@pixie
Originality, they don't posess that...
That's a double-edged argument, even more so these days.
Much of the original AmigaOS was NOT original in design, and as time has gone by lots more has been borrowed from other platforms.
Operating system technology evolves. Good ideas spread and bad ones fall by the wayside, that's the way of things. Most people who apply the phrase "the original and the best" to operating systems are talking bollox.
The new PPC generation of AmigaOS will be judged for its qualities alone, not by the achievements of its predecessors. Similarly, MorphOS and AROS should be judged by how they function, not by how long the history of their brand is. All three are part of the greater "Amiga community", together with Amithlon, UAE etc. Users of all of these will either learn to get along with each other or the community will finally die. There is no future at all as smaller fragmented communities that reject each other as alien.
P.S. and just to actually touch on the "fragmentation" argument in Webb's editorial:
The deed is done. You can't put the genie back into the bottle. Making MorphOS and AROS disappear won't make all those users return to AmigaOS with their tails between their legs. Most likely, people would just drift away to platforms with a more stable future and the greater Amiga community would shink even further. As to who is responsible for the original fragmentation, I think we all have our own opinions. Either way, does the recrimination help anyone now?
The way to combat fragmentation is not by enforcing the "one-party state", but by co-operating and applying common standards, so that users can remain within the Amiga community without having their choices reduced by doing so.
