Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: snowman040 on January 13, 2006, 01:15:17 AM
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Just wondering is Gateway still owner of Amiga patents ? I've seen some news about licences being sold, but who is THE owner ? And if someone recalls what was the amount of money involved in Gateway's Amiga Technologies buyout ?
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IIRC, everything Amiga that Gateway owned became the property of Amino Corp. which then started Amiga Inc... Then after some time sold it all off to KMOS Inc. which has now become Amiga Inc.
In short, Amiga Inc. owns all IP associated with Amiga... Hardware and Operating System.
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Just like to add, that Commodore is back in business. Well, of course its not the original Commodore, but we see.
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/commodore/index.php
and the company webpage
http://hardware.commodoreworld.com
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It seems the real ownership is still with Gateway (or its subsidiary Amiga Development LLC, respectively), while Amino/AI got licences to some of the IP. Which exactly or if any at all they still possess seems to be unknown. At least so far noone I've talked to, be he a dealer or developer, seems to have ever seen a real proof of Amino/AI really possessing what they claim to own.
Well, so far just my experience and humble opinion as a plain user - if anyone did see real proof, I'd be glad of course to see him posting here to throw light on it. But as far as I do see the situation, there's only indirect proof - i.e. noone having publicly claimed yet to be the real owner instead.
Not to mention that already Escom could not prove (http://flyingmice.com/cgi-bin/squidcgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/51110) in 1997 to exclusively own AmigaOS 3.1 source code as it was not part of the Commodore sales contract.
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You are correct. I remember following this case when it was announced.
AFAIK, and I'm rarely wrong (humble aren't I?) Aminos got the right to the name, but Gateway retained ownership of patents. Frankly the new "Amigas" seem to lack all the novel hardware that makes an Amiga an Amiga. Haynie was right in one regard: they are more or less just PPC-based PC's.
I have long wondered on this forum why so few people are aware of the ruling of the German court which really seemed to imply that Gateway only thought they bought the full Amiga rights.
Since nobody challenged Gateway's ownership (and in fact people were happy to see a monied owner come along) it seems that the complications of international law (not to mention patents and the complexities of fledgling IP laws and precedents) have kept Gateway shielded from legal challenges.
For all we know, Gateway found out after the fact that they really didn't have everything. But they're in the US, and who in Germany has the interest and money to make an international challenge? For all we know Aminos/Amiga/whomever knows they don't have an actual ownership to the OS and are desperately hoping nobody figures it out.
Frankly I've often wondered by various interests haven't just hired a lwayer backtrack the various post-CBM "IP" transfers and find out where it all stands. If Deloitte and Touche liquidators screwed up it may well be that at least the OS is floating around out there, actually unowned in a grey netherworld (legally).
I don't see why the pios or bPlan guys or AROS or whomever don't just run with the ball once they confirm what the German court ruled. Confirmation wouldn't be very hard.
Since nobody has protected a legitimate onwership of the OS, a judge might just give it to whomever asks first, or just consider it in the public domain due to lack of an interested/actual owner. Continued ownership of trademarks requires demonstration of protection of that trademark and an orphaned OS might be treated similarly.
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Ben Hermans is an attorney, perhaps Hyperion have quietly done just that.
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@Argus
If so, then this would have had happened less than a year ago, not before. But indeed Hyperion would be the only ones who'd really benefit from doing so - AROS devs don't want the sources and MorphOS doesn't need them.
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Senex wrote:
AROS devs don't want the sources
Why not?
--
moto
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@motorollin
I guess it has simply progressed way too far to jeopardize it by any "pollution" through legally uncertain code.
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Would it be necessarily be illegal if boing's comment is correct?
Since nobody has protected a legitimate onwership of the OS, a judge might just give it to whomever asks first, or just consider it in the public domain due to lack of an interested/actual owner.
--
moto
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motorollin wrote:
Senex wrote:
AROS devs don't want the sources
Why not?
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moto
Because 68k asm source code for a 15 years old operating system is very close to useless. TECHNOLOGY HAS MOVED ON! :-D
Even Hyperion have stated that little of the origianl source code was used, do you really think it would have taken 4 years JUST to port an OS from one machine to the next with the full source code?
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Hello All,
I still believe the rumor that Bill Gates/MicroShaft scared
Gateway to stop making,marking new Amiga.Why would you buy
the rights if all you want are the patents.Gateway was &
still is just other PC Clone company what are the patents worth
to them.They wanted to change but good old Billy Boy wouldn't
let them.Thats my opinion and I am sticking to it.Merv
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amiga1084 wrote:
Hello All,
I still believe the rumor that Bill Gates/MicroShaft scared
Gateway to stop making,marking new Amiga.Why would you buy
the rights if all you want are the patents.
It was a complete package, they bought it play around with it for a bit... got bored/sacred (whichever) and sold the trademark to a bunch of idiots.
They held the IP/Patents, 'cos patents are always good to have. But they have all expired now, Amiga is nothing but a valueless trademark now.
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@Amiga1084
They were considered useful (actively or passively) for law-suits with other companies.
Compare Gateway <-> HP (http://investor.hp.com/EdgarDetail.cfm?CIK=47217&FID=1047469-05-6240&SID=05-00):
"Also on July 2, 2004, Amiga Development LLC ("Amiga"), an entity affiliated with Gateway, filed a lawsuit against HP in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging infringement of three patents relating to computer monitoring, imaging and decoder technologies. Gateway seeks an injunction, unspecified monetary damages, interest and attorneys' fees. HP and HPDC have answered and counterclaimed, alleging infringement by Amiga and Gateway of four HPDC patents related to personal computer technology."
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boing wrote:
...
Frankly I've often wondered by various interests haven't just hired a lwayer backtrack the various post-CBM "IP" transfers and find out where it all stands. If Deloitte and Touche liquidators screwed up it may well be that at least the OS is floating around out there, actually unowned in a grey netherworld (legally).
...
My ears pricked up at that - if someone cares enough to fill me in on what the current known status is, as well as some of the background (I was out of the Amiga when the crash came) then I can ask my contacts at Deloittes and maybe I can do some digging around. I work for a company that writes legal tracking and forensics software, and have good contact with Deloittes. Not guaranteeing I can find anything (confidentiality and all that).. but at least I should be able to find out who the current listed owners of different names/IPs actually are, and possibly what isn't owned by anyone.
Gizmomelb
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Then Why Spend Money On It? Printing posters, stickers,
conventions,Amiga expo's etc
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bloodline wrote:
Because 68k asm source code for a 15 years old operating system is very close to useless. TECHNOLOGY HAS MOVED ON! :-D
So what about an OS that tries to be a carbon copy of 15 year old operating system?
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uncharted wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Because 68k asm source code for a 15 years old operating system is very close to useless. TECHNOLOGY HAS MOVED ON! :-D
So what about an OS that tries to be a carbon copy of 15 year old operating system?
Fine, if you don't plan to sell it ;-)
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@Boing
Yes I'm aware of that ruling, it was brought up (along with the C= 1.0 source in a book episode) by many a blue when MorphOS' legal status is being questioned.
However, while Escom were a bunch of monkeys, I'd imagine that Gateway would have done thier homework. I think there is little chance that the corporate sharks, er, I mean, lawyers would have over-looked something as obvious as that.
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@Senex
Don't forget that Amiga Development LLC filed several patents on systems/technologies they created themselves. (AmigaObjects Etc.)
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Even Hyperion have stated that little of the origianl source code was used, do you really think it would have taken 4 years JUST to port an OS from one machine to the next with the full source code?
Actually, a lot of OS4 is based on the AmigaOS source code. Obviously it has a lot of changes, since OS4 is a massive upgrade to pretty much every area of AmigaOS. Exec was written entirely from scratch, and DOS has been heavily rewritten, but the changelogs for nearly all components go back to 3.x.
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xeron wrote:
Even Hyperion have stated that little of the origianl source code was used, do you really think it would have taken 4 years JUST to port an OS from one machine to the next with the full source code?
