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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Amiga_Nut on January 11, 2008, 02:50:22 PM

Title: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on January 11, 2008, 02:50:22 PM
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else, I didn't see it (been off here for a while now)

http://www.amiga.com/news/index.php?art=32&PHPSESSID=a967629a16ea4a1c6e5f06220997d1fa

Open letter to the Amiga community.

I'm kind of shocked at all these OS4 legal shenanigans to be honest :roll:

Also does anyone know which company was making tentative moves to purchase Amiga Inc. ??
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: A1260 on January 11, 2008, 02:54:33 PM
its an old letter... 5 years old... nothing new!
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Amiga_Nut on January 11, 2008, 02:57:59 PM
Ahh there was no date on it, and it was above the newest annoucement of Sept 2007. Sorry
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Krusher on January 11, 2008, 02:59:12 PM
Quote

A1260 wrote:
its an old letter... 5 years old... nothing new!


How is it possible he mentioned an Iphone then?

Quote

Amiga lost a deal worth more than 250,000 units because the development was not properly handled.  Amiga has been working and negotiating with third party OEM’s and ODM’s for far more units than the iPhone® has shipped and we still are unable to provide the product.


Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: McVenco on January 11, 2008, 03:04:22 PM
Quote
How is it possible he mentioned an Iphone then?


5 years in terms of speaking. The letter's been published somewhere mid-october 2007.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Nlandas on January 11, 2008, 03:22:01 PM
Yes but Amiga Anywhere 2 is not AmigaOS 5. It's simply another means of deploying Amiga based applications on other platforms. Amiga, Inc. has not stopped it's plans for AmigaOS 4 and potentially beyond.

"What matters is that contrary to a great deal of the nonsense that I am reading lately, Amiga at no time has ever abandoned our goals, the Amiga community and our dream.  I recently read a post about how OS 4 should power a phone, and somehow this is supposed to be an epiphany that the Amiga OS could power more than a desktop."

"New hardware is indeed being developed, and we have selected the first 3rd party manufacturer that will build in high quantities, and yes, this new hardware is being delayed because OS 4.0 is needed to complete the package and to resolve certain technical issues."

It sounds to me that once the legal wrangling is over, we will actually see new hardware to run it on. We don't know the details of the legal proceedings. Maybe Hyperion wants to partner with another hardware developer and Amiga, inc. is saying - No - we will be providing the hardware through ACK controls.

I know it's been a long road but a lot of this negative idle speculation doesn't sound like the old Amiga community to me at all. If anything we, were always too positive and too hopeful.

Let's see what happens after the legal stuff is done. If we don't see anything shortly thereafter then I'll be more negative too.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Piru on January 11, 2008, 04:07:48 PM
@Nlandas

"Give yourself to the dark side."
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: persia on January 11, 2008, 05:34:06 PM
I want what Bill was smoking when he wrote that!  Or perhaps it was from a parallel universe, as in this universe, Amiga inc has produced a few hunded copies of old Amiga games for PCs.

Amiga Inc has NEVER produced anything Amiga compatible!  
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on January 11, 2008, 05:44:05 PM
Quote
Also does anyone know which company was making tentative moves to purchase Amiga Inc. ??


DiscreetFX
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Andeda on January 11, 2008, 06:51:02 PM
This is a little offtopic but ill ask anyway, who was behind the release of amigaone was it Amiga inc? how many was manufactured, and why didnt they manufacture more of them?? So lets put it this way, what went wrong?
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: zyphoid on January 11, 2008, 06:52:06 PM
Quote

Piru wrote:
@Nlandas

"Give yourself to the dark side."


I agree with Piru "Black" or "Blue"...who knew?
 ;-)
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Caius on January 11, 2008, 07:07:16 PM
Quote
Andeda wrote:
This is a little offtopic but ill ask anyway, who was behind the release of amigaone was it Amiga inc? how many was manufactured, and why didnt they manufacture more of them?? So lets put it this way, what went wrong?

You'll find at least one of your questions answered on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne), under "Current Status".

I don't know how accurate the information is, but it's somewhere to start at least.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Nlandas on January 11, 2008, 07:51:07 PM
Quote

Andeda wrote:
This is a little offtopic but ill ask anyway, who was behind the release of amigaone was it Amiga inc? how many was manufactured, and why didnt they manufacture more of them?? So lets put it this way, what went wrong?


