"Hyperion and Cloanto allegedly close to finalizing settlement"

[Matt_H]

It would be most welcome to have this nonsense resolved.

[Matt_H]

Oh, for f***’s sake! What the hell are either of them going to gain by backing out of talks?

They’ve probably blown through well over 5 years’ worth of revenue on lawyers’ fees at this point.

They’re fighting over CRUMBS! If they would stop this idiocy they might at least get a sandwich now and then.

[Matt_H]

Right. When reporting a robbery, it’s important to be fair and balanced and blame both sides equally.

Knuckleheads.

And which of the inanely litigious companies do you think should not be blamed for this mess?

No one is benefitting from this. Not either of them, not other developers, not customers. No one.

[Matt_H]

Well, that's part of why this is such a disaster. Both companies have delivered very important products. I want them to continue to do so, but this idiocy is preventing that.

Even if there are individuals who ordinarily benefit from Hyperion's bizarre shell-corporation status, these lawsuits are eating away all of their revenue. They're sure not benefiting now.

[Matt_H]

I’ve got to agree with Thomas here. Without strong governance there is real risk of fragmentation from an open source model. We’ve suffered from that ever since the beginning of the post-Commodore era: MUI vs ReAction, NSD vs whatever the other thing was, P96 vs CGX, PowerUp vs WarpOS, and, of course, the big one, OS3 vs OS4 vs MorphOS vs AROS. Each of those splits has diminished the ability of the community to move the platform forward as a whole because each one has made it harder to achieve a critical mass of sustaining users.

Why is critical mass important? Look at what happened with AWeb. We had an open-source web browser! At the time it was the thing we needed most to make our Amigas usable in the modern world! And it fizzled out after just a few maintenance releases. If OS3 fragments we could see the same thing. As much as we want it to be true, open source isn’t a panacea for every situation. Instead of one slow-moving branch we could have 4 dead branches. Given the choice I’ll take the slow-moving branch, thank you.

Thomas is also right that a developer driven model is rarely one for long-term success. Go into a business class in any university and they’ll teach you that product development has to be driven by user needs. Remember the story from the pre-Commodore days when management essentially locked RJ Michal in a room to make him write the Intuition documentation? That was a user-centric decision. We don’t have that kind of structured, considered decision making anymore, and I honestly think we suffer for it. We all like to tinker and customize our systems and there is enormous overlap between developers and users in the community, but it’s not 1:1. I’m one of those idiots who could never get a handle on coding and as much as I love getting under the hood of my system there’s a limit as to how much I’m willing to do. I’ve tried so many times to like Linux, but it’s just a complete disaster beneath the surface. I don’t want to see the Amiga go the same way.

Ultimately, we all want the platform to be free from the corporate and legal shenanigans that are holding back development. I’m just skeptical that open sourcing the OS is the solution to that problem. Unfortunately, I don’t know what other solutions there are. What a mess!

[Matt_H]

@ cgutjahr

I don't want this to get too heated. I agree with a lot of the concerns you raised previously.

MUI vs ReAction, NSD vs whatever the other thing was, P96 vs CGX, PowerUp vs WarpOS, and, of course, the big one, OS3 vs OS4 vs MorphOS vs AROS.

• All of those were created despite AmigaOS being closed source
• All of those were created while there was no active development of the official OS
• All of those were resolved the second the official rights holder declared one of them to be the official solution

But I would argue that all of those were created *because* we'd lost the governance that Commodore provided in its stewardship of the OS. And even though one or the other has been declared the "official" solution, the situation is far from resolved--MUI is still used despite ReAction being the "official" choice for OS3/OS4. If we still had strong governance a solution would have been found before a split happened, and in a way that would have not left proponents of an alternative feeling personally offended.

Why is critical mass important? Look at what happened with AWeb. We had an open-source web browser!

We also had an open source DPaint! Look at what happened! What do mean, "it was totally outdated by the time its source was released"?

At the very least it was an Intuition GUI that could have had a new rendering engine dropped in. Easier than starting from scratch, but still nothing came of it.

As much as we want it to be true, open source isn’t a panacea for every situation.

Nobody's claiming that. But the situation is really, really fucked up.

Oh, absolutely agreed!

And Thomas and you are arguing "let's continue to try what we tried countless times in the last 25 years, one of these days it has to work, right?".

I'm not hostile to the idea of open source, just concerned that it could make our problems worse in the long run. Hence my comment about the dead branches. See below.

Instead of one slow-moving branch we could have 4 dead branches.

Why? Because Thomas and his guys rage-quit when the sources are released?

No, because the 4 branches will each start out with passionate defenders who ultimately aren't numerous enough to sustain them in the long term. Meanwhile everyone else will be confused as to which one to back and in all likelihood will end up backing none of them and just lose interest and walk away. That doesn't benefit anyone.

Thomas is also right that a developer driven model is rarely one for long-term success.