Actually, a lot of OS4 is based on the AmigaOS source code. Obviously it has a lot of changes, since OS4 is a massive upgrade to pretty much every area of AmigaOS. Exec was written entirely from scratch, and DOS has been heavily rewritten, but the changelogs for nearly all components go back to 3.x.
When pressed Ben Hermans said that the only thing he could remember being used from original AmigaOS source code was some binary tree algorithms...
Anyway as a coder yourself you know that very little of AmigaOS 3.x code is in AOS4.0.
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:-?
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@Gizmomelb
There is a german source (http://www.rbenda.de/commodore/story3_4.html) by Rainer Benda (former employee of Commodore Germany and Amiga Technologies).
A quick summary:
On the CD-ROM "Kickstart Archive", published by Thomas Unger, there is a chapter "Patente", which does list what has been purchased by Escom under the patent number "US 5,594,473" from Commodore back then.
From that listing one can't conclude that the Amiga operating system would have been part of that buyout.
On July 16, 1997, there has been a judgement (13 U 97/97) by the Higher Regional Court in Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany, which does contain the following paragraph:
"In den zwischen der Commodore-Amiga-Gruppe und der X. geschlossenen Veträgen ist nur von -sämtlichen aufgrund der Patente bestehenden Rechte, Titel und Rechtsansprüche- die Rede; das Betriebssystem OS3.1 ist dort nicht als solches bezeichnet. Den vorgelegten Unterlagen über eine Vereinbarung zwischen diesen Parteien vom 13.03.1995 lässt sich deshalb nicht hinreichend überprüfbar entnehmen, daß die X. die ausschliesslichen Lizenzrechte an dem Betriebssystem erworben hat."
In short it says that in the contracts with the Commodore-Amiga group only those rights are mentioned which are based on the patents - but that the operating system itself wouldn't be mentioned as such. Based on the documents from March 13, 1995, there is no sufficient proof of exclusive rights to the operating system.
Furthermore the court did rebuke the lack of lucidity of the situation.
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Ok, so I guess attempt of buying all Amiga IP, patents, brand etc. would be real pain in the arse job ? With lawsuits, licences, etc, etc...?
No one answered second part of the question ? How much money Gateway paid for Amiga ? I remember Escom paid 5mil$ for Commodore ?
regards
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IIRC Gateway retained most of the patents related to "Classic" Amiga technology, certainly in terms of hardware. Aminos (later Amiga Inc) did buy the trademark, software (possibly including software patents or exclusive licenses regarding the original software, which Gateway had no use for themselves).
However, haven't quite a few of the original patents expired by now?
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Aehem... as i mentioned in the 3th post.
There is a company who is currently owning the Commodore name and paid, i believe, about 32Mil.$.
I have to look up the facts, but Commodore is working again.
From Amiga Inc. i don't expect anything. There is nothing taking off.
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Hello All,
Could Gateway take the licences from so called Amiga
Corp at any time? As Gateway still owns the patents?
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@yester64
I believe this incarnation of C= is completely disassociated with Amiga and its related patents. Isn't this the case?
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@Oliver
Right
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Yes. Commodore and Amiga became disassociated when the original C= assets were sold off. The C= name and trademark was sold off to a Dutch company called Tulip. Amiga and all related assets were sold off to Escom. There is no connection between Commodore and Amiga today.
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Actually IIRC both were sold to Escom. They definately sold C= branded PCs in the short time between the Amiga sale going through and Escom going bust.
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http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/commodore.html
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uncharted wrote:
Actually IIRC both were sold to Escom. They definately sold C= branded PCs in the short time between the Amiga sale going through and Escom going bust.
My memory must be faulty then, because I'm fairly sure I recall the Coomodore brand being sold off prior to Escom's purchase of the remaining assets and trademarks. The events listed in the link you posted do not tally with the way I remember these things.
I don't know if Escom sold Commodore PCs, but I can definitely tell you they sold Escom PCs (in the UK, through the old Rumbelows high-street chain of shops, which Escom also bought).
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Escom bought the whole package. Gateway was the first one being interested in Amiga (patents) only.
That's how I noted it down back then (in German) on a former Amiga history website and as I've just seen it at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International) as well:
"Escom paid US$14 million for Commodore International, primarily for the Commodore brand name. It separated the Commodore and Amiga operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the brand name on a line of PCs sold in Europe. However, it quickly started losing money, went bankrupt on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.
In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV."
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Senex wrote:
Escom bought the whole package. Gateway was the first one being interested in Amiga (patents) only.
That's how I noted it down back then (in German) on a former Amiga history website and as I've just seen it at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International) as well:
"Escom paid US$14 million for Commodore International, primarily for the Commodore brand name. It separated the Commodore and Amiga operations into separate divisions and quickly started using the brand name on a line of PCs sold in Europe. However, it quickly started losing money, went bankrupt on July 15, 1996, and was liquidated.
In September 1997, the Commodore brand name was acquired by Dutch computer maker Tulip Computers NV."
Yes, fair do'. I stand corrected.
I can confirm that they didn't use the Commodore brand in the UK. They sold their PCs under the Escom brand here, as I said, in their own chain of high-street shops. Occasionally, those shops would have an Amiga somewhere under a pile of boxes at the back, but the staff rarely knew anything about them.
Nevertheless, the fact that Commodore and Amiga have nothing more in common these days remains true. The re-appearance of the Commodore brand is immaterial.
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bhoggett wrote:
I can confirm that they didn't use the Commodore brand in the UK. They sold their PCs under the Escom brand here, as I said, in their own chain of high-street shops. Occasionally, those shops would have an Amiga somewhere under a pile of boxes at the back, but the staff rarely knew anything about them.
They did use C= in the UK, for a small line of PCs. Yes, most were branded Escom, but they also sold C= Branded PCs, but only for a very short time before they went Belly up.
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From that listing one can't conclude that the Amiga operating system would have been part of that buyout.
No, that's not what it says. Often understood in a wrong way, even by me :-D
lässt sich deshalb nicht hinreichend überprüfbar entnehmen, daß die X. die ausschliesslichen Lizenzrechte an dem Betriebssystem erworben hat."
You don't need an exclusive right (ausschliessliches Recht) to license it to other third parties. What the court just said is that the contract doesn't say if there are any other parties left that have the right of distribution on AmigaOS.
That's what the law suit was all about. Some third party was sued because they sold copies of AmigaOS3.1 which according to them was legal as they have distribution rights. AT/Escom said that they have the exclusive rights to AmigaOS. However as the "dumb German judge" decided the contract didn't say that Escom got all exclusive rights with the buyout. Therfore Escom lost the law suit.
This law suit would only matter if nowadays some third party comes and sells OS3.1 and could show some AmigaOS3.1 license agreement from the Commodore era to AInc.
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Yes, as Ralph said in my first comment's link and as I translated then as well - the judgement itself in its conclusion is about the exclusive rights.
But nevertheless to me this seems as if it would have been possible for MorphOS to focus on the A-Box environment back then and just ship it with WB 3.1 IF they would have obtained that other licence (which IIRC refers to VT). Or AROS could have started with kind of AfA back then already on m68k or even better an x86 A-Box.
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There is no connection between Commodore and Amiga today.
Maybe not legal (or business) but they have links to the Amiga community on their website! :-)
Commodore - Link is mid RHS on page (http://hardware.commodoreworld.com/default.aspx?i=3)
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Patents only last 10 years, so anything that C= had is no longer patented.
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First I'd like to thank you all for answering, seems like Amiga story is very complicated :)
What I really wanted to know is if some company X (for example) would like to buy all Amiga IP, brand name, patents, etc, etc... how complicated it would be, and how much money it would take ? (feel free to guess)
From what I learned so far:
- Brand name and patents are held by Gateway
- Amiga Inc, Amino or whoever licenced brand name and .... ?
- Hyperion licenced Amiga OS rights (or is just developing OS4 for Amiga inc.?)
and it looks like 1000 lawyers can't deal with this mess :)...
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Patents only last 10 years, so anything that C= had is no longer patented.
Actually 20 years, still anything from the original will soon expire if it hasn't already.
