OS4 rollout schedule

[HyperionMP]

I'm sure you have heard of the Draco?

Frankly, to get OS 4 to run on a chipsetless system is really not that much of a problem.

Otherwise things like Amithlon and the Draco could never have existed.

[HyperionMP]

The chipset dependencies of AmigaOS are located in three areas of the OS and nowhere else (anymore):

1. Exec

2. Certain device drivers & resources (timer, cia, IDE, gameport, keyboard, serial, parallel, audio etc.).

3. graphics.library

1) As you know we already have ExecSG running on the A1 hardware so this not an issue.

2) Most of the device drivers need to be re-implemented. This is gruntwork but luckily highly modular. You don't need a serial device before you can start on a parallel device etc. This work is already under way but the main developers are still on OS 4 itself rather than the devices.

3) graphics.library contains hardware banging start-up code. This would need to be replaced or patched out by Picasso 96.

The chipset dependency issue is really overrated.

[HyperionMP]

Well, you are referring to the conversion of a 68K device to a PPC device using the same underlying hardware.

This is ofcourse relatively straightforward, especially with the toolkit we have developed.

What I was referring to was reimplementation for different hardware.

[HyperionMP]

You are seriously mixed up here.

I'm sure you are aware that we want to be able to run 68K applications on OS 4?

How do you propose we do this without an emulation layer?

Besides, why would be waste our time to reimplement certain 68K ASM modules in C when there is no need because 1) they are not particularly performance critical or 2) they are intended for the old hardware.

There is very little 68K ASM code left in OS 4 but we have no particular desire to for instance replace the 68K ASM code in graphics.library dealing with AGA with C code.

Or to reimplement SCSI.device when the real bottleneck is the throughput of the IDE controller.

Waste of time if you ask me.

[HyperionMP]

The license is not only about extracting money from the hardware manufacturers.

If hardware manufacturer x wants to bundle its hardware with operating y whichi s proprietary, he needs to charge his customers.

Again, there is no requirement to ship every Pegasos with OS 4, there is only a requirement to ship certain Pegasos machines with OS 4 when customers have indicated that is their OS of choice.

The second reason for the license is to have a contractual mechanism in place to protect consumers from the quite frankly criminal behavior of certain companies who defrauded customers through lack of legally required repairs and total neglect of warranty obligations.

There is ample evidence of that to be found on this very site of people who send it very expensive hardware over 2 years ago for repair and never saw it back.

Sure, if you are a hotshot developer, BBRV can pull some strings for you and you'll get your board repaired or replaced but other than that, you can forget about it.

How can we ask people to return to the platform when companies like that prey on the userbase in violation of countless consumer laws?

[HyperionMP]

>Frankly, I don't care if we ever see OS4 legally running on a >Pegasos. But I don't understand your position, and it is >things like this in the Amiga Market that seriously wind me >up.

I can't say I'm surprised. You are involved in a open-source project with people developing in their spare time and without any significant commercial incentive nor pressure.

Hyperion is allocating significant resources to have full-time professional developers working on OS 4.

We cannot afford the glacial speed at which AROS is being developed. People are already slamming us for taking around 18 months now to deliver OS 4.

As a result, we want to make sure we extract a reasonable compensation for our work to ensure continued development of the OS.

This means that any party wanting to offer OS 4 FOR THOSE CUSTOMERS THAT WANT IT must be willing to enter into a license scheme that at least somewhat guarantees a return on investment for us.

If a customer specifically asks for OS 4, why is it so hard for a hardware producer to agree to the license terms and ship that specific board with an OEM version of AmigaOS?

Let me tell you why: because the same hardware producer is pushing an alternative operating system and has a vested intrest in that.

It is a conflict of intrest.

Plus if they would enter into the license agreement, they would be required to cough up all hardware and firmware specifications in order for OS 4 to happen.

[HyperionMP]

bloodline wrote:
You skillfully avoided my Question about the OS, there Ben (you could be a politician). Ok fine I imagine there are some things you don't want to talk about. We wil let the individual make his/her own conclusions then.

I did?

You mean this question:

"Question: How much of OS4 has been written? From what I can gather only exec and maybe dos and intuition have been "ported" to the PPC... at what point does this become an OS one asks? The implication is that the original AmigaOS is required to boot and provide a significant amount of functionality... if this is the case then quite a bit more work will be required to make the A1 boot. "


I had hoped that my subsequent posts would have cleared up the misconceptions underlying your question.

OS 4 has an inbuilt emulation layer and the difference between 68K and PPC code is minimal.

There is no sandbox involved.

