Actually, I've talked to Ralph about this issue from time to time, and he didn't seem to be against this issue; actually, he had some corrections and extensions for a new edition waiting in his drawer (and, actually, I have a couple of corrections I would like to add, but anyhow...). For some reason, it never came to the phase of "yeah, right, let's do this now". It's probably a timing issue, and a question of financial viability.
I believe the major problem points are: Time (we all have our day jobs and probably a couple of other hobbies), and money. Given the experiences of the first (actually, second, but first international) edition and piracy, and the pretty low moral of the Amiga community concerning copyright, it's questionable if it is worth doing from a financial perspective.
One way possible way woudl be to publish it through a "print on demand" publisher, i.e. you could get a PDF or something for really little money, and a paperback for the printing and shipping costs.
I could try and approach him on the issue if there is sufficient interest.
The petition site is no longer active, so I can't see how many people signed the petition when it was active, and I can't remember how high the number had gotten by the time I had signed the petition myself. My best guess is that I was number 450 to 500 who signed that petition, but that is just a rough guess and my memory of the event may be very faulty.
I think that there is still a large amount of interest in an updated version of the book in multiple languages, considering the number of users still looking for a copy of the original German, or 2nd edition English translation books.
If you would take the time to contact Ralph again and ask him about the possibility of doing a "Print-On-Demand" publishing of an updated version, I would greatly appreciate it, and think that many other users would also thank you and Ralph for any news on this topic.
If Ralph needs to know how many people are interested in buying an updated book, a poll could be posted on all of the remaining Amiga related forum sites (except you would need to find a way to filter out duplicate votes by the same people who are members of multiple forum sites). Another possibility is using Kickstarter to fund the publishing of a paper book, instead of any kind of pdf or e-Book. My preference would be to buy a real hard bound, or paperback book, that I can hold in my hands, instead of an electronic book displayed on a computer monitor or e-Reader, but I will buy what ever is made available.
I hope that someone can convince Ralph to let this happen. Since you mentioned it, perhaps Ralph would be open to doing a revised version of his original book in collaboration with several other knowledgeable programmers, who could help add new content that would bring his original book up to date with the latest (or last 68k version) of AmigaOS.