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snowman040 wrote:
First I'd like to thank you all for answering, seems like Amiga story is very complicated :)
What I really wanted to know is if some company X (for example) would like to buy all Amiga IP, brand name, patents, etc, etc... how complicated it would be, and how much money it would take ? (feel free to guess)
From what I learned so far:
- Brand name and patents are held by Gateway
No, the IP and Patents are held by Gateway, but the patents will have expired by now so are valueless. The IP is 20 years old too, so isn't of much value... Denises Minimig IP has MUCH more value!
- Amiga Inc, Amino or whoever licenced brand name and .... ?
No, Amino bought the trademarks/Brand (Amiga) and obtained a licence to use the IP and patents.
- Hyperion licenced Amiga OS rights (or is just developing OS4 for Amiga inc.?)
Hyperion apperantly bought a licence to develop a PowerPC version of AmigaOS called Amiga Os 4.x
and it looks like 1000 lawyers can't deal with this mess :)...
I'm not a lawyer :-D
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amiga1084 wrote:
Hello All,
I still believe the rumor that Bill Gates/MicroShaft scared
Gateway to stop making,marking new Amiga.Why would you buy
the rights if all you want are the patents.Gateway was &
still is just other PC Clone company what are the patents worth
to them.They wanted to change but good old Billy Boy wouldn't
let them.Thats my opinion and I am sticking to it.Merv
Maybe gateway bought amiga just to get better barganing leverage on microsoft.
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Anyway as a coder yourself you know that very little of AmigaOS 3.x code is in AOS4.0.
This is a hilarious statement.
Anyway, the lack of a comprehensive response doens't imply that I concede your point, merely that I cannot go into specifics because of the NDA I hold with Hyperion. Damn it.
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xeron wrote:
Anyway as a coder yourself you know that very little of AmigaOS 3.x code is in AOS4.0.
This is a hilarious statement.
Maybe it is, but it doesn't detract from the fact that 15year old source code is of no value just about everybody.
Anyway, the lack of a comprehensive response doens't imply that I concede your point, merely that I cannot go into specifics because of the NDA I hold with Hyperion. Damn it.
Use hypothetical examples then...
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I think the bigger thing is that trademarks and copyrights have to be vigorously defended in order to remain valid, and with Amiga Inc in... well, whatever state they are in... there is no one defending any of this.
For example, before reopening the Amiga.org merchandise store (http://www.cafepress.com/whyzzat/) on cafepress.com, I wrote McEwen an e-mail announcing my intentions and the fact that I was holding any licensing fees in escrow until they let me know what to do with them (based on the only licensing documentation I had ever been given -- the one that demands 30% of sales price)..
To date, despite numerous attempts to get a reply, none has been forthcoming. This is ok, because only one hat has been sold, but the fact that there is zero response to multiple contact attempts regarding official business and paying them money is pretty troubling.
I may consult with my attorney to find out whether their supposed trademarks on the Amiga symbols is even valid any more, considering their lack of attention to the matter.
Wayne
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bloodline wrote:
Use hypothetical examples then...
Well.. hmmm... OK. You are porting operating system A to hardware B. Lets say you have component X's source code. It is written in C. With a bit of tweaking it compiles under GCC for hardware B. Is it better to rewrite component X from scratch, or use the existing source code? This will depend on the state of component X's code of course, but when there are hundreds of components in operating system A a fair amount of them will probably be worth developing using the original source as a base.
Also, I can think of at least one OS component in OS4 that was almost entirely assembler. It was translated function by function into C to ensure maximum compatability, with builds tested on AmigaOS3.x to ensure nothing broke as the functions were translated (the C functions even had to work with the other functions still being assembled from the original source). When it was fully C, it was tweaked to compile with GCC, and then finally compiled for OS4 and PPC. This was done because the component in question was quite complex and it was desirable to go for maximum compatability with this particular component. Although there is now none of the original source involved in that component, I still consider it based on OS3.x code. (note: if you are thinking of a particular component, you are probably wrong, but i can't tell you which one it is anyway).
Anyway, at the end of the day, only the OS4 core devs know exactly how much OS3.x code is used, and i'm not one of those, so even without NDA I couldn't give you an exact figure, but from the information I DO have I can see that having the code has been very useful indeed.
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xeron wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Use hypothetical examples then...
Well.. hmmm... OK. You are porting operating system A to hardware B. Lets say you have component X's source code. It is written in C. With a bit of tweaking it compiles under GCC for hardware B. Is it better to rewrite component X from scratch, or use the existing source code? This will depend on the state of component X's code of course, but when there are hundreds of components in operating system A a fair amount of them will probably be worth developing using the original source as a base.
Also, I can think of at least one OS component in OS4 that was almost entirely assembler. It was translated function by function into C to ensure maximum compatability, with builds tested on AmigaOS3.x to ensure nothing broke as the functions were translated (the C functions even had to work with the other functions still being assembled from the original source). When it was fully C, it was tweaked to compile with GCC, and then finally compiled for OS4 and PPC. This was done because the component in question was quite complex and it was desirable to go for maximum compatability with this particular component. Although there is now none of the original source involved in that component, I still consider it based on OS3.x code. (note: if you are thinking of a particular component, you are probably wrong, but i can't tell you which one it is anyway).
Ok, our definitions are a little different, I understand what you mean.
I know which part you are referring to though, and I'm not thinking of the obvious ;-)
Anyway, at the end of the day, only the OS4 core devs know exactly how much OS3.x code is used, and i'm not one of those, so even without NDA I couldn't give you an exact figure, but from the information I DO have I can see that having the code has been very useful indeed.
I would put it to you though, that other than the private functions (and the extra comptiblity that that might provide for naughty programs)... it has not sped up or in any way eased the the AOS4 process!
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I would put it to you though, that other than the private functions (and the extra comptiblity that that might provide for naughty programs)... it has not sped up or in any way eased the the AOS4 process!
and I couldn't disagree more wholeheartedly if I tried.
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xeron wrote:
I would put it to you though, that other than the private functions (and the extra comptiblity that that might provide for naughty programs)... it has not sped up or in any way eased the the AOS4 process!
and I couldn't disagree more wholeheartedly if I tried.
Go on! Try!
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I'll do my best ;-)
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bloodline, if you're not a lawyer - you should be :-D
Ok so, in order to get Amiga name (trademarks / brand) and to start developing new Amiga OS/Hardware, company X should:
- buy Amiga name from Amino, or buy Amino? :)
- licence or buy IP and patents from Gateway
Is this correct ?
What ammount of money can be involved here ? 50-100mil$,... less? more ? Are there any informations related to Amiga Inc. / Amino stock value ?
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snowman040 wrote:
bloodline, if you're not a lawyer - you should be :-D
I wouldn't mind earning a lawyer salery!
Ok so, in order to get Amiga name (trademarks / brand) and to start developing new Amiga OS/Hardware, company X should:
- buy Amiga name from Amino, or buy Amino? :)
If you want to call it an Amiga, yes.
- licence or buy IP and patents from Gateway
No, you don't need the IP since it can't be used anymore, there are no chip factories that could build Amiga chips... but you could reimplement the chips using modern technology as Dennis has done (See this thread: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19361)
Since Dennis designed the Amiga compatible chips all by himself, he owns the IP to them.
What ammount of money can be involved here ? 50-100mil$,... less? more ? Are there any informations related to Amiga Inc. / Amino stock value ?
At a real push the owerns of the Amiga trademarks could probably demand about $5 Million... but the brand isn't worth that much anymore. Amiga Inc. the company has no value.
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snowman040 wrote:
bloodline, if you're not a lawyer - you should be :-D
Ok so, in order to get Amiga name (trademarks / brand) and to start developing new Amiga OS/Hardware, company X should:
- buy Amiga name from Amino, or buy Amino? :)
- licence or buy IP and patents from Gateway
Is this correct ?
What ammount of money can be involved here ? 50-100mil$,... less? more ? Are there any informations related to Amiga Inc. / Amino stock value ?
man, i think you got thoes units off, surely you meant 50-100k
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@bloodline
And what about OS rights ? How expensive would it be to buy AmigaOS classic and patents so company X could continue development? (Similar to what Hyperion did, but in more "we own this" type).