"Long term success"? We're discussing AmigaOS 3.x - where do you want it to go in 2020?

That's a very valid question and it's one that I think a strong governance system could help resolve. Just what do we want for OS3? OS4?

My ultimate interest is preventing this from happening again:

[Matt_H]

But I would argue that all of those were created *because* we'd lost the governance that Commodore provided in its stewardship of the OS.

I don't think 'governance' is the right term here. This is/was a commercial market, and both hardware and software developers would fill whatever niche they either saw as commercially viable or bothered them in their personal use of the Amiga. You can't just forbid that from happening.

And even though one or the other has been declared the "official" solution, the situation is far from resolved--MUI is still used despite ReAction being the "official" choice for OS3/OS4. If we still had strong governance a solution would have been found before a split happened, and in a way that would have not left proponents of an alternative feeling personally offended.

The GUI is actually a good example. 1.x had no proper GUI toolkit, which is why everybody created his own. Then Gadtools came along, but nobody used it because a very large chunk of users was still on 1.x. Once the majority of users were able to run Gadtools applications, the system was already outdated again, which is why we got all those Gadtools extensions or completely new GUI toolkits.

Neither Commodore's presence, nor the closed source nature of AmigaOS nor CBM's announcement you should use Gadtools from now on did do anything about this situation. What finally solved it was continued OS development. MUI still being alive is a special case, it simply survived because the competition adapted it as their solution.

Fair point, developers will fill gaps the vendor has left open. But originally all those toolkits were to support products at the application level. Now we have a problem of competing components at the OS level. If Commodore (and its governance/guidance) hadn't folded we probably would have seen official adoption of an MUI-like toolkit before all the alternatives took off--just like Commodore adopted ARexx and commodities.library. Even though there is an "official" toolkit now, its adoption came after the damage of the split was done.

The issues we have now are far beyond GUI toolkits. Now it seems like we've got multiple iterations of icon.library, workbench.library, exec.library, scsi.device, ixemul.library, etc.--variants that all have the same name. It's getting too difficult to keep track of them all and they're not all interoperable. If we don't get everyone lined up on mutually agreeable standards then a compatibility nightmare awaits us down the line.

No, because the 4 branches will each start out with passionate defenders who ultimately aren't numerous enough to sustain them in the long term. Meanwhile everyone else will be confused as to which one to back and in all likelihood will end up backing none of them and just lose interest and walk away. That doesn't benefit anyone.

Nah. Let's say a hypothetical open source  3.2 comes out, developed by a team lead by two respected and well-known developers, one of which has been at this for close to three decades, and it's delivered in a big shiny Box labeled "AMIGAOS 3.2". There will be absolutely no confusion as to which project one should support. If history tells us anything, there will be threads where people announce they're going to buy it, despite not having a need right now - just "to support the Amiga".

Well, that's what we'd hope would happen and what logically *should* happen under a (strong governance!) open-source model, but we're not exactly a logical bunch in this community.
So, who knows if it would actually be that clear?

MorphOS had a head start, ran on much, much better and cheaper hardware that was continously available - and in contrast to OS4, it has seen tons of development in the last decade. But as soon as Bill Buck stopped throwing suitcases of money (or at least promises of such suitcases) at the whole thing, it got pretty much irrelevant over night. I could say similar things about AROS, but OlafS is here, and that always gets him worked up - so I won't

But that's kind of my point, right? There's been a split and there's no going back from it.

My ultimate interest is preventing this from happening again:

I get that. But I don't think it's much of a problem in 2020 - partly due to AmigaOS now being a retro hobby toy, partly due to the low number of skilled developers. If I have two or three of those on my team, I control 80% of the qualified work force

And let's not forget that Hyperion/Ben is the party that allegedly torpedoed the very early attempt to join forces and create one single PPC based AmigaOS from components controlled by Amiga, H&P, Hyperion and the MorphOS team (*)  and established a 3.x branch after Cloanto did - one who's legality is currently questioned in court - and is hated by a very large chunk of the developers and managed to get their proprietary PPC OS which was completely under their control split into two efforts. "Unity, peace and common standards" is not the first thing I think about when hearing "Hyperion".

Unfortunately, the choice is not "open source or some hypothetical well-meaning entity lead by Jay Miner's grandson" - it's "open source or Hyperion".

(*) not saying Hyperion was the only guilty party

Sigh. Yeah, that's all true. But isn't even open source is a fantasy? Hyperion's not going to open-source it, and neither will Cloanto if they prevail, right? The best we can hope for right now is that they swallow their egos and try to get back to some best practices for product development.

[Matt_H]

@ cgutjahr

I guess to summarize my thinking:
1. We already have a mess.
2. We are at risk of losing critical mass to sustain the platform as a whole.
3. We don't currently have the systems and structures in place for successful open-source governance.
4. Therefore, open source risks further fragmentation.
5. Further fragmentation exponentially increases the risk of a fork losing critical mass--including the "official" fork.
6. Therefore we might end up with an even bigger mess.

