Petition: AmigaOS distribution policies and PPC hardware

[Seehund]

 There's a petition aimed at Amiga Inc. set up at www.petitiononline.com/amigaos/ for all those who disagree with Amiga Inc's presented plans regarding compulsory OS/hardware bundling and licensing.

An excerpt from the petition:

On April 12th, 2002, you, Amiga Inc., published your plans regarding distribution policies for the forthcoming AmigaOS4 in an "Executive Update" on your web site.

In short, what you say and what we the undersigned object against is this:

* Any hardware capable of running AmigaOS must first be modified with "AmigaOS specific extensions" to its "boot ROM" in order to be allowed to run AmigaOS.

* Such hardware and its distributors must be approved and licensed by Amiga Inc. and the hardware distributors must also sell and support AmigaOS4.

* AmigaOS will only be available bundled with such hardware.

We think that the above will seriously hurt AmigaOS users, the POP/PPC hardware market and thus ultimately you, Amiga Inc., yourselves.

To read the entire petition and sign it, please click here.

Before those imagining sides, factions, camps and personal enemies everywhere start commenting, it must be emphasised that this poll is not intended to "promote" anything else than the success of AmigaOS, the POP/PPC hardware market, free choice and ethical business practices

[Seehund]

Crispy_Beef:

it just stops AOS running on boards that aren't approved.

Exactly. That's not "just", that's a software company trying to tell hardware distributors and users what to do. Amiga Inc. do not have the weight to throw around to do such a thing successfully. It's an unnecessary obstacle without technological relevance against having AmigaOS running on as many hardware products as possible available from as many distributors as possible.

And a manufacturer can't expect to use the Amiga name if they haven't applied for a licence.

Well, of course not! The point is that nobody should have to license and use this name to begin with in order to sell their own hardware, regardless of what OS the buyers are using. If someone wants to use the Amiga trademark or sell OS/hardware bundles they should of course have to get a license, but not just to sell their hardware, regardless if their customer uses OS X, Y or Z. Please read the petition before you decide to sign it or not.

Please STOP thinking about only two pieces of hardware called Pegasos and AmigaOne. If there was no compulsory licensing, no compulsory BIOS modifications, and no compulsory OS/hardware bundling,  you could choose unrestricted between these two and whatever other POP mobos there are and might be.
 Before someone comes along and says "but AOS must still be compatible with the hardware...", yes of course. But if a hardware distributor must modify potentially compatible hardware, get a license and start selling OS4, then the chances that OS4 will ever run on that hardware are drastically reduced before any compatibility work can even be planned for OS4.

[Seehund]

While it's nice to see that people are being generally civil, it's sad to see that so few seem to even have read the petition or tried to understand it before coming to a decision.

No, for hopefully the last time, this is not for or against any company, product or entity. Read the petition. Someone for some utterly odd reason even found it relevant to write that he wouldn't want to "hurt" Amiga Inc. and a bunch of other companies. Well, I have no idea how you can come up with the notion that the petition is meant to hurt anyone. Read the petition, think for yourself and for once try to forget about labels, camps and factions.

I see a whole lot of people merely repeating what's said in the April executive update. Hey, guess what, the undersigned don't agree with that. Duh. That's why there's a petition. If you feel the need to argue against the petition, at least provide your own arguments or try to explain WHY you agree with the compulsory bundling and licensing and WHY you think the arguments you're reusing are valid or relevant. There is no point of mere repetition.
Most of my arguments and reasoning are there to read in the petition.

I'll provide a simple step by step instruction:

1: Read the petition and read the April executive update. Compare what's being said.

2: Think. For yourself. This can be difficult, we're all flock animals. If names like MorphOS, AmigaOne, bplan etc. pop up, then clear your mind and start over. This is not about old flamewars and imagined factions. There is no "Amiga" anymore. There is AmigaOS and there is hardware. The company behind AmigaOS has nothing to do with hardware. The companies behind the hardware have nothing to do with AmigaOS.

3: Read the petition and the executive update again and try to think forward, imagining consequenses.

4: Come to a decision. Sign or don't sign. Simple as that. Noone but moron zealots who invent factions and see "the competition" as personal enemies are going to hold your decision against you, whatever it may be. Just make sure you have read and understood for yourself.

Regarding the fsckwits who post abuse in the comments to the petition - the obvious abuse will of course be removed before it's all handed over. Noone has to worry about ending up in "bad company". Whenever you sign a petition you naturally only agree with what's said in the petition, not with any of the personal comments from the undersigned. I'm not gonna censor anything based on if it's "stupid" or ill-informed or just not exactly what I think.