And bloodline, could you explain more your opinion that Amiga brand isn't worth that much ? Do you think that some serious investment in Amiga has no sense ?
@koaftder
Well I did hoped for the worst :-) remembering Escom buyouts and all, got me thinking pesimistic about the numbers... but hey - less money on IP, brand, bla bla - more on development ... :-D
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snowman040 wrote:
@bloodline
And what about OS rights ? How expensive would it be to buy AmigaOS classic and patents so company X could continue development? (Similar to what Hyperion did, but in more "we own this" type).
Who knows who owns the OS rights... Amiga Inc. suggest that they do, and no one has challenged them. They have proven their unwillingness to disscuss any terms on this matter.
Hyperion IMHO own the rights to the parts of AOS4 they have written, which despite Xerons protestations, I think is a sustantial amount!
Well... if you own the rights to the Amiga brand, you can take an opensource Amiga OS compatible clone, and call it Amiga OS. I would suggest that one should take an exising *nix and then host the opensource amiga OS compatible clone on that, in a similar way to what Apple have done wither thier OS.
And bloodline, could you explain more your opinion that Amiga brand isn't worth that much ? Do you think that some serious investment in Amiga has no sense ?
The probem is that the current owners have killed the Brand image, in order to maintain a brands value you MUST keep it rellevant to the young people. No mass market under 25 will have any nostalgia for the brand, and it's been 10 (more like 13) years since Amiga meant anything other than "that old games machine, that I might still have in the attic".
If you wanted to use the Amiga brand now, you would have to build an image from scratch! It would be a new brand.(http://forums.macnn.com/images/smilies/poke.gif)
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snowman040 wrote:
@koaftder
Well I did hoped for the worst :-) remembering Escom buyouts and all, got me thinking pesimistic about the numbers... but hey - less money on IP, brand, bla bla - more on development ... :-D
I know it seems pretty awful for me to write that... I just dont think the amiga brand carries much value anymore in relation to branding, at least here in the US that is. Very few of my geek friends have heard of it, and almost none of my non geek friends have even heard of the amiga brand. ( i'm still gonna buy that mousepad wayne, just getting my money back into check (: )
There are a lot of compaq sales, even though theres no compaq anymore, thats because people got branded. My girlfriend wont buy a machine unless it's got Compaq somwhere on it, she associates the brand with quality. Amiga missed that ball because they fell down on the early side of the curve, most people never got a chance to get branded except for us early computer adoptors.
For the amiga brand to carry weight now, they will have to put out something insane, like an optical processor clocked at 10Ghz or a quantum computing based math coprocessor. If a company did that, it wouldnt matter weather they called it amiga or something new now would it, as it would stand on it's own anyway.
If hell froze over, steve jobs would take over Amiga Inc, put out sexy looking machines, ditch the operating system for something better, add lots of eyecandy and spend a billion dollars on amiga branded consumer applications. Then the brand might be worth something, but we know thats not going to happen.
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Bloodline: Anyway as a coder yourself you know that very little of AmigaOS 3.x code is in AOS4.0.
I spend a lot of time refactoring other peoples' code. There is a pretty big margin between actual code and program design.
Hyperion went just a bit too far, which is why it's taken them years to get this thing done (and only if there's new hardware available on which to launch it).
Bloodline: Maybe it is, but it doesn't detract from the fact that 15 year old source code is of no value just about everybody.
15-year-old design can still be useful, if it's done well. Granted, all the hardware-handling stuff in OS3 isn't of any use.
With that said, I still think starting with OS3 was a bad idea. QNX was a lot more interesting, and just because most modern OSes end up cloning UNIX in one way or another, doesn't mean they have to stay that way.
Bloodline: No, you don't need the IP since it can't be used anymore, there are no chip factories that could build Amiga chips...
Hmm... we all know the AGA blueprints are dust, but what about OCS/ECS? People don't seem to talk about the old chipsets that much.
Bloodline: I would put it to you though, that other than the private functions (and the extra comptiblity that that might provide for naughty programs)... it has not sped up or in any way eased the the AOS4 process!
Xeron: and I couldn't disagree more wholeheartedly if I tried.
It doesn't take me all that long to port badly written Perl to decent PHP, and I've seen plenty of wretched Perl (the kind with a regex on every other line). Most of that is writing abstraction layers, and using common techniques that allow the code to run on non-UNIX, non-Apache servers. It never ceases to amaze me how may people hard-code for UNIX/Apache when they don't have to, and use an .htaccess file to mask the fact that their code is terrible and insecure.
This isn't low-level or GUI stuff, of course, but the design work is similar. Also, script writers are generally more aware of security issues than OS developers (which have a curious tendency to leave the system in root all the time, like Windows). I'm really upset with the security/group capabilites of OS4.
Secure computing? The ability to fully quarantine any program? Now that's something that would get attention! I don't know why people still think CHMODing the hell of out everything and filtering paths is a secure solution.
Snowman040: And bloodline, could you explain more your opinion that Amiga brand isn't worth that much? Do you think that some serious investment in Amiga has no sense?
You're asking this of an AROS developer? :-)
It's not valuable because AmigaOS was designed to run on a 1-2 meg machine with no fast storage. Todays cell phones are more powerful than an A1200, and accept memory cards that store between 64MB to 2GB of data. You can force AmigaOS to do that stuff, but doing that on an achitecture that can't handle the task is the source of most bloat. Try to get AmigaOS to do the things people expect of XP, and you'll see the bloat and cruft pile up in a hurry.
Bloodline: I would suggest that one should take an exising *nix and then host the opensource amiga OS compatible clone on that, in a similar way to what Apple have done wither thier OS
UNIX has plenty of problems, but most people who think it's a big, hairy mess don't know anything about it. Clip out all the legacy support for 20-year-old programs that nobody uses anymore, and UNIX can actually be very clean and simple. There's a reason so many embedded OSes use UNIX-like architecture, despite the limited hardware available.
It would be nice if people stopped all this dynamic library crap and went back to command-line tools like they used to use. Why rewrite all the tools that are already built into the OS? UNIX could really use a new shell and desktop environment. That's what I would like Amiga to be.
Koaftder: I just dont think the amiga brand carries much value anymore in relation to branding, at least here in the US that is.
Definately not in the US. Most other coders I know have no clue what an Amiga is, and I'm not taking about 15-year-olds, here.
Koaftder: For the amiga brand to carry weight now, they will have to put out something insane, like an optical processor clocked at 10Ghz or a quantum computing based math coprocessor.
Or off-the-shelf parts that get the job done!
The only uses for 4Ghz processors are for serious graphic/video workstations, servers, and game machines. Clip out the entertainment software, and a basic economy PC is more than enough to keep people happy. The problem is, people can't live without games. Computers don't make people's lives easier; they mostly exist for amusement. :-)
Really, what's the point in Mesa3D support if the base graphics card is a Radeon 9200? My iMac has that, and the visual quality sucks for 3D, let alone the speed. That hardware is best used for the GUI, so we can dump all the crazy layers crap. Still, Hyperion does 2D for its graphics. Now, we've got all these new hand-held systems with early GPUs. What now?
Koaftder: If a company did that, it wouldnt matter weather they called it amiga or something new now would it, as it would stand on it's own anyway.
Amiga is never going to stand out on the grounds of technical competence without a freakin' lot of money. Both Amiga and Hyperion don't seem to have much of an idea of what to do with their creations, other than license it for use on gadgets that don't do that much other than take notes, send messages, and play mini-games.
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Waccoon wrote:
Amiga is never going to stand out on the grounds of technical competence without a freakin' lot of money.
How much money is that ? 200, 500, 900mil$ ?
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snowman040 wrote:
Waccoon wrote:
Amiga is never going to stand out on the grounds of technical competence without a freakin' lot of money.
How much money is that ? 200, 500, 900mil$ ?
It needs someone with the arrogance, balls and ruthlessness of Steve Jobs (who also has experience resurrecting an ailing computer brand)... I guess it would cost however much he would charge to do the job... Though I doubt someone like that would bother with such a pathetic starting point.
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Damn it's the Steve jobs fan club :)
Only kidding but lets be honest here, You are talking like only Jobs could resurrect the Amiga which is cobblers.
