I'm not going to sign this and I urge everyone else with a positive
interest in the official AmigaOS to abstain too.
Amiga, Inc. are enforcing the inclusion of the ROM to ensure only
certain systems are able to use AmigaOS. But it seems some people
aren't thinking too much about as to why.
There are numerous reasons, many of which have been mentioned in the
past. However, has anyone even thought about the issue of quality
control?
If a board hasn't been officially endorsed by Amiga, Inc. how can we,
as users, expect a board, developed by a third party with absolutely
no involvement with Amiga, Inc. whatsoever, to be completely 100%
AmigaOS compatible?
Answer: We can't.
The model adopted by Amiga, Inc. may seem draconian but it ensures
they don't fall into the same trap that other OS developers have
fallen into in the past who have had no control over the quality of
machines their products get used on. The result, in theory, is that
the situation where the OS works fine on some machines and falls over
regularly on others should never occur. Therefore if something claims
to be an AmigaOS compatible machine... it'll be an AmigaOS compatible
machine.
The inclusion of the ROM is the ONLY way Amiga, Inc. can ensure a
machine that claims to be AmigaOS compatible is exactly that and 100%
compatibility should be in every future AmigaOS users interest - as
it'll ensure the AmigaOS acquires a reputation of being reliable and
who want's to use an unreliable machine that fall over all the time?
Of course there will inevitably be ways around this. Crackers will
invariably crack it in no time. However, any board manufacturer worth
their salt would be insane to release a machine claiming to be
AmigaOS compatible with an illegal copy of the OS and the only people
left are those who will quite happily go to the trouble of installing
pirate versions of the OS themselves on whatever 3rd party PowerPC
boards they find and quite frankly, they deserve everything they
get... including an uncertified crappy machine upon which the OS may
fall over all the time.
The question you should ask yourself before signing this is: Would
YOU be happy to buy a machine that can not be guaranteed to any
degree of certainty to be AmigaOS compatible?
I know I'm not!