That's an easy one - Maybe an overly simple synopsis. AmigaOne was endorsed by the developers of AmigaOS and Amiga, inc. also seemed to be on board with it as well. However, AmigaOS 4.0 took too long to develop and release. While AmigaOne was developed and released only 1000 boards were made and then apparently lack of parts kept additional runs from being made.

I'm sure someone else will correct anything misspoken here.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Nlandas on January 11, 2008, 07:57:44 PM
Quote

Piru wrote:
@Nlandas

"Give yourself to the dark side."


I did that long ago when I built my first Windoze PC and started using it extensively and then started actually working in the IT field where there are no Amigas. :cry:

However, I refuse to give into the "I hate Amiga, inc.(KMOS), all they've released is a few games crowd." until after the legal issues are done surrounding AmigaOS 4. If they don't release hardware for us shortly after the legal issues are done, then I'll consider becoming Nelly-negative.   :lol:  
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Painkiller on January 11, 2008, 08:47:06 PM
The rights for Amiga brandname and OS should go to a company that would actually do something with it and I mean business. What A.Inc is currently doing is something that anyone of us could do. I would really like that the rights would go to Genesi that actually produces something. But then again they already have MorphOS which is marvelous I just think they could do a lot more if they had all the sourcecode from AOS etc. and maybe even release a Amiga barnded hardware. But then again the battle of the rights are between A.Inc and Hyperion which both are bad choises to carry on the Amiga legacy in my opinion.

IMO MorphOS as the future AmigaOS and Genesi to produce Amiga branded hardware maybe even a Cell based system. But then again I'm only dreaming...
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Caius on January 11, 2008, 08:59:54 PM
I think this has been discussed before, but...

For some reason I'd like Commodore International Corporation (http://commodorecorp.com/) to take over the Amiga. That said, I know nothing of this new incarnation of the company, except their stated intention of reviving the Commodore name. I think I'll keep an eye on this company though. They certainly appear a lot more serious than Amiga,Inc. at the moment.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: persia on January 11, 2008, 09:08:49 PM
Quote from Commodore's website:

We’ve made it our business to provide our customers with unrivalled access to personalized media entertainment – available anytime, anywhere and on any device.
 
 
Why does this sound so familliar?
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: persia on January 11, 2008, 09:24:44 PM
Hmm Commodore's Gravel in Pocket looks interesting.  a 2GB media player for € 190.95 isn't that special but if it does live TV through Commodore World, then maybe....
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: DigitalQ on January 12, 2008, 01:42:39 AM
Frankly, I think the best thing that can happen to the Amiga OS right now is to make it Open Source.  I can honestly say I can see it becoming more popular than the many variations of Linux, and stands a great chance of upsetting the Microsoft monopoly.  
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Caius on January 12, 2008, 01:58:18 AM
Quote
Frankly, I think the best thing that can happen to the Amiga OS right now is to make it Open Source. I can honestly say I can see it becoming more popular than the many variations of Linux, and stands a great chance of upsetting the Microsoft monopoly.

Possibly. On the other hand it may also lead to fragmentation if two or more AmigaOS spinoff projects starts heading in two different directions. On Linux this effect is halted by using a common kernel, and by a shared vision of Posix compliance. Although different Unix/Linux variants aren't always binary compatible, they essentially share the same operating system API, making it very simple to port software between them.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: sdyates on January 12, 2008, 02:39:05 AM
I have been here long enough to doubt anything will ever come from Amiga Inc...

I honestly believe that AROS is our best chance if Hyperion does nto win.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Plaz on January 12, 2008, 02:56:54 AM
Quote
For some reason I'd like Commodore International Corporation to take over the Amiga


Some of us find the attitude of DiscretFX a good fit as a possible home for Amiga, but that aint going to happen if Amiga Inc. has any thing to say about it.

Plaz
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: ematech on January 12, 2008, 08:31:52 PM
1) Amiga inc is not for sale.

I know a company can make an offer for 30.000.000 $

Bill don't want sell.
Bill want produce windows ce game.