If somebody owned the Amiga brand and actually moved it forward with actually what would be a little invetsment really it would take off again in Europe with no problem at all, Maybe geek freinds haven't heard of the brand in the US but here in UK and Europe you ain't no geek if you have no experience of the Amiga.
Amiga never had any problems at all selling here in the UK or Europe and my mother has even heard of Amiga and i'm 32.
I think it's a shame that(Could be a nutcase but it may be somebody genuine - I know i know why would they be asking on a forum) anybody who shows interest in relaunching the brand is hit with all this rubbish that is basically just telling everybody how great Steve jobs is.
Amiga needs somebody to step up and move forward but what exactly makes Jobs that person ?
Sorry to be blatant here but who gives a hell about Steve jobs, It's kinda like he is an acceptable Bill Gates or something, They are both ruthless horrible scumbags but Jobs gets given so much leeway because he is BG's main competitor (Yeah right).
Lastly to say that the Amiga brand has no value is total hogwash and cant be backed upo in one bit, Yes the IP may be worth nothing but the name is still worth a hell of a lot in Europe and pretending otherwise wont make it less valuable, Do you not understand the value of "No way it's an Amiga" when it comes to impulse buys ?
The Amiga has a huge future as a media centre/Game machine and i will tell you why, Gaming is going through a second coming of sorts and it seems that all those people who weren't around for the first round with Amiga Atari and SNES and so on now wan't that action, A media centre that plays retro games and still has the power to kick out the modern games too is going to clean up (Notice a good browser is needed here bigtime) , Now this can be done with PS2 and Xbox and so on which is true but the potential for a machine that does this without needing chipping is unbelivably huge.
Any way i don't want to come across as flaming anybody but there was some rubbish spouted here ;)
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Flexinoodl wrote:
Damn it's the Steve jobs fan club :)
Only kidding but lets be honest here, You are talking like only Jobs could resurrect the Amiga which is cobblers.
My point was we would need some one LIKE Steve Jobs, anything less and the Amiga would not have a chance.
I asure you the Amiga brand has nothing of value over my StiffSock brand... Amiga Inc. killed off any value the Amiga still had.
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bloodline wrote:
Flexinoodl wrote:
Damn it's the Steve jobs fan club :)
Only kidding but lets be honest here, You are talking like only Jobs could resurrect the Amiga which is cobblers.
My point was we would need some one LIKE Steve Jobs, anything less and the Amiga would not have a chance.
I asure you the Amiga brand has nothing of value over my StiffSock brand... Amiga Inc. killed off any value the Amiga still had.
What amiga inc may be trying to do is roll under it's value. Lets say Amiga is worth 5. A.inc may be trying to make it's value worth less than 0, causing the variable to roll around and end up extremely high with minimal effort. This is a strategy Steve Jobs would never have come up with. Perhaps those steering amiga inc are really geniuses and we are not aware of it yet.
Since amigas are 32 bit, it's value after 0 would be 4294967295. At this value, they could get by selling socks and tshirts for thousands of dollars a piece, and people would consider it a good value.
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Slightly off topic but to say that fue people know about the "Amiga Brand" is not very true. When Amiga was selling their A3000(t), 4000(t) 1200 and 600 in the 1990's it outsold the PC almost two to one in the UK only the Mac. sold better. So this tells me that there are alot of Amiga users out there who either have it stored in their atic or are still using it today. I know only a fue people that dont know what an Amiga is and considering that my A4000D is still running today tells me that it is a well made product. I hope that some day Amiga as we all know it will come back to life. (not likely but I would like to see it happen) The Amiga One is a start but is not really an Amiga as we know as there are so many changes to it.
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tonyvdb wrote:
Slightly off topic but to say that fue people know about the "Amiga Brand" is not very true. When Amiga was selling their A3000(t), 4000(t) 1200 and 600 in the 1990's it outsold the PC almost two to one in the UK only the Mac. sold better. So this tells me that there are alot of Amiga users out there who either have it stored in their atic or are still using it today. I know only a fue people that dont know what an Amiga is and considering that my A4000D is still running today tells me that it is a well made product. I hope that some day Amiga as we all know it will come back to life. (not likely but I would like to see it happen) The Amiga One is a start but is not really an Amiga as we know as there are so many changes to it.
Do you live in the UK? Amiga doesnt seem to have cought on much in the US from what ive seen. I remember it all over the place in Dallas in mid to late 80s. Moved to NC in '90 and never heard or saw amiga in a store ever again.
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Saying that AI ruined Amigas brand value is actually a very blinkered view you can only have if you are an Amigan.
Because you are an Amigan you know all the AI sillyness we have had to deal with plus all the other rubbish before that.
Now look at it from the point of view of the average consumer, They know nothing of any of the past ten years other than there wasn't any Amigas in the shops, If one appeared in the shops it would just be accepted as a new Amiga end of story, The ammount of people who know the entire Amiga ownership history up until now is miniscule in comparison to the retail market available to a new Amiga.
Like i said it would have to be built up in Europe first then through to Asia (With all the recent anti MS stuff over there the timing is now perfect) and then into the US.
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I'd be interested to hear how the community or AI could add value to the Amiga brand.
Samuar
ps//
steve jobs is nothing without a big bag of cash. So we need both a steve jobs and a rather large bag of cash. Let's find them.
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Bleh. I just spent the last 45 minutes reading over the the history of the Amiga. I still remember the day that I read that Gateway 2000 was buying the Amiga, planning on making new systems. Just going over all that information is like trying to trace out individual spaghetti noodles in a pot of them.
:bigcry:
All this is just mind boggling. It's just so surprising how they were able to completing mess up a company and not know where things are coming or going. If you could go back in time and change any of the events, would you ?
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Flexinoodl I salute you!
I've just read some of the most negative tripe on this thread...
First point would be that yes, the Amiga didn't do as well in the United States as it did in Europe. Europe has this culture of parties, art and varying musical styles whereas I perceive the US to be starched IBM business men tapping away at a Lotus spreadsheet with an iPod playing soft rock or country music. Anyone worth their salt in the computing industry knows about the Amiga. It was used by Nasa, moviemakers, TV broadcasters, 6 million gamers/creators and featured on Rolf's Cartoon Club (the pinnacle of it's career).
There's too many geeks now that grew up on a diet of Visual Basic, Windows and too much hardware resources. They became blinkered, arrogant and lacking in essential survival skills... a bit like US troops in Iraq.
The Amiga brand still holds a whopping big clout - you just have to look on the TV text services/newspapers in the UK to see "Commodore is resurrected" as having some sort of editorial grandeur.
I vote Sir Alan Sugar as the saviour... he's got a billion dollars behind him and Amstrad (his Amiga-competing company) is now on the up...
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@Hyperspeed
True a lot of people in the US tend to be the money grubbing, power thristy type that are content to be slam away on computer operating systems with no personality.
I personally don't like those "pocket protector" types. Most IT personal get on my nerves. Yes I have respect for the truly hardcore Unix that really really know what they are doing, it's the typical MSCE type that do it to me. The ones that think just because they can remember everything on the pages of their Access manuals.
In the past few days I've learned that there are a lot more Amiga users in my city then I thought. Matter of fact, I've learned that my public library has more then just the 4000T that is pushing Infochannel on our public access channel. All the people that decide to take workshops to run and produce shows, and do any editing have to learn how to use the Amigas. I'm going to ask the director of our access channel about all the Amigas. I wanna play with them. Already we have tons of new Amigans brewing everyday.
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Flexinoodl I salute you!
I've just read some of the most negative tripe on this thread...
I would rather negative and find myself in a relistic situation fully aware of what needs to be done, than to live in a delutional bubble where everything is ok... The Amiga has had enough of la la land.
The Amiga brand still holds a whopping big clout - you just have to look on the TV text services/newspapers in the UK to see "Commodore is resurrected" as having some sort of editorial grandeur.
You miss the point of a Brand! It's not for the techies (the sort of people who would remember the Amiga), they would buy any machine that was good.
