New improved intuition.library version from the Kickstart 3.1

[TheMagicM]

Keep up the good work Cosmos. We need more people working on 3.x and it seems you have done a great job! We should all be thanking you....

Maybe someday 3.x will become open source so it can be developed by the community like it should be at this point...

What if it was released as open source...  I wonder how much better WB 3.x can actually get.

[Madshib]

I often wonder that myself, but I've seen the hardware taken to some pretty amazing places for what it is and the age of it....

[psxphill]

Really you are worried about the laws of patch intuition.library? you are ironic about that

I plainly said that I didn't care.

PS: The wikipedia link is crap.

Try reading it again.
 
 

Which countries do you have in mind?

 There are various situations where it's illegal in the US and the EU.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality

[guest11527]

What if it was released as open source...  I wonder how much better WB 3.x can actually get.

From the typical amount of patches you find in Amiga-Land and the amount of ignorance for Os interfaces, I suppose it can only get worse. AmigaOs does not require to get open-sourced. It requires a maintainer. That is missing...

[guest11527]

i trust you, but since the sources of amiga kickstarts and system libraries are not open we are left with no alternatives as to refrain to patches to keep it legal.  

I don't really think so. I believe if you'd know whom to ask and what to ask for, it should be very well possible to obtain them if you'd want them. Of course, this requires approaching people politely and having a reputation as software engineer (not as hacker), so I would assume that Cosmos is out.  

But anyhow, it's not my problem.  

I dont think the fans, customers and (be it bedroom) coders are to blame for this situation. on the contrary, from my observations the community behaves sometimes even over-loyal in comparison to rather limited support it can count on from various sources and for various reasons.

I, however, believe they are. There are always methods to interact and approach the right people to get what you want. Not as open source, for certain. The guerilla type approach of course does not work. It is pretty much a matter of thrust.

[wawrzon]

who cares if it even got worse, which i dont see happening. alone the availability of patches, that if carefully chosen leads to vastly improved os from a user perspective proves it right.
if sources along with proper documentation went public it could only improve on blindly and uncoordinated patching bits and pieces. open sourcing would probably at least provide a chance that it gets actively and competently maintained, as aros is. remember, before you became part of the amiga os team at its time you were one of these third party contributors, and neither before nor after proprietary nature of the system prevented it from design flaws and messy programming.

if you see open source as equivalent of coding anarchy btw, you can still build upon it and fork it to an "official distribution", be it closed source, like morphos does with parts of aros code.

however all this is void talk, since there is no chance in hell any sources were going open one way or the other.

[wawrzon]

I don't really think so. I believe if you'd know whom to ask and what to ask for, it should be very well possible to obtain them if you'd want them. Of course, this requires approaching people politely and having a reputation as software engineer (not as hacker), so I would assume that Cosmos is out.  

But anyhow, it's not my problem.  

I, however, believe they are. There are always methods to interact and approach the right people to get what you want. Not as open source, for certain. The guerilla type approach of course does not work. It is pretty much a matter of thrust.

maybe, maybe not. and frankly i dont think that there is anything left as alternative to what you call a guerilla type approach. since that is probably what you, maybe rightfully, consider aros development practices to be. except perhaps in morphos camp, i cant tell how organized that is. but observing the os4 development, it has definitely become guerilla playground by the looks of it. i think, that outsourcing practically the whole development to more or less skilled volunteers, because only a limited number and quality is actually available did not improve on the situation. from my initial even if brief experience as user and what i recall over the years reading forums i  cant defeat an impression my heavily guerilla style patched amiga was more dependable that the official os4 alternatives..

[guest11527]

remember, before you became part of the amiga os team at its time you were one of these third party contributors, and neither before nor after proprietary nature of the system prevented it from design flaws and messy programming.

Except that I never tried to heavily patch the system. I did not took system libraries and "extended" them in the way Cosmos did, instead I took Os interfaces for granted and programmed against them. That's quite something different.

if you see open source as equivalent of coding anarchy btw, you can still build upon it and fork it to an "official distribution", be it closed source, like morphos does with parts of aros code.

You got me wrong. I don't consider "open source" to be anarchy, not at all. You would be astonished how well-maintained and organized the Linux kernel development works. What I was saying is, and I repeat it here, that intuition (and the Os in general) requires a maintainer. Open source plus good maintenance works fine, but good maintenance does not depend on open source. However, what I would consider likely, given the general approach of the Amiga community, that as soon as it becomes open source, maintenance will become impossible - simply because nobody in this camp takes software engineering serious, and would just start to patch around in the sources without much plan and coordination. Thus, I'm afraid that a good maintenance model would not work for an Open Sourced Amiga. It requires discipline from the contributors, but discipline is exactly what is missing.  

however all this is void talk, since there is no chance in hell any sources were going open one way or the other.

Maybe, who knows. Its not my decision by any means.

[Niding]

Im just going to chip in as a non-coder;

I THINK many users (and programmers) consider this platform 100% as a hobby, and approach it as such. A tweak/patch might work in favor for some, speeding the OS up or whatnot.

Or it might make the OS a labyrinth of version numbers of libs/systems file that might make troubleshooting harder if something doesnt work.
This might make it harder for people on this forum to give advice regarding issues since people are running with xxx versions.

