New improved intuition.library version from the Kickstart 3.1

[warpdesign]

Perhaps we should start a bounty to open source OS3.9? That has happened with various Amiga applications but curiously not with the operating system itself.

OS3.9 contains various components from various companies (ie: Haage&Partner iirc). I guess you'd better off starting with OS3.x if you would like to open source something.

And seeing it's still been sold by Cloanto I'm afraid you'll have a hard time convincing anyone to open source it.

Releasing for free OS1.x (binaries only, except say/narrator stuff) could be possible though, and would be a good start.

[warpdesign]

It is a illusion to even think they could open source it. The sources would potentially speed up development on both AROS and MorphOS (regarding compatibility) and that would not be in the interest of everyone. Then the legal situation is (politely) a little "uncertain" so with whom do you want to negotiate? AmigaInc.? Hyperion? Both? And then there is still some money made with it so even if all problems would be solved how much money do you think the bounty should reach? 6000$ would certainly not be enough and the sums I think of are out of any reach today. And I personal think we now have a good replacement already that is open (Aros 68k) so instead of wasting money for old sources it would be better to invest in Aros 68k.

While I agree AROS 68k has made great progress and may now substitue Amiga ROM in some cases (emulation), it still needs a lot of polish, optimisations and stability fixes to really replace it. The small WB replacement app for example (I'm not talking about the MUI one but the one written by Jason) is real slow and is missing lots of functionalities for example (and hasn't been updated for what.. a full year ?).

It seems AROS lacks focus: lots of things are started but never really finished. And it hasn't changed.

[warpdesign]

It is a illusion to even think they could open source it. The sources would potentially speed up development on both AROS and MorphOS (regarding compatibility) and that would not be in the interest of everyone. Then the legal situation is (politely) a little "uncertain" so with whom do you want to negotiate? AmigaInc.? Hyperion? Both? And then there is still some money made with it so even if all problems would be solved how much money do you think the bounty should reach? 6000$ would certainly not be enough and the sums I think of are out of any reach today. And I personal think we now have a good replacement already that is open (Aros 68k) so instead of wasting money for old sources it would be better to invest in Aros 68k.

It's true for the sources. Releasing 1.x 68k ROM images only for free wouldn't be that impossible though. And seeing how old it should have been released for free for non commercial use for a long time if you ask me.. But I'm not the sharks being Amiga

[warpdesign]

Thus, which type of goal do you have in mind? AmigaOs being separated into a pile of unmaintainable junk? Look at the arbitrary discipline of your average Amiga hacker, look at Cosmos. That's exactly the type of problem I do not want - people picking up the code, making changes without even asking, releasing stuff they should have coordinated. If the AmigaOs community would be somewhat more coordinated, disciplined and well-behaived, all fine. But it's in general a very unfriendly environment for stable software. No, I *do not* want five incompatible shells, ten incompable workbenches and six incompatible icon libraries because coder A doesn't like the style of coder B or is even too lazy to write a report.

Don't you think he would behave differently if code was available and updated ? I'm pretty sure there are people hacking like him in the Linux world, just because you can, but would you say Linux has become a pile of junk ? I wouldn't say so...

[warpdesign]

What exactly do you mean by "WB replacement app"? You mean the desktop? It has not been updated for years. It is in the process of being updated as far as I know but I do not know when. But (at least on 68k) it is not really important because you can use Magellan and Scalos (Scalos only works with certain older MUI classes so I do not support it). Icaros desktop 2.0 will be using Magellan too.

I must admit that it sometimes lacks focus in development. Priority should have been (from day one) 68k integration, stable and modern desktop, MUI on at least 3.8. and others. The priorities of Aros devs were different so people did not use it. But on 68k you can integrate 68k components like on MorphOS or AmigaOS (propably even better), so I have replaced Zune with MUI38 and Wanderer with Magellan. And that is only two examples. What is missing is optimizations and more support for classic hardware.

Next Icaros desktop sounds very promising but of course 68k still works as a blackbox and that will stay the same in future.

I was referring to the "low-end" 68k AROS targeted at Amiga OCS/ECS with very-little RAM, by WB I meant "Workbook" by Jason McMullan which is supposed be a Workbench.

I guess this is quite different if you target higher-end: then you have plenty of ram/power to use bigger desktop apps like Magellan or Scalos.

But be it high end or low end, it seems focus gets lost after some time and lots of things are almost ready, but not yet, and lack polish: Zune, WorkBook,...

[warpdesign]

You see it too much as a engineer but AmigaOS on 68k is completely dead, there will be no development anymore there, noone paying for coordination. AmigaInc. are not interested in it, the same for Hyperion and the old sources sticking legally between both. That developers like you are hindered to help by old contracts just because they have had access to the old sources just show me that this community only has future if we move on with open sources (and there is only Aros) and forget all that were part of the past. For me AmigaOS 68k is dead and future only with Aros 68k. I know that some still think different but I hope people in the 68k community start to change mind in future.

I agree open source is the way. What I don't get is why other Amiga "flavors" do not embrace open source as well. They seem to be so socret & protective, like there were millions to be done with OS4/MOS...

[warpdesign]

Compilers tend to make the code a bit larger than hand coded ASM (naturally), and you correct about the graphics, no one has actually written an "Amiga Driver" yet, it still just does all graphics operations as readPixel/writePixel (the emergency fallback gfx mode of AROS), fix that and you will have sorted the major bottleneck.

I thought someone was working on it (Tony) ? Now I understand why it's so slow.

[warpdesign]

I'm wondering: if we exclude the fact that it's opened (that's already huge, yes), can be fixed and improved by anyone, and is portable, what are the benefits of running AROS instead of original AOS on 68k hardware? It seems most AROS developers don't seem to be that interested in seeing it run correctly (ie: at least on par with original AOS on 68k hardware) but why would they? What's the motivation? What would it bring?

[warpdesign]

If there was new/old 68k hardware supported only by AROS 68k then it could be different game. I guess it is too late to support old 68k Macs now ;-)

Or maybe if AROS brought something really new and better (memory protection? etc...) ?