AmigaOne clones?

[Kronos]

Let#s make a few "what ifs":

What if Genesi would get a licence ?

The wouldn't be able to sell one single extra board,  as OS4 is not ready to be bundled.

The might even sell less, since some people might wait for the dongled version.

They would give differnet (hostile) companies some control over their HW.
They would have no guarantee that future products will get a licence.

Not a good idea for them.

What if OS4 would still be promised for "any suitable HW" ?

A lot of users might buy the Pegasos and use MorphOS until OS is finished.
These users might get used to it, and selling them another OS might proove
difficult when they are allready satisfied with the one they got "free".
The number of sold A1s would be lower and since it is the only board with an
"AmigOne-the-name-licence"  AInc income would be dramaticly reduced.
(very low fees on OS4, HW-licence "free").

So it is the interest of atleast AInc and Eyetech that there are no other licences,
and it might even suit Hyperion, while Genesi have no reason to sign such a
licence.

Copy-protection with a shrink-wrapped USB-dongle would be just as good
regardless if it comes with the HW or the OS.

Also: The A1-SE had an licence when it only existed in the form of MAIs eval-board,
and the XE even before it actually existed.

Funny kind of quality-control  :-P

The Pegasos is on sale, the HW is no secret, same goes for the OF.
It is AInc's/Hyperion's decision if the want to reach that market or not.

[Kronos]

@Tigger

OS4(warez) on Apple-HW ?
Ain't gone work due to missing drivers for the HW.

OS4 on Teron-boards by TerraSoft ?
Should be easy and you might be right with 2 days.

OS4 on Pegasos ?
Should be possible, but a bit harder (different SB/BIOS).

[Kronos]

@Tigger

I had a discusion about that with Ben some time ago, and it seems that
Hyperion plan to keep the HAL closed up, making it very very hard to
write new base-drivers (PCI/IDE/..) for it.

I really doubt that there are enough people out there who are willing
to make it happen. Real shame when that (OS4 on Apple) could have
been the biggest market for OS4, and with an open HAL it would have
happened with next to no work for Hyperion.

[Kronos]

, except Aos 4.0, got to buy an AmigaOne with it or run it on an old Amiga with a Phase 5 board (and I'm still pretty sure we'll see some form of copy protection on that) or that it will be "different" then the AmigaOne version.

Offcourse that will bê different:
a) It won't have drivers for VIA/MAI (IDE/PCI/PS2).
b) It will need a real KickROM (3.1)
c) The bootstrap is completly different to th one used by PCCBoot.

[Kronos]

The question is - which company of the three is interested having this ..........Amiga Inc? They play no role in the game.

Sure they do !!!

Ben Hermans claimed that AInc gets very little of every copy of OS4
and that the OS4-licence is free (believing that is another thing).

The licence for the name "AmigaOne" ain't free and that is the only part
were AInc could make some money (to rebate al those coupons ??).

So the question si what is more important to AInc ?
Making OS4 a success, and therefore spreading to as much HW as possible ?

Making a maximum of money without any work and in a minimum of time ?

Looking back the last 3 years the answer should come easy  :-x

[Kronos]

@Kurt

Get a bit of reality PLEASE !!!!

There is a difference between "don't want" and "don't care".

Genesi just DON'T CARE if OS4 runs on the Pegasos just like they don't
care if BeOS or IBMs AIX runs on it.

Do they prevent anybody from porting any OS ?
No, they are just won't sign any licence-deals for 3rd-party-SW.

Is the Pegasos documented good enough to port an OS ?

I would say docu on VIA-SBs and MAI-NBs  should be easy to get, and
OF and no secret either. The rest could be pulled from sources of
a Linux-kernel.

At some time someone decided that OS4 will only run on licenced
and bundled HW, and that one did know that this was unacceptable
for bPlan and now Genesi.

Their decision, not Genesi's.

[Kronos]

@Skyraker
Why ? The missing name ? How many people outside the "community"
would even consider buying a computer based on a name ?

Currently MorphOS is leading by a distance and after I read the latest
interviews were all Hyperion-guys said something like "no no I mainly
work on Mac/Linux/?? projects, OS4 is done by someone else" I
don't see tha gap getting closer. Genesi on the other side have been
hiring and licenceing like mad. Turboprint and a real JAVA-VM are
things that will be important. Genesi is also the only company working
on real new HW (eclipsis) that might be of interest to a wider market.

[Kronos]

@skyraker

When was OS4 shown public last time ?
Mid November on the WOASE.
The MOS I have here is from 24.10.02.

So it should be fair to compare those 2.

OS4 was 100% useless at that time, and alot of keyfeatures like
the 68k-emu hadn't been tested at all (on OS4-kernel that is).

I run GoldED-AIX without problems, I even use the highest setting
for syntax-highlightning that is recomended for CPUs >1ghz (in UAE).

Speed is more than good.

Compiling MorphOS-native SW is also no  problem (gues what I'm
doing at this time).

How long until you can do that on an A1 (not in Linux-UAE) ?

[Kronos]

@Kurt

Yeah and Ben is an angel in a white dress  :-o

How hard do you think would it be to get that info using reverse-engeneering ?

You know Linux runs quite fine on that HW, and you can't really hide something
in a linux-kernel.

Well and bPlan offered Hyperion to produce games for MorphOS, but they said no !!

For some reason Ben wanted to save the Amiga single-handed, and everybody
else to work in his shadow (same on the other side).

Result: Clash of egos.

[Kronos]

@Skyraker
And I still got an email from Ben where he threatened to drag me int court
over voicing my opinion/suspicions.

No imagine Ben would have gotten sued everytime he spread unprooven stuff
about the competition.

And I even ain't "competition", quite on the contrary: abck than I was still
pro-OS4  :-o

[Kronos]

@Skyraker

That is all ?

From your rants I would have expected something a bit more agressive.

He just asks why you insulted him, and if your men enough to say it into his face.

Now do the same with Ben .... but make sure you got a good lawyer ready  ;-)

[Kronos]

@Warface

Damn right !!

Being called a "stupid uneducated clueless idiot" by that wannebe
lawyer (in public even) was really helpfull for my decision  :-D

[Kronos]

@T_Bone

No those were directltly targeted at me (I even forgot "foolish"),
in the "I know the exact number of NBs bPlan has"-thread.

And what did I do to deserve it ? I just asked Ben to either proove his claim
or to STFU !! I even tried to explain to him that such trolling would only hurt
his cause. I mean if he had been right about this, leaning back and waiting
for bPlan to crash is all he would have needed.

[Kronos]

Amiga OS is a commercial product that would be in direct competition with Apple on their own hardware.

 :lol:  :lol:  :roflmao:  :roflmao:  :lol:  :lol:

Do you really think Apple would care about a few thousand freaks
running an odd OS on their HW ? HW that is sold in 7 digit numbers a year ?

Yes "new world" Power-Macs arev documented and that is why Linux
runs on them (the iMac and Laptops are a bit different).

I don't mind OS4 being tied to one specific piece of HW, but won't
accept all these licence-BS, when it is just used to blame someone
forit, when it is really the lack of resources(finacial and time) preventing it.

[Kronos]

35 ?? Wow that list is still growing ....

But tell me, do you still count Mason (now come on nice icons, but
OS-developers), Strunzi (gives you access to his CVS) and all the
"I'll add a tiny tool to it" ?

O.K. not sure about Thomas, but that would leave exactly one men
working full-time on the core components ........ see you in 04  :-P