So for my own use, I stick with the official versions of Workbench, but I do understand that the more tech savvy can find "unofficial" libs/systemsfile useful for their use.

Cosmos seems to have the best intent behind his efforts. Maybe it could be compared to any hobbist with for example cars. They are often modified by hobbists far beyond the basic factory spesifications. And if the owner/user finds it enhances his expirience I can see why he gets a bit offended when his efforts is not being appriciated.
Espesially since the OS progress appears to be rather slow (understandable considering the manpower), its tempting to use the "if you want it done, you gotta do it yourself!" approach.

Thomas Richters big picture approach makes more sense to me tho from a stability point of view. Keep versions "official" for predictable performance.

Anyhow, thats just my non-tech savvy point of view. I might be talking our of my arse

[kolla]

There are various situations where it's illegal in the US and the EU.

But the kind of reverse engineering that is going on here in Amigaland is explicitly legal.

[kolla]

From the typical amount of patches you find in Amiga-Land and the amount of ignorance for Os interfaces, I suppose it can only get worse. AmigaOs does not require to get open-sourced. It requires a maintainer. That is missing...

The only way to solve the maintainer problem is to make it open source - sheesh, you are so stuck back in the 90ies rethoric that I am flat out amazed! What rock have you been living under?!

[guest11527]

The only way to solve the maintainer problem is to make it open source  

Or to have someone that pays for the work.  

- sheesh, you are so stuck back in the 90ies rethoric that I am flat out amazed! What rock have you been living under?!

That kind of rock where you get actual money for your work as a software engineer, and that kind of rock where clients get a contract for software maintenance, and a guarantee for stability and performance.

Look, I don't know how you make a living, but I myself have to work for it.

[wawrzon]

Or to have someone that pays for the work.  

That kind of rock where you get actual money for your work as a software engineer, and that kind of rock where clients get a contract for software maintenance, and a guarantee for stability and performance.

Look, I don't know how you make a living, but I myself have to work for it.

Thomas. We know you are a serious developer, but you cannot be serious here. For twenty years none could be found to competently maintain and finance amiga, be it understood as the os or hardware or whatever. The situation is not getting any better i am sorry. We are not talking of better choices. We are out of alternatives. Closed or open source will not make better maintenance possible anymore. It will just allow to preserve the code and allow still for an ocassional bug or fix. There is nothing to quarrel about. Serious development has ceased here.

[kolla]

Or to have someone that pays for the work.

 

Yeah right. No, I do not pay for Amiga software other than to have sources released  - enough is enough! I have supported my share of software development on Amiga up through times, as has most of us, only to see support vanish because nonsense drama and intrigues. Last I did was to contribute quite a bit to help Directory Opus Magellan become open source. It's a great pleasure to now have it working well, natively on AROS and AmigaOS.

That kind of rock where you get actual money for your work as a software engineer, and that kind of rock where clients get a contract for software maintenance, and a guarantee for stability and performance.

But may lose all support and guarantees once your company goes belly up, or is bought up by people who do not give a damn. Yes, I do know that part of the IT industry quite well.

Look, I don't know how you make a living, but I myself have to work for it.

I also work for a living, in the IT business, your way of talking was the mantra 10+ years ago, luckily times have changed.

[kolla]

Serious development has ceased here.

Well put!

[guest11527]

Yeah right. No, I do not pay for Amiga software other than to have sources released  - enough is enough!

Whether it is open or closed source I do not even mind. What I would mind is that it is maintained.  

No matter what you think, "Open Source" does not mean unpaid work. I currently participating a little bit in the linux intel driver development (only very minor), yet you find that people there *are* getting paid by the big players that have some interest in the platform.

You seem to believe that everything that needs to happen is to make the source publically available, and the problem will be solved. That's not the case. It will replace one problem by another problem unless somebody "wears the hat" as we say here, i.e. has the final say what goes into the repository and what won't. No, I don't think that the average Amiga hacker is disciplined enough to accept a "no" in case it is a "no".

Then, in the end, it does not matter whether the sources are released or not as long as somebody cares. Currently, they are closed, and I frankly say that nobody cares, at least not for the 68K branch. Sad enough. There are enough things that could be done if there would be a way to do that without actually causing irritiation by anyone.  

But may lose all support and guarantees once your company goes belly up, or is bought up by people who do not give a damn. Yes, I do know that part of the IT industry quite well.

And how does that change with Open Source? It is just the same, as soon as the development team just considers the old software obsolete, you may have the source, cool, but you cannot really do anything about it because it's just a big pile of code you do not know how to work with. Projects got abandoned, and nobody picked them up. Open Source code is very volatile - whether your source still compiles with the latest version of libIdoNotcare.so you never know.

I worked in both ways, each has its advantages and its drawbacks, but just throwing the code into an OpenSource repository is not going to help much - unless somebody really cares about the result.  

I also work for a living, in the IT business, your way of talking was the mantra 10+ years ago, luckily times have changed.

Not really. In the end, somebody has to pay the party. Even for OpenSource if you care about quality or consistency. Again, I'm not against it. I'm against leaving it unmaintained.