In order to be a sucessful brand you need to build a reputation in your chosen field. The Amiga has no reputation in any field right now, you would have to build one from scratch.
I vote Sir Alan Sugar as the saviour... he's got a billion dollars behind him and Amstrad (his Amiga-competing company) is now on the up...
He is completely the wrong type of person for the job! Amstrad computers, hahahahah... :crazy:
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Snowman040: How much money is that ? 200, 500, 900mil$ ?
If you wanted to be more than just a hobby system, and actually have multimedia worth something, an initial investment of $40-50 million would be a minimum. This assumes you're making a desktop-class OS, you're not going mainstream, and that you're not making your own hardware. It also assumes you're really making something different that will interest geeks, with only a passing resemblance to UNIX (the good parts).
Be Inc. burned though, what, $300 million over ten years? I don't know why they dumped the BeBox for vanilla PC hardware. If they had narrowed down their platform to just a few, select x86 boards, instead of trying to write tons of drivers, they could have done better. Be cost too much to maintain. Still, I wasn't too impressed with Be. The GUI drove me nuts, and still looked way too much like Windows for my tastes. It had cool technology, but it didn't feel cool.
Windows owns multimedia. Apple owns eye candy. Google owns services. Nobody own portability outside the gaming market, but there's a thousand companies trying to do that, already. Amiga really should focus on high-level interfaces. It's the only frontier that nobody has really done well, yet. Everyone who shouts that Linux is the future forgets that it is just a kernel. Interfaces on UNIX just plain suck.
Anyone: Steve Jobs
He's a major A.H. Profit or no, there's no way would I want someone like that to re-invent the Amiga, because I would probably not like it at all.
tonyvdb: Slightly off topic but to say that fue people know about the "Amiga Brand" is not very true. When Amiga was selling their A3000(t), 4000(t) 1200 and 600 in the 1990's it outsold the PC almost two to one in the UK only the Mac. sold better. So this tells me that there are alot of Amiga users out there who either have it stored in their atic or are still using it today
I have a Coleco Vision in my attick. I'm a huge, huge fan of that system. Does that make me more likely to buy a game machine that carries the Coleco brand name? Hell, no.
I want a system that does what I want it to do, not one that brings back fond memories and forces old ideas to work with modern hardware.
Flexinoodl: Saying that AI ruined Amigas brand value is actually a very blinkered view you can only have if you are an Amigan.
Amiga's brand value was ruined by the fact that after 7 years, AGA offered only a pathetic refresh of the chipset. I vividly remember how disappointed I was in my A1200, and the fact that the A4000 had slower graphics than the "budget" machine due to the timing issues with faster CPUs. Really, I remember looking at window refreshes in the store, and couldn't believe how slow it was in 256 color mode. I knew right away Commodore was finished, and so did all of the stores. Within 6 months of the release of the A1200, nobody had them in stock anymore. Everyone converted permanently to PCs.
If the brand was so valuable, why didn't more companies fight to the death to acquire it when Commodore went bust?
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I've stayed out of this until now...
I vote Sir Alan Sugar as the saviour...
No, he's not got a clue when it comes to technology - he can't evaluate what will or will not be successful and relies on people to tell him what will be successful. Those people let him down: look at the emailer phones that were supposed to make amstrad their millions.
Amstrad, to me, means cheap electronics that jump on the "me too" bandwagon with no innovation. The approach sounds almost Tramiel-esque: I want it cheaper, not better... Someone else can innovate, we'll take it mass market :-(
However, the guy does have business acumen and a personality which might be useful ;-) . If you could mix in a bit of Jay Miner's original flair and insight I think you'd be laughing.
What made the Amiga were the custom chips and DMA which at the time was revolutionary compared to the horribly crippled PC architecture. The 68000 chip probably helped too as compared to x86s of the day, it was beautifully simple to work with.
The appeal of decent graphics and sound was obvious, and took the Amiga into the home as a games machine, coupled with a useful OS. The games never caught me greatly, it was tinkering with the machine that I enjoyed.
Today, I think there's a market for a decent OS with the "given" that it'll support superb multimedia. The appeal is an easy to use, safe, secure OS that's understandable by one person with average interest in the field of computers.
Couple it with hardware that doesn't require huge cooling and you've made something appealing. Make it instant on/off, wrap up some decent games, internet access and office software and you're on to a winner providing you make it look appealing and inviting. It would be a "family computer" that could grow with the kids: as they progressed from games, they'd get into the other side of the machine. This is exactly what happened with me and the 64.
AmigaOS 3.x is already fragmenting too much in my opinion due to the stuff that's had to be bolted on. Look at the RTG stuff. Look at sound. Look at the network stacks. It's forked ;-) . The forking and choice is what I feel is truly preventing Linux from taking off. Which distro? Which desktop? Gnome or KDE? It's part of the power of the FOSS movement, but it's also a weakness.
The beauty of AOS 1,2 and 3 is that I know what every file in the OS does. It's understandable, it's straightforward, it's simple, it's beautiful! Even a base install of WinXP isn't. Linux or BSD distros can be close, but that's getting worse :-(
There's no particularly new insights in this post, admittedly, but the Amiga makes computing fun and understandable, and encourages hacking in the traditional sense of the word. I believe there's still a great appeal in that approach...
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Waccoon wrote:
Anyone: Steve Jobs
He's a major A.H. Profit or no, there's no way would I want someone like that to re-invent the Amiga, because I would probably not like it at all.
Sure he is a huge A.H. but we were talking about saving the Amiga Brand... not about making products that would appeal to the Amiga community. ;-)
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chiark: What made the Amiga were the custom chips and DMA which at the time was revolutionary compared to the horribly crippled PC architecture. The 68000 chip probably helped too as compared to x86s of the day, it was beautifully simple to work with.
I'm not really sure why people keep saying this, as using the hardware directly caused tond of problems that haunt Amigans to this day. The games and demos were fun, but Workbench is what made the system a real computer.
Then again, I was never a hacker. I like to do things properly. :-)
chiark: The forking and choice is what I feel is truly preventing Linux from taking off. Which distro? Which desktop? Gnome or KDE?
Yeah, Linux is still a geek OS. There's little unity and cooperation on the desktop. People have been telling me for years that Windows would die any day, now. Linux people just don't understand interfaces at all.
When do I get a new FTP program with resume upload that doesn't lock up ten times per session? Oh no, just the same old standard with more eye candy. Linux people have no intuition at all.
chiark: There's no particularly new insights in this post, admittedly, but the Amiga makes computing fun and understandable, and encourages hacking in the traditional sense of the word. I believe there's still a great appeal in that approach...
The best thing about AmigaOS is how easily it could go between the CLI and GUI. Windows does everything with a GUI. Apple does the same to a point, because some things can't be done at all in the GUI. Linux is only really useful if you use the CLI, as there's no real standards for the GUI, and each distro has a different pack of tools that are all crippled in one way or another.
Bloodlin: Sure he is a huge A.H. but we were talking about saving the Amiga Brand... not about making products that would appeal to the Amiga community.
Ah, so you just want a salesman, and not engineers. :-D
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Waccoon wrote:
Bloodline: Sure he is a huge A.H. but we were talking about saving the Amiga Brand... not about making products that would appeal to the Amiga community.
Ah, so you just want a salesman, and not engineers. :-D
:-D
Yeah, I guess so... no one comapny could afford the same number of CPU designers as intel/AMD, or the same number of GPU designers as ATI/nVidia or the same number of chipset designers as any of the above... it just makes sense to use thier hardware and repackage it a way (a pretty aluminium case?) that makes it more attractive to the customer... a well thought out OS and a great suite of productivity/home apps as standard for a good price is the way to do it.
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Waccoon wrote:
I'm not really sure why people keep saying this, as using the hardware directly caused tond of problems that haunt Amigans to this day. The games and demos were fun, but Workbench is what made the system a real computer.
But, back in the day, it was the only way to get performance out of the machine... There was no other option. The hardware was documented, so it was definitely expected for people to hit it. If CBM had not wanted people to use it, there'd have been no information available and a strict "use the stuff we provide in ROM" approach.
