What is AMiga OS 4.1 based on?

[Vanilla]

It's based on AmigaOS4.0! :-)

What it's based on is is the OS3.1 sourcecode and whatever OS3.9 sourecode Amiga managed to scrap together for Hyperion.

It isn't the MorphOS kernel, otherwise there would be no red team and big team competing to be The Sorest Looser. :-D

And AROS? Are you serious? Hehe. LOL! :-D   In this case it would be an Amiga inspired kernel, but not The Amiga kernel. And you would see no OS4 on x86 threads. I regret saying that "phrase" but it was a logical progression.

[Vanilla]

I wonder how much 3.5/3.9 code they did manage to re-use given all the legal issues with H&P; I know that Amidock is a completely new application, for example, but I'm guessing they somehow managed to get the code for things like ReAction...

A few things are are missing. Arexx is 68K, and likely to remain that way since they only had a license to the 68K source code, and can only go as far as debugging that same source code.  Hyperion brought Python in, but it just doesn't look as easy as AmigaDOS and Arexx scripts. Not  to matter, as even if Arexx gets bumped off, programs can still support Arexx ports and commands. Since it is just a standard message port and messages in Arexx format; just a "string in a structure" really, so easily kept going.

The Installer was lost, although they have made their own for certain things; thus the OS4 installer can't be used to install OS3.9 programs that make use of it's multimedia or other features for instance.

The Printer modules were lost. They had to spend time reimplementing features there and not all were put in. So the OS4 printer.device is not perfectly backwards compatible to the OS3.9 one .

I thought Palette used to be 68k, it's now native. IIRC it had some screen colour bug. It's still not right, as it looks dated and has no colour wheel? :-?  Perhaps that was the sacrifice for becoming native.

There there is Unarc, some decompressors are 68k.

The Shell. Well I never liked the ones used to replace it in the past. And always thought they should just bite the bullet and get the sources to KingCON. Well now I guess it's too late and the Shell we have is slightly better than what we had in OS3 and 100 times better than what you get in WindowsXP!

From my above descriptions it would look like AmigaOS4 is a big mess! I would have liked a more cleaner rebirth to the Amiga, but it was pulled apart after Commodore already broken it. so this is what we ended up with. It still here at least. :-)

[Vanilla]

Don't comment on things you don't understand. AROS is not Amiga inspired, it is an AmigaOS clone. You imply that AROS is a modern kernel, made to look like AmigaOS it isn't. Bear in mind that MorphOS used AROS code, and there has been quite a bit of code sharing between the projects.

I understand all right. There may have been no reverse engineering, but it's obvious AROS uses the AmigaOS include files to recontruct it in portable C. Now if that isn't some serious inspiration I don't know what is!

[Vanilla]

AROS doesn't use the AmigaOS includes, they are copyrighted... Come on keep up, you are showing your ignorance here.

Then where does it get all its structures from? You say AROS is a clone, but if it is a clone then it needs AmigaOS includes to be one. If it  doesn't use AmigaOS includes then we are stuck. Where do the AROS system includes come from?

And, AROS is reversed engineered, and using the publically available docs.

So you mean to say that the writers examined 68k disassemblies to see what the code does and convert that to C? If so that's not much better than using copyrighted files as your basis.

I thought it would have been easier for them if they used the AmigaOS include files and autodocs as their basis. Reimplementing all the core functions themselves by needessly reinventing the wheel and writing code to mirror the Amiga API behavour.

[Vanilla]

Yes, exactly.

:-O

Legally there is a difference. If you don't believe me, consult a copyright lawyer.

I thought reverse engineering would be worse. What's more, I thought the basic system structures would be copied, since if you want to compile Amiga C programs you need those same systtem structures anyway.

I thought AROS would be done just reading docs and public structures and recreating it. Well that seemed the clean approach to me, if you don't want legacy issues, and a better framework for forward moving features.