Bill is a bad clone of Bill G.
purchase amiga for implement nothing.



I hope Hyperion wins the legal cause.
someone can can buy Hyperion.
Quote

Amiga_Nut wrote:
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else, I didn't see it (been off here for a while now)

http://www.amiga.com/news/index.php?art=32&PHPSESSID=a967629a16ea4a1c6e5f06220997d1fa

Open letter to the Amiga community.

I'm kind of shocked at all these OS4 legal shenanigans to be honest :roll:

Also does anyone know which company was making tentative moves to purchase Amiga Inc. ??
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: Tenacious on January 12, 2008, 09:40:49 PM
I won't believe anything until 6 months after it happens. I've been mislead a dozen times too many!

Now, if I can just switch OFF the alarm on my crap detector...


Edit: I agree that open source is probably the only possibility of moving forward.  

Hey Bill, why don't you develope an Aphone and donate the old patents to us.  Big Hairy Grin.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on January 12, 2008, 10:34:34 PM
Quote
I agree that open source is probably the only possibility of moving forward.


I, for one, disagree with this point.  If it becomes open source then it will have to also become non-profit since it won't have a way to enforce who pays and who doesn't.  AROS is short on developers and it is open source and x86-based as well as running on some PowerPC machines and others.  Bounties are nice but some programmers need a steady paycheck to be able to stay involved with a project for an extended period of time.

I think the only hope for reunifying the factions of the Amiga community is to offer a binary object model that will work on Classic Amiga and new Amiga formats also.  Since AmigaAnywhere 2 will never be ported to the classics or to AROS it is NOT a possibility.  GCC, though open source and ported to the classic Amigas, is not well documented and difficult to work with.  Java's bytecode stinks and is so tailored to one particular programming language that it is no longer a possibility even though it might have been at one time.  That leaves the Low-Level Virtual Machine (http://www.llvm.org/).

The reason why I think LLVM is useful is that it already supports most non-68000 32-bit processors already and is open source with funding coming in from Apple and Adobe.  It supports JIT, interpreted, and static compilation of code through the same library.  Also, even if it doesn't unify the Amiga community, it will offer a JIT compiler for UAE and others that is written in C++ rather than PowerPC or x86 assembly so it can be ported from anywhere to anywhere else.  Lastly, Sidewinder and I am already targeting the LLVM for Mattathias BASIC, our sequel to AmosPro and other versions of BASIC to be supported later by use of extensions to the Mattathias language.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: DigitalQ on January 12, 2008, 11:45:07 PM
Open source doesn't necessarily mean non-profit.  Consider Red Hat.  Making plenty of profits from a completely open OS.  If you look at the Open Source model honestly, you will recognize that a company can reap a lot of benefit having so many people working on their program and/or OS for "Free," and they can discover new ways to profit from it.  Again, I use Red Hat as an example; there are many others who have benefited from Open Source, including (but not limited to) Sun Microsystems, The Mozilla Foundation, and even Google.  

When it comes to Amiga, there are more profits to be made from the brand image than there is from the OS.  Making it open source would dramatically improve the brand image of Amiga.
Title: Re: Did anyone read this open letter to us?
Post by: SamuraiCrow on January 13, 2008, 12:31:12 AM
Ok.  Well, who's going to make profits selling AROS?  It only fares well when compared to other 3rd party operating systems.  When compared to Linux it doesn't do so well, nor does any other Amiga-like operating system.  All Amiga's got going for them now is small memory footprint.

AROS can run hosted on other operating systems or under virtualization tools like VMWare so maybe it might catch on.  But it's going to take more than the bounty system to make it happen.  It's still got to compete with the BeOS-like operating systems like Haiku as well.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are lots of operating systems around but not so many decent emulators that will generate native code for their host operating system.  AmigaAnywhere wasn't a bad idea, it just was poorly instrumented.

The solution I proposed is a for-profit open-source venture as well.  And AFAIK it's making people money by the bucketload.  LLVM was used to emulate shaders in older Macintoshes and the Mesa graphics library under other platforms now the Mac is catching on big time with Linux gaining users all of the time!

Don't get me wrong, I think a highly optimized operating system is important, I just don't think it's enough of a novelty yet to catch on.