As a result, you cannot distinguish between OS 4 in its current status (with quite a number of modules still in 68K but very few original 3.1/3.5/3.9 modules) and its final status (with those same modules recompiled for PPC).

The only difference is speed, not functionality.

I quite frankly don't have a clue as to what this has to do with booting on the AmigaOne other than that the devices need to be reimplemented, an issue which I discussed already quite extensively.

[HyperionMP]

meerschaum wrote:
@HyperionMP

>I cant believe you  would say that about an other party, when >your magical partner or whatever twisted arrangement you >have for OS4 with amiga.inc  has so many rumors,nonsense  >yet you slam on the other side like that? ....looks a bit >hipocritical...but maybe I'm wrong on all counts..and >Hyperion the game porting house gone OS developers  is >just showing the characteristic AI camp honesty. ..

Our hardware partner is Eyetech and no-one else.

I have no reason to believe that Eyetech will not comply with all relevant consumer legislation with respect to the AmigaOne including warrzanty obligations and after sales service.

They have been in business for many years now.
 

[HyperionMP]

So how do you explain that fact that Genesi are sponsoring the development of OpenBEOS, NewOS, AROS and a few other OS's to be ported to Pegasos?

These products are not directly competitive to MorphOS unlike AmigaOS 4.

They do not run 68K legacy software transparently.

Not even AROS. And let's face it, both MorphOS and OS 4 have a hell of a lot more to offer in terms of functionality than AROS.

AROS simply is not a competitor to MorphOS and OS 4 unless it catches up in the field of functionality and offers transparent binary compatibility with OS 3.x applications.

[HyperionMP]

The 68K interpretive emulator is integrated with the kernel and is hence available at boot-time on the A1 once the U Boot firmware has successfully obtained the kernel image.

[HyperionMP]

>1. Ben claims that the license scheme is to protect >customers from fraudulent mainboard >manufactures. Ignoring for a second the inherent >below-the-belt quality of this justification, what >makes a group of developers the court and judge >of the market?

First of all, you are ignoring the facts. Are you denying that there have been hardware companies past and present who have failed to live up to their legally defined warranty obligations?

Is it below the belt to ensure that our customers do not fall victim to this in the face of overwhelming evidence?

Secondly, the warranty and support obligations are a legal standard set by the European and national legislators, not by Hyperion.

All we want is to make sure that a hardware manufacturer or reseller is equipped to handle support and warranty repairs as required by the law.

[HyperionMP]

2. It was claimed that the scheme is used to protect IP by complicating piracy with a hardware device. That's a perfectly valid approach but it is just unreasonable to charge the mainboard manufacturer for a service that primiarily benefits Hyperion. Many of us are developers, none of us requests special chips on mainboards.

Another misconception. There never has been talk of "adding" chips on the mainboard. This is something some MorphOS enthusiasts came up with.

We either require access to the already present  flashrom or are willing to consider some kind of external dongle like a USB token.

Furthermore, we are not charging the hardware manfucturer as such but only a per unit royalty for every copy of OS 4 sold.

[HyperionMP]

3. Some claim that Hyperion has to cover high development costs, in a small market, and that justifies milking money from the mainboard manufacturer, on top of charging customers for supplying the OS. Considering that the mainboard manufacturer has had considerably higher development costs, I don't see the moral justification for the software side charging the hardware side. One side gets an OS, the other side gets a platform, costs and benefits are evenly split, and the money comes from the customers alone.

First of all, your statement is erroneous in the sense that we are only charging a per unit OEM royalty. We will determine whether or not it is economically feasible to undertake support of a given platform and a manufacturer might or might not want to induce us by guaranteeing a minimum number of sold copies.

Furthermore, your statement betrays a lack of insight into commercial policy and economics. The consumer always ends up paying the bill whatever license scheme is put in place. The distinction between what the hardware manufacturer pays and what the consumer pays is therefore completely artificial.

Let's not fall victim to the same delusions that have people claiming MSN messenger and IE are free of charge. The consumer ends up paying for it through other products.

[HyperionMP]

That about sums it up, yes.

I honestly cannot see what is so terrible about this.

We don't want to be involved in shipping end-user copies to dealers for several reasons:

1. This would put a strain on us as we would need to put into place an infrastructure for shipping, warehousing and distribution which goes beyond what we have now for selling our games.

Obviously a manufacturer already has this infrastructure in place.

2. We would end up at the losing end of all the piracy. At least with the OEM scheme we'd be reasonably sure that every board sold for the explicit purpose of running OS 4, would actually have a paid for copy of OS 4.

[HyperionMP]

The answer is obvious from 1) the fact that Eyetech also sells boards in the Linux market 2) my post above.

Only customers that explicitly want OS 4 will need to pay for it.