Statement From Bill McEwen on Thendic-Amiga

[mdwh2]

It's one thing to post their side of the story of whatever legal shenanigans are going on this week, but I find it sad that he takes the opportunity to attack AmigaOS users.

Go after a distributer by all means (eg, a hypothetical retailer selling Pegasos machines running OS4 when it's out), but I never agreed to any EULA, so I'll legally run my legally obtained OS3.9 on anything I damn well like.

Trying to pass off EULAs as legal contracts is one of the things that I dislike about companies such as Microsoft; it's sad to see them going the same route.

[mdwh2]

[What happened to the Quote button? Hmm, anyway]

LordOfCommunity wrote:

"MorphOS is MorphOS, Genesi = Genesi, I can't recognize any Amiga in that apart from being API COMPATIBLE. Like WINE is API compatible to Windows. So if you really like the amiga then you should hand over your site to Kees. Not just add another webmaster."

Hmm, perhaps we should have a different website/forum for every single company, Amiga-related or not, and heaven forbid anyone who doesn't post to the right one

WalkernyRanger wrote:

"If the community has changed then why do they still frequent a site for AMIGA users?"

Perhaps for one, because they run Amiga software? Not to mention having an interest in Amiga affairs.

If more than one AmigaOS successor appears and remains in use (be it OS4 and MorphOS, or something else), and they diverge (ie, no future compatibility between them), then I'm sure that new forums will appear, and the userbases will become more diverged as the systems have less in common - but at the moment, there are things in common.

[mdwh2]

K wrote:

"Ya...thats right..they either don't work...or get routed to the actual company that owns the name. "

www.microsoft.org and www.homedepot.org don't exist. www.apple.org does, but doesn't go to a webpage.

As for the rest, well that's probably because the actual company that owns the name also owns the domain names in question, and not because some fan site has decided to dedicate their domain to some company because they felt they had a "responsibility" to them.

If you believe that Amiga Inc should have rights to the domain www.amiga.org, then this is a separate issue (and imo, they should have no such rights since this is a .org site, and there is no trademark infringement going on). What would your view be if this was eg, www.amiganews.org - or possibly a name that didn't say Amiga at all, but this was still a site that had historically still been dedicated to the Amiga?

[mdwh2]

@K

Also, as a counter example, http://www.mac.org/ doesn't redirect to any official Apple site.

[mdwh2]

Jules wrote:

"It's been a very long time since I installed 3.9, but doesn't the EULA appear during instalion time?"

I'm not sure - I ended up doing a manual install, so I never clicked "Okay" to anything, let alone agreed;)

(Though no doubt, the EULA-police will insist I agreed simply by reading it in the instruction manual).

@HyperionMP

Well yes, EULAs might not be illegal (I don't think anyone's suggesting Amiga Inc be taken to court because they had a EULA;), but the question is, have they been upheld anywhere? (And if so, in what form). Otherwise, it's all a matter of speculation.

[mdwh2]

@WalkernyRanger

Windows XP doesn't run Amiga software "transparentely" (ie, from the user's point of view it's indistinguishable in its behaviour to native software). Also there are other points - eg, I didn't think that Windows' API was very compatible with the Amiga's.

So I don't see how the situation is even vaguely analagous. Also, there are Windows related posts here, but ones that are still related to the Amiga (WinUAE being the most obvious example).

"except we can't seem to discuss anything AMIGA, without someone suggesting we buy a Pegasus or try MorphOS."

Yep, I agree here - though just to add that it happens the other way round (and with other things too, like Amithlon), and it's annoying whenever it happens.

[mdwh2]

@WalkernyRanger

You don't have to convince me of the benefits - I'm running WinUAE on Windows 2000 here. Nowhere have I suggested that posts about WinUAE, Amithlon etc shouldn't be allowed here. But your description of a system which runs WinUAE automatically most certainly does not fulfill what I said about being indistinguishable from native (ie, x86 Windows) software.

WinUAE, Amithlon, AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS are all systems that allow running of Amiga software, through various different methods (be it emulating AmigaOS as a whole directly, or providing a compatible API and emulating the programs).

Windows does none of this. It can't even be claimed to be Amiga-like in its behaviour (which, AIUI, MorphOS can).

If the only way MorphOS could be made to have any Amiga-like relevance was to install an additional software, and the Amiga-stuff only ran within this software environment, then you would have a point, and I'd agree that Windows/MorphOS posts woudl only be on-topic here if it was with respect to this additional software. But this isn't the case.