Even with hindsight, I think games/demos were right to hit the hardware. Was was wrong was the way that AGA clung to compatability by bolting things on: the opportunity was there to do so much more, but they fumbled it. Perhaps they should have made the 1200 more like the 128, which could be booted in 64 emulation mode. Sure, I know about the early startup screen but that wasn't perfect...
Then again, I was never a hacker. I like to do things properly. :-)
Agreed. But when the only way to make something work is to hit the hardware, it sorta is the proper way. The first call in all demos that I wrote was to tell the OS to politely keep its nose out so it is "proper" ;-) . But I fully agree, doing just that ties you into a certain architecture.
The best thing about AmigaOS is how easily it could go between the CLI and GUI. Windows does everything with a GUI. Apple does the same to a point, because some things can't be done at all in the GUI. Linux is only really useful if you use the CLI, as there's no real standards for the GUI, and each distro has a different pack of tools that are all crippled in one way or another.
You know, I think you could be right. I use the CLI extensively, but on the other hand the wb is useful for "real" work.
Couple that with the simple structure (devs: libs: l: s: c: ...) and I think that's what appeals to me.
Sorry for taking this off topic, but thanks for the discussion all the same :-D ... This was once about patents - hope no-one minds the off topic too much.
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:madashell:
Grr, I've been yelled at too many times for being a cynic. I've been told all I want to do is taint people with the poison of negativity when I mention anything at all wrong with the Amiga world. Okay now we have more people people that are admitting that they don't want the sugar coating crap shoved down their throats any more.
Is it okay now to chuck the "Positive Touchy Feelings in AmigaLand" stuff and be able to get real. Personally myself, I'm a MUCH better worker when I'm angry (which really doesn't happen all that often), getting stuff done very quickly. True if I'm not stuff will get completed eventually, but being all PO'ed is going to light a fire under you. Face it, anger people take action. Brash, cutthroat, livid take no prisoners business guys end up eating steak at the end of the day, while the mild and meek still with hot dogs.
Did you take the red pill, the blue pill, or the sugar pill? Only you know.
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Ok. You don't like Steve Jobs......
Well how about.....
(drumroll)
Steve Wozniak.
The Woz could sort all this rubbish out....
Who could possibily be a better choice?
He has publically spoken out about their being a lack of choice in the market place and a need for something more from operating systems. So he has vision.
He's got the goodwill of the entire computing planet and he's probably the nicest guy in tech.
I don't know what he's doing right now, but this might be something he could get his teeth into. What could be more fun then raising a cult computer from the ashes?
It would make headlines, and he and Amiga would be used in the same sentence as Jobs and Mac. I think he could make a success out of it like no other.
If he couldn't buy the whole shebang(including Commodore) outright, he probably wouldn't have any trouble raising the money.
Hell, he would probably have fun engineering the next Amiga himself.
Has anyone had any success in contacting him? Seems he apologised for being flooded with e-mail last I tried.
Ok. Going back to my happy place now.(http://64.33.47.100/images/a1000anim.gif)
We have no weiners!!! We have no buns!!! Get the Woz to run this hotdog stand!!!
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Woz is a clever chap, but I'd rather have Dave Haynie... or even both!!! :-D
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I live in Canada, but folowed the Amiga news closely at the time. It was a sad day when comodore went under. The North americain office of Comodore was most likely the main reason for them going under. Their coustomer service was just terrable and the marketing was very poor.
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>with Amiga Inc in... well, whatever state they are in
>... there is no one defending any of this.
Exactly. I doubt they could weather a legal clash over the rights or ownership of the AmigaOS, let alone trademark. Gateway might (if they felt it was worth it- and if you're not stealing any patents, they may not) but I suspect by now they (Gateway) too suspect they might not actually have actual legal ownership of the OS. And don't expect them to admit to it easily.
Wayne, do you know what constitutes defense of a trademark for legal purposes? I think it's up to Amino to find and slap down the infringement. I notified Petro about Play's illegal use of the Boing ball, which helped keep it viable as a logo/ttrademark. I'm sure you would help your case, and help set some precedent if you sent registered mail to Amino.
> I'd imagine that Gateway would have done thier
>homework. I think there is little chance that the
> corporate sharks, er, I mean, lawyers would have
>over-looked something as obvious as that.
This was international legal wrangling combined with language obstacles, multiplied by complex technical documents. And tons of paperwork with a complicated history. Who knows how it happened. What matters "uncharted", is not your idle opinions, but what the courts found.
And based upon the posting on page 1, it is clear that the patents were transferred, but not the ownership of the OS. Looking at the "new Amiga" hardware proffered now, little or no Amiga hardware is present so those patents are not likely an issue. I think at best the OS would be considered a copyright issue, but am unsure. Remember, software patents are a new (and IMHO, insane) concept. The AmigaOS existed and CBM went under almost a decade before such absurd software-patent legislation was passed. So it should remain under a copyright not a patent. And we don't see anything about Escom having legal ownership of it to actually sell to Gateway do we?
>Therfore Escom lost the law suit.
Which again makes me wonder why anybody believed that Gateway/Amino ever had legal right to AmigaOS. We need a class action.
If anybody says the patents are expired, show your evidence.
> Patents only last 10 years, so anything that C= had is
>no longer patented.
You keep on believing that. :-)
>Hyperion licenced Amiga OS rights (
Ah, but licensed from WHO? If Escom didn't have full exclusive rights to it, then Gateway couldn't possibly have bought it from them. So you have to wonder if Hyperion should have checked the court records more closely.
Speaking of insanity, what ever happened of the sales of the Pan-Asian Amiga rights to Lotus-Pacific? Huh? There's a can of worms for Gateway and Amiga/Amino :-) if anybody wanted to dig around.
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All this talk about who would make the ultimate CE0 of amiga inc reminds me of fantasy football. Need to put up a site thats a good mix of fu
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That's pretty much what it is. What's wrong with that :-D ?
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Wacoon: so let's say that this legal, Amiga OS, IP, patents, brands, rights hell-mess takes 50mil$ to solve. Would another 50mil$ for development of 3-4 motherboards, 5-6 related products be enough ?
boing: but then, who owns Amiga OS exclusive rights ? :-)
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justthatgood: It's the angry people eating steak I most suspect of having mad cow disease!
I do think a venture capitalist needs to be approached, given the lowdown (including the potential for anger to flare in the community) then ask them for a few million for research so we can get a taste of what is needed. I can't believe that Amiga Inc. (whoever they are now...) is not communicating with the public anymore, what is Hyperion doing these days - they have no PR relations at all!
As for blue, red and sugar pills - I'll take the (Alan Sugar/) pill!
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If CBM had not wanted people to use it, there'd have been no information available and a strict "use the stuff we provide in ROM" approach.
I recall Commodore's documentation was rife with "DO NOT DO THIS" disclaimers. Programmers didn't listen. Hence, even adding more memory or a hard drive caused Gurus left and right. When an A500 game doesn't work on an A500, you know something isn't right. Hell, look at copy protection. A lot of times, floppy issues prevented A500 games from working on an A500, and you still had to type in codes from blood-red cardstock. Thank God developers don't do things like that, anymore.
Hitting the hardware was fine for demos and games, but nobody really expects a hard-coded A500 demo to work on an A4000, given that many PC demos won't work on modern PCs, either. Game compatibility is usually pretty good if it is friendly to CPU caches.
Workbench apps are a different story. I recall only a few WB programs that really hit the hardware (Audition4 comes to mind), and I don't really think it was necessary to get decent performance.
Besides, demos and games look pretty much the same on every platform since the developers make their own GUI tools. There's little consistency, and little "Amiga" about it, other than your typical, "I can do more playfields than you can." How about all 'dem lousy PC ports, eh? ;-)
Would another 50mil$ for development of 3-4 motherboards, 5-6 related products be enough?
Yeah, but how do you make the money back? Software is flexible, hardware has to be sold quickly.
Also, $50 mil dumped into PPC hardware != $50 mil into hardware that already exists. Why spend tons of money to get some idealistic ball-and-chain that is only marginally better than a very well-tested solution that already sells by the hundreds of thousands? Be coudn't hack it, and that was before the big venture into "integration" that cut x86 motherboard manufacturing costs drasticly while adding tons of standard features.
