As a developer, I agree, we should go all in for AROS.
For one, it is open-source. This is a really important for a developer. It helps in understanding the OS and it gives security.
Then, I would suggest that the vampire core should also go Open Source, don't you? After all, this is then a rather unfair game. Vampire as a closed source product depending on the work of open source developers, work that is required to run it and *sell it*?
Also, being able to have a powerful development machine (i.e. a fast PC) can really improve software quality.
The development machine does not need to be identical to the target machine, and I don't see how this relates to the open vs. closed source debate.
All the effort put into AROS and applications for AROS help AOS4 and MorphOS anyway (as long as these efforts are open-sourced as well).
The problem I have with open source is that it's mainly driven by making its developers happy. So nice software interfaces, nice code and so on. Not by making its users happy, which is something different. There is no, or only little target driven development.
AmigaOs as an operating system carries a lot of legacy cruft along, old layers of software, weird and rough layers such as graphics or the shell. An open source developer would be very tempted to get rid of this cruft.
However, if you rather want to keep users happy rather than developers, such "unpleasant" code parts have to stay, and the design has to adjust to such requirements. This is typically an unsatisfactory, unpleasant task, a task that requires a lot of insight knowledge from how the Os has been used. Not everything of this cruft is really "coded in software".
It's really hard to enforce that in an open source development. If I look again at Linux, interfaces change more or less on a daily basis, both within the kernel, and also on the application level. This is my personal nightmare, even more so as I consider running legacy applications a primary development goal. This problem simply does not exist for Linux - you can recompile the application for the new interface if you need to.
But we cannot just recompile DPaint 4 if we like. Running an open source Os development that must run and support a huge library of closed source applications is something that looks like trouble for me.
If you'd say, ok, we start from scratch and write a new Os for 68K, and write new applications for it as well (as it happens for Linux), I'm all with you. But then I would surely not design the Os as AmigaOs in first place. It has too many misconceptions and design errors to begin with.
However, as I understand, Vampire V2 gives you 128MB of memory. This is very little for todays needs.
But that's really the point, isn't it? If you want to satisfy today's needs, why do you need a vampire in first place? You got your PC already, do you? Vampire is not about "today's needs". It's IMHO satisfying "the needs from 20 years ago".
You seem to dream of an AmigaOs that replaces your windows machine. However, this is not going to happen.
I would want to see a JDK 8 port for AROS, but that seems just not feasible on 68k (There is JAmiga 2 for AOS4). If we had 4GB, we could bring most modern applications to the Amiga, but I do not know if this is possible on 68k. And this is holding me back... big time :nervous:
But why, just tell me why? Why should the vampire replace your PC? Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. The PC is more powerful, faster, has all the applications, so why do you even want to start a competition? Amiga is exactly not about running a lookalike of the Windows Explorer on a 68K or a Java Applet (isn't that deprecated anyhow) in a browser.
It's - for me at least - running DPaint 4, the shell and the workbench. Plus, not having to wait for so long anymore when starting SAS/C. Approximately.