New AROS bounties

[HenryCase]

Hi all,

Just wondering which of the AROS bounties you'd like to be tackled next, and also whether anyone had any ideas of brand new AROS bounties they'd like to see.

Looking at the current bounties (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros2/), I'd say the most important unassigned bounties are those for Kickstart Replacement, ACPI (Phase I) and SoundBlaster AHI Driver Bounty (in that order IMHO).

As for new bounties, there are so many good possibilities. One inspiration for this thread was reading Rob N's great Traveller blog (http://cataclysm.cx/). In the comments section of the most recent post (18/01), someone mentioned that Gnash, the FOSS Flash player, can use Cairo to display its graphics. A bounty for this would be awesome, as it would enhance the work done on Traveller (I admit I spend quite a lot of time on YouTube which is why I'd want an AROS port, but other websites would benefit too).

I'd also like to see bounties created to support those who do more of the back end, lower level AROS stuff, as they are really helping the stability and usefulness of the OS. What these bounties should be I don't know. Can someone here tell us which low level sections of AROS need most work?

I'd also like to see a bounty being started to support the AROS mp3 player AROSamp, as its at an early stage right now and I'm hoping more money equals faster development.

A bounty for more integrated ARexx support would also be awesome.

That will do from me for now. Please post your AROS bounty ideas.

[HenryCase]

@yorgle
Well I'm all up for making sure potential application developers have an easy time running AROS, but have got to be honest in saying that I see the platform ports as a low priority right now.

Can you run AROS hosted on PPC Linux? Or run VmwAROS? Until that OSX bounty is fulfilled I mean, I'd like to see it happen too, I just think other parts of AROS should be given focus first. All IMO of course.

How about brand new bounties? Any coding resources you'd like to see implemented?

[HenryCase]

@Krusher

Basically, an operating system needs a programming language that's accessible for everyone.

I couldn't agree more. Programs like AMOS and Blitz Basic seemed reasonably popular back in the day, hopefully Mattahtias BASIC will be too. I've got a couple of ideas for simple apps I'd like to write using it already.

@bloodline

Yes, the AROS - Kickstart replacement bounty... that's one I'm really looking forward to!

I think I've found a way that the creation of a Kickstart replacement (which is definitely number one in terms of importance out of the unassigned bounties) can be sped up. Have you ever heard of how IBM-PC clones started? Let me explain...

One of the key proprietary parts of the IBM PC back before the clones came was the BIOS. However, Phoenix Technologies (creator of the first IBM PC BIOS clone) worked out an ingenious way of getting around the reverse engineering problem, by using the 'clean room' technique. From Wikipedia:

"With the success of the IBM PC in 1983, Phoenix decided to provide a IBM PC compatible ROM BIOS to the PC market. A licensable ROM BIOS would allow clone PC manufacturers to run the same applications, and even the MS-DOS that was being used by IBM. However, to do this Phoenix needed a strategy for defense against IBM copyright infringement lawsuits. IBM would claim that the Phoenix programmers had copied parts of the IBM BIOS code published by IBM in its Technical Reference manuals. Because, due to the nature of low-level programming, in two well-written pieces of code that perform the same function some correspondence is inevitable, it would be impossible for Phoenix to defend itself on the grounds that no part of its BIOS matched IBM's. Phoenix developed a "clean room" technique that isolated the Engineers who had been contaminated by reading the IBM source listings in the IBM Technical Reference Manuals. The contaminated Engineers wrote specifications for the BIOS APIs and provided the specifications to "clean" Engineers who had not been exposed to IBM BIOS source code. Those "clean" Engineers developed code from scratch to mimic the BIOS APIs. This technique provided Phoenix with a defensibly non-infringing IBM PC-compatible ROM BIOS. Because the programmers who wrote the Phoenix code had never read IBM's, nothing they wrote could have been copied from IBM's code, no matter how closely the two matched. The first Phoenix PC ROM BIOS was introduced in May, 1984, and helped fuel the growth in the PC industry."

Now the Kickstart is low level code and can be reverse engineered. If we can think of a way to recreate the clean room technique and assign two or more 68k coders to assist each other in this way then we're on to a winner (there also needs to be a fair way to split the bounty but lets not worry about that right now).

The only way I can think of to recreate the 'clean room' technique through the Internet is if the person doing the decompiling and analysis stays completely anonymous and unreachable to the 68k code writers. Or maybe there is another way to do it. Any ideas?

Einstein wrote:
Hi HenryCase!

What these bounties should be I don't know. Can someone here tell us which low level sections of AROS need most work?

Resource managers (for resource tracking), including memory manager (for memory tracking and protection).

Result: criminal tasks, instead of the OS, will experience their afterlife. :-)

Hi Einstein! :-)

Yep, they sound suitably important for a bounty. Apart from memory what other resources would need managers? Also, doesn't the x86-64 version of AROS already have partial memory protection? If so, is there any reason why this can't be applied to the other versions of AROS fairly quickly?