If you're talking about modifying a PC machine to, for example, provide the anti-piracy BIOS lockout, then $50 mil is way over budget. But then, it's debatable as to whether said lockouts actually thwart piracy. Lousy drivers are probably good enough. :-)
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One could argue that piracy helped make the Amiga, as it has done lately with the Playstation!
It probably made VHS what it is today also!
Really though - AmigaOne... what's that chip inside it for that offers lockout protection? Is that the only custom hardware it has!?
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Hyperspeed wrote:
One could argue that piracy helped make the Amiga, as it has done lately with the Playstation!
It probably made VHS what it is today also!
Really though - AmigaOne... what's that chip inside it for that offers lockout protection? Is that the only custom hardware it has!?
Eyetech reflashed the standard "OpenFirmware BIOS" (as found on 99% of other PPC motherboards) with a "UBoot BIOS". Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
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bloodline wrote:
Eyetech reflashed the standard "OpenFirmware BIOS" (as found on 99% of other PPC motherboards) with a "UBoot BIOS".
Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
Wrong.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2590&start=80#31050
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humppa wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Eyetech reflashed the standard "OpenFirmware BIOS" (as found on 99% of other PPC motherboards) with a "UBoot BIOS".
Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
Wrong.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2590&start=80#31050
Ok then, Mr pedant... The version of AOS4 that is in the wild (ie in the hands of users, and thus available for any board that has been release) can only boot from a UBoot BIOS... Give me a copy of AOS4 that boots from OF and my original statement would be wrong.
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bloodline wrote:
Ok then, Mr pedant... The version of AOS4 that is in the wild (ie in the hands of users, and thus available for any board that has been release) can only boot from a UBoot BIOS... Give me a copy of AOS4 that boots from OF and my original statement would be wrong.
What are you talking about? I don't know which version you mean, but it's most likely a version for A1. We have UBoot for the A1. The version for the A1 will rely on UBoot, no question.
However, this does not contradict to Rogues post and the fact that OS4 does not necessarily need UBoot. Ever looked at the BPPC/CSPPC? And how would you do UBoot on an old (mysterious) IBM PPC-PDA?
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humppa wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Ok then, Mr pedant... The version of AOS4 that is in the wild (ie in the hands of users, and thus available for any board that has been release) can only boot from a UBoot BIOS... Give me a copy of AOS4 that boots from OF and my original statement would be wrong.
What are you talking about? I don't know which version you mean, but it's most likely a version for A1. We have UBoot for the A1. The version for the A1 will rely on UBoot, no question.
However, this does not contradict to Rogues post and the fact that OS4 does not necessarily need UBoot. Ever looked at the BPPC/CSPPC? And how would you do UBoot on an old (mysterious) IBM PPC-PDA?
I never once said anywhere that AOS4 needs UBoot. I only said that AOS4 which is available/has been available (in some way) to us (the end user) has relied on UBoot. And, I might add, in reply to the original question, this is the key anti-piracy measure (i.e. custom) part of the AmigaONE...
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One could argue that piracy helped make the Amiga, as it has done lately with the Playstation!
I buy that. Though it really helped the platform, not the developers. Piracy hurts more in certain countries than others, too.
Really, I think the rediculous copy protection schemes used by game developers caused the rampant piracy. Unreliable and frustrating CP forces people to seek out cracked copies so they don't have to worry about disks dying, typing in annoying passwords, etc.
The modern equivalent includes CP schemes that are incompatible with a given CD-ROM, and games that install drivers that run in the background even when the game is not active, such as Steam and (even worse) Star-Force. I can't belive game developers are pulling that kind of crap, and it only encourages people to get cracks. Some drivers even run in kernel mode, to make it less likely that they can be bypassed. Talk about desperate.
It probably made VHS what it is today also!
In terms of tape technology... definately. BetaMax, on the other hand, just didn't meet customer requirements.
BTW, what VHS is today: dead. Even cheapo promotional videos you get with kitchen appliances all come on DVDs. ;-)
Bloodline: Eyetech reflashed the standard "OpenFirmware BIOS" (as found on 99% of other PPC motherboards) with a "UBoot BIOS". Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
I'm not a fanatic on this stuff, so I could be wrong, but I thought it went like this:
- 1st production run of AmigaOnes had a ROM instead of an EEPROM. This caused some issues when firmware updates were made available. I think only early-bird customers got these boards.
- Later AmigaOnes have an EEPROM, but a custom version of UBoot has a key signature sought by OS4. However, it can be reflashed.
- OS4 only supports UBoot at the moment, as Hyperion customized UBoot for the AmigaOne (UBoot is an open-source project independent of Hyperion).
- It's customary to reflash the BIOS through a BIOS tool, rather than a boot disk, like on a PC. There might be a lockout designed to protect the UBoot BIOS from being overwritten by another BIOS, but I don't know that.
Really, there's no "real" hardware difference between AmigaOne and each respective Teron board. I don't see why the BIOS can't be reflashed, though OS4 wouldn't work, anymore, without a HAL update.
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bloodline wrote:
I never once said anywhere that AOS4 needs UBoot.
bloodline wrote:
Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
So you are saying that OS4 "only boots from UBoot" because it doesn't need it? Well... :lol:
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Achtung, Das Boot!
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Yeah, but how do you make the money back? Software is flexible, hardware has to be sold quickly.
Also, $50 mil dumped into PPC hardware != $50 mil into hardware that already exists. Why spend tons of money to get some idealistic ball-and-chain that is only marginally better than a very well-tested solution that already sells by the hundreds of thousands? Be coudn't hack it, and that was before the big venture into "integration" that cut x86 motherboard manufacturing costs drasticly while adding tons of standard features.
Exactly. It's a waste of time and money to do something that already existing in very cheap quantities. I guess it's human nature to deny reality of a situation and a wanting to return to yesteryear. Unless one can squeeze in the capabilities of a $3K desktop into a $500 desktop but then your still missing the applications for the OS.
So it's not millions to invest, but we are talking *billions* and I don't see any one with that type of pocket change wanting to carry on R&D for OS4, MOS, or AROS.
Dammy
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humppa wrote:
bloodline wrote:
I never once said anywhere that AOS4 needs UBoot.
bloodline wrote:
Thus AOS4 only boots from UBoot firmware.
So you are saying that OS4 "only boots from UBoot" because it doesn't need it? Well... :lol:
Yes, it only boots from UBoot because that is the "security measure" taken by Hyperion. AOS4 has no technical need for UBoot...
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Yes, it only boots from UBoot because that is the "security measure" taken by Hyperion.
But that's wrong. You're running in circles. It does not only boot from UBoot. The Classic version, mystic device version and most likely also the Powervixxen/SharkPPC boot without UBoot. So UBoot as a security measure is quite useless, since the only devices which actually use it are bought together with OS4.
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humppa wrote:
Yes, it only boots from UBoot because that is the "security measure" taken by Hyperion.
But that's wrong. You're running in circles. It does not only boot from UBoot. The Classic version, mystic device version and most likely also the Powervixxen/SharkPPC boot without UBoot. So UBoot as a security measure is quite useless, since the only devices which actually use it are bought together with OS4.
Yeah, becuse I can buy a version of AOS4 that doesn't use UBoot... right...
I've been trolled... :roll: I appologise for adding to the noise in this thread.
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Yeah, becuse I can buy a version of AOS4 that doesn't use UBoot... right...
Can I buy a stand-alone version of AOS4 that does use UBoot? No.
Would that in any kind of way change the falseness of your statement?
No.
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This is getting a bit silly, give it a rest! :madashell:
There is little point arguing (or trolling) over uboot anymore. We get the idea!
Security is a hell of an issue for us all. However,:idea: it seems that things being as they are, if someone (please) had the cash, perhaps it would be possable to get a company like Zone Labs to make an intergrated security suite for the AmigaOS.
Microsoft couldn't do this for Windoze (the monopolies people would go nuts). They had enough grief for building in a browser! On AmigaOS however, who would complain? ;-)
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Yeah, please no more UBoot.
Let's meditate instead.