People, some history lesson..
Few years ago, before Steve Jobs went back to Apple and made it a very successful company after lots of failures, Apple has opened the market for Apple clones - and there were many of them. I do sys admin sometime for a small Ad Agency and I've seen few of those Apple clones - they're pretty nice, although very underpowered by today's Apple machines..
Bottom line for that Apple deal - did they make lots of money? no they didn't because there wasn't actually a good certification program! you could just submit some docs, pay some money - and Apple would have (back then) be happy to cut a deal with you to sell you ROMS + OS images.
Do I plan to sign this petition? absolutly not.
Do I want to see Amiga succseeds? yes, yes, and yes..
I belive Bill's way is a very good way - if a company wants to sell their boards to run Amiga OS 4.x and future versions - then they have to pass a board (or series of boards) to Amiga Inc for testing and verifications, and both sides win - Amiga Inc get some money from the verification procedures, royalties for using the Amiga Inc, and some sales of ROM chip + Amiga OS 4.0, Hyperion will get some money from the AOS 4.0 + ROM Sales (to get some money from their investment in the development of AOS 4.0), and the motherboard vendors can get some money by selling those boards...
It's not like Amiga is trying to force prices around.. If a board manufacturer can sell a G4 or G3 board very cheaply and the board is approved by Amiga Inc. - then users are winning! you'll pay less for a good board - it's just math.
I wish Amiga Inc and other parties will do well. I loved Amiga and I would love to buy it again as soon as something stable comes out..
One more issue that people do forget - since these boards are based on PowerPC - there's (almost) nothing stopping you from running Mac OS 8.X (and 9.x if I'm not mistaken) - all it takes is few hacks to use an image of a NewWorld ROM of Apple's PPC machines...
Regarding the Shark board - I belive that people should complain to the Shark manufacturer and encourage him to do some deal with Amiga so their board could be certified - it's for the users and for their business.
Hetz