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

Now the Kickstart is low level code and can be reverse engineered. If we can think of a way to recreate the clean room technique and assign two or more 68k coders to assist each other in this way then we're on to a winner (there also needs to be a fair way to split the bounty but lets not worry about that right now).

The only way I can think of to recreate the 'clean room' technique through the Internet is if the person doing the decompiling and analysis stays completely anonymous and unreachable to the 68k code writers. Or maybe there is another way to do it. Any ideas?

I can assure you the legal issues of this and all techniques required have been discussed in great detail on the AROS dev list. The only problem is lack of interested developers.

Well I'm glad the legal issues surrounding the techniques have been discussed. As for the lack of willing/interested developers, as far as I can tell it is a huge task, and one where a team would be preferable. I am prepared to dig around some places we may find willing coders if I knew these things:

1. How are bounties split when there is a team (or if this hasn't happened in the past has this been discussed)?
2. Other than the clean room technique, what other legal methods of creating a kickstart replacement are there?
3. Was there a strong consensus on which would be the best (or easiest) method to use?

Other than the kickstart replacement bloodline, any AROS bounties you'd like to see?

[HenryCase]

@zizban
Yes, that sounds essential. I wonder how hard that would be to implement.

@alenppc
PS3 AROS. Pipe dream, or is it...
http://www.geek.com/mit-offers-free-playstation-3-programming-course/
http://www.cag.csail.mit.edu/ps3/lectures.shtml
Get yer learnin' hat on! :-D

@Einstein

Anything that is a resource has it's manager, e.g: memory (Exec), message ports (Exec), windows (Intuition), Zune/MUI objects (Zune/MUI, this includes BOOPSI too), and alot more..

Do you mean to say these resource managers don't exist yet or that they need a makeover?

Difference between partial mp (A) and full mp (B) is like being attacked by a samurai when one carries a shield (A) and when one sits in a tank (B). :-D

Liking the analogy there Einstein! :-D

Partial mp is just a retrofit mp, with full mp huge portion of the API needs modification/rewrite, that's why it takes time.
As for AROS32, i don't know if that will be supported for enhancements, it's up to the devs.

I see. Well in that case I'd prefer if we had full MP (sounds like were playing a FF game!) on one distro before work was done to port it to all of them, but as you said it's up to the devs.

[HenryCase]

@SamuraiCrow
Mattathias BASIC does sound great. I posted a few questions on the project's SourceForge page, hope you don't mind me repeating them here:
1. How far through the development is this project (i.e. is a release candidate or beta version due soon)?
2. Which version of AmigaOS is going to be your first target platform (please say AROS!)?
3. Does Mattathias BASIC follow similar syntax to AMOS?

@bloodline
Thanks for the answers to my kickstart coders questions, I'll get chasing them tomorrow. Didn't know about EFI (BIOS replacement). Wouldn't it be better to get UEFI support considering thats the newer standard, or did you want it for x86 Mac compatibility? SMP support is a must, that should definitely be a bounty (maybe one to start next year, but collecting funds should start ASAP).

As for SATA, isn't the first SATA driver currently in progress (for the Sam440 bounty)? If so, will this reduce the workload in writing other SATA drivers?

Einstein wrote:
A makeover.

I see. Well, if it makes AROS more stable then I'm all for it (not that I'm saying it isn't stable now you understand!).

Einstein wrote:
Or up to the bounty cash  :-)

Yeah, I can see that one being real popular! 'Pay AROS devs to give you partial MP only for them to perform a huge rewrite when full MP is needed'. :-D

[HenryCase]

Piru wrote:
@HenryCase

reverse engineering & reimplementing Kickstart ROM

This is a huge task, however. You make it sound as if it'd be couple of months for 2-3 guys.

More like 5-10 years, assuming you find skilled and well motivated hackers to do it.

PC BIOS was only couple of KB, trivial in comparison. Yet it took 15 guys several months or so.

Piru, I now understand the enormity of this task...

I downloaded Amiga Kickstart ROMs tonight and tried decompiling one into 68k ASM. The resultant text file is 3406 pages long in Word (using 10pt Courier New). However, it isn't a task we can shy away from, as it isn't just important for AROS but for a number of other projects as well.

Looks like I'm going to be busy building an 68k ASM coder army! :-o :-D

Piru, what new bounties would you like to see for AROS?

[HenryCase]

@bloodline
I used a great 68k disassembler called IRAPC, created easily readable ASM code. I'm no coder, but I do recognise the format the code takes. Whether it compiles again into a useable ROM is another matter!

I am really not worried that I cannot work on the kickstart replacement directly, but I would be willing to coordinate the work, as well as try to analyse the structure of the kickstart to assist the coders.

Question is how long will this work take? Lets say I managed to find 10 willing 68k ASM coders, we'd still be looking at 2-3 years before completion. I'd hope that the bounty would have increased quite a bit by this time.