[Seehund]

Are people still arguing over those two POP mobos over here? Sheesh.
 And some people even seem to think that one somehow is "more Amiga" than the other, ain't that cuuute. Aren't trademarks and licensing a wonderful thing? :-P

To the ones still asleep; wake up! There still isn't any one out there making any "Amigas". Nothing has changed. You'll get AmigaOS4, be happy. If you're lucky you'll even be able to choose which POP mobo you want to buy.

anarchic_teapot wrote:

Just had a look at the petition. The list of signatures reads like an ann.lu flamefest.

What, the names? How many flamewarriors (regardless of imagined "side") are known by nick/name on ANN? 3? 5? 10?
I'm sure it's not 230.

Many of those who've signed are either MorphOS trolls, or people who just don't understand what's going on.

I suppose they're no better than the rest who can't stop forming their every opinion based on labels, "camps", trademarks and licenses.
BTW, right now I count to 1 abusive "pro-MorphOS" (sigh) comment. There's also 1 faked "pro-MorphOS troll" from someone pretending to be Brecht Machiels ("darklite").

For pete's sake guys, it's not Amiga Inc who can make the Pegasos AOS compatible, it's bPlan.

Pardon?
[color=0000FF]Q:[/color] "There's this software company with a new OS. Who's responsible to make it compatible with as much hardware as possible? The hardware companies or the software company developing/selling the OS?"
[color=FF0000]A:[/color] "Huh? The software company of course. Just like any other software company. Is this a trick question?"

I was saddened to see several good friends' names in there, though I do wonder if a few names haven't been forged...

OTOH, a goodly number of the currently 219 signees actually did it to protest against the petition itself.

Oh, God no! Truly saddening. What ever shall you do? Cut all ties to your former friends or just look angrily at them?
All over a petition trying to change a software company's business practices...

Yeah, there are 4 people who either didn't understand that a button saying "Sign the petition" actually will "Sign the petition", or are trying some kind of sabotage. It's kind of funny either way.

I'm going to ignore it. As far as I'm concerned, the Pegasos has too uncertain a release date to be taken into account, and I have no desire to shift to MorphOS.

MorphOS, the Pegasos and the A1G3-SE aren't the point of all this. The point is that it shouldn't matter to you what label there is on a POP mobo or who's selling it to you. No software company has anything to do with that.

 The name Amiga belongs to Amiga Inc, and they have every right to specify in what way it will be protected, and what form the licensing may take.

I thought it was obvious that the world actually contains a couple of companies who have no desire to use the Amiga trademark. Regardless of whether a hardware distributor has that desire, and the desire to get themselves and their hardware licensed and modified and on top of it all sell another companiy's OS bundled with it, we - the users and customers - should have the right to buy our hardware from those companies to run whatever OS we like. Amiga Inc. should try to sell us *their own* product, AmigaOS.

 It's not as though it's particularly convoluted, it doesn't prevent people selling dual-boot systems (as MicroShaft do),

It is convoluted, but that doesn't really matter. A software company of Amiga Inc's caliber CANNOT make ANY demands or put any restrictions on hardware and hardware distributors if they have any intention of maximising their number of sales and get their product running on as much hardware as possible.

and it makes sense to have a mobo that can recognise an AOS-formatted hard disk to boot from.

What has a license, OS/hardware bundling and anti-piracy extensions in the BIOS or elsewhere to do with your harddisk, its MBR and filesystems? Would a POP mobo stop booting from some harddisks if you peeled off the Amiga sticker?

All these hysterics are beginning to disgust me.

Yeah, those damn hysterics. BTW, did you lose many friends in the Great Petition Horror of 2002? Sheesh...

[Seehund]

BTW...

@anarchic_teapot

though I do wonder if a few names haven't been forged...

Could you please list those names (unless it's the darklite spoofer which I already know about). If it's true it's of course unacceptable.

Abuse and sabotage won't get anyone anywhere. Do people seriously believe that the crap won't be removed when it's compiled (if not before)?

[Seehund]

DaveP:

Seehund you have said that you are going to clean up the comments
are you going to check that these people are genuine?

Yes. As soon as the damn petitiononline.com admin feels like answering my requests. Otherwise when the list is compiled before it's sent off.

[Seehund]

Akaru:

I don't think this petition will have much clout because of whats been said above. Can all of these be verified? can they really be taken notice of? Anyone can post under more than one name and email address. Theres nothing stopping people from spoofing other peoples interest, it doesn't have enough legitimacy.

It's an online petition, not an election to parliament or a scientific study. Registration wouldn't stop abuse, someone with his/her mind set on abuse and being an asshole could still register multiple times with different e-mail addresses. I'm happy to see that over 300 people so far have taken a chance to easily voice their opinion. All these people writing individual e-mails/letters would have been the alternative, but that's unlikely to happen.
A petition hanging on a billboard is