zero intrest in YDL would be required to pay extra on the off chance he may want to run YDL one day?

That's why I call it a Linux tax.

Incidentally, the current Linux distro for the A1 is Debian based as SuSe seems to have discontinued LinuxPPC support.

[Seehund]

> see here for a very good reason as to the delays.

It's already common knowledge that the firmware wasn't ready, in spite of what's been announced by others than TSS and Mai. There are no actual delays per se. The boards are simply not done and shipping in volume yet, again despite what's been announced by others than TSS and Mai. The quite natural "breaking" of totally unrealistic and unfounded "release dates" announced by a distributor without any control over the product does not equal delays. It's a natural process. (There was a recent thread about "spoiling" here and on Moo Bunny)