To reiterate: I'm not against open source in principle, just worried that in our current circumstances it could make matters worse. Project management is extremely complicated, and open-source project management even more so. If it's not done right the result is chaos.

If we can somehow solve #3, then choo choo, I'm all aboard the open-source train. In the meantime I just want this legal foolishness to end so that someone can deliver products for me to buy.

[Matt_H]

@ kolla

Hey, man. You. Need. To. Relax.

It's an unenforceable software license. No one cares what you do with the copy you bought. No one is even going to find out unless you broadcast it on a public forum. Here's the short version if you want to make sure you're ethically in the clear:
1. Don't make copies that you then give away or sell.
2. For however many machines you're going to use it on, buy that many copies.

Enough, please!

[Matt_H]

3. We don't currently have the systems and structures in place for successful open-source governance.

Those are just big words, what do they mean? I explained why (and how) AmigaOS development could continue exactly like it did IMHO - what are those "systems and structures  for open source governance" we allegedly need and why do we need them?

Fair questions. I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a few days. this 2006 article from Sun Microsystems is a little old but has some good points, getting into the merits and pitfalls of open source. Bear in mind that he's speaking about large, corporate-backed open-source efforts; we'd need something appropriate to the scale of our tiny community:

I believe the biggest challenge for an open source community is to understand in what ways governance will impact its community members. Governance is critical to an open source project. While open source licensing lets people have access to source code, this doesn't have to mean that chaos ensues. In fact, open source projects are typically very well organized and are run with a great deal of professionalism and discipline. Governance helps ensure that the people running the project can decide what gets incorporated into the source code.

There are one or two open source communities that really don't seem to have good governance. The lack of good governance leads to a loss of freedom for the people that use the software. Good governance lets open source communities decide upon standards, and good open source standards are implemented by multiple software products leading to the long-term sustainability of all of the software.

<snip>

There isn't a single one-size-fits-all approach to governance. Different communities have different needs, but there are also attributes that are essential to good governance — like meritocracy, transparency of process, and open access for everybody with the necessary skills to participate in a project. How governance gets structured really depends on the organization. For example, governance of the Apache Software Foundation is quite different than the governance of the GNOME Software Foundation. Both organizations are very meritocratic, but the Apache approach is very formal, while the GNOME governance model is more relaxed. Both are exemplars of good governance.

<snip>

Sun would have open sourced Java a long time ago. But open sourcing commercial software is more than just picking a license. Existing developers need to be respected. And, it's important to figure out how the governance of the project will respect the contributors. There are also issues about proving relicensing rights — not to mention producing an environment in which a well-designed and backwards compatible implementation of the Java platform can be kept in the marketplace. So, Sun isn't delaying. Sun is figuring out which license will work best, devising governance, reviewing copyright ownership and so on.

I've also been looking at Apache's and Mozilla's governance practices.

Fundamentally I'd say it's a combination of institutional management, project management, and community management. The professionalism and discipline cited above are key. We need (1) user- and developer-backed decision makers to set long-term goals and priorities of individual releases, we need (2) community liaisons to stay on the pulse of user needs and to be the first line of communication so that (3) skilled developers can focus on executing the roadmap for a given release.

Community buy-in is absolutely critical at every stage, but part of our challenge is that we probably have as many opinions in the community as we have users
The professionalism and discipline are essential in the process so that everyone's opinions are respected, even if some people's opinions aren't adopted verbatim. That's how we prevent (further) fragmentation.

[Matt_H]

Well, yeah, of course it's wishful thinking. So much in Amigaland is.

And I absolutely agree that uncoordinated development is better than no development. But if we could actually get ourselves organized just think about how much better a position we'd be in as a community.

[Matt_H]

Fucking hell, everyone. Can't we have a conversation without descending into personal insults and accusations of moral impurity? Yes, the legal situation is a disaster, and up is down, and x did y to z, and blah blah blah. I don't give a shit anymore. Fact of the matter is that Thomas and others are volunteering their time to try to advance this platform that we all claim to love. I stepped away from this thread because I felt I had said all I wanted to say, and now I come back to check in and find that the bullying and the holier-than-thou attitude has blown up to the point where it seems Thomas has left the site altogether. Tell me, what have you "won" by driving a valuable member of the community away? Who benefits?

Disagree with the direction Thomas is taking the OS? Disagree with the fact that Hyperion gets the proceeds? Fine, vote with your wallet and don't buy the resulting product. But don't shit on the *volunteer* effort that Thomas and others are putting forth to try to bring some advancement to the platform.

Someone sent me this thing about a year or two ago and this thread reminded me of it:


Right now it looks like we're at step 7. Everyone needs to chill the fuck out.

It's pretty rare that I drop f-bombs and such in my posts, so let that be an indication of how disappointed I am in the direction this thread has gone. If I had mod powers it would now be locked. I'll say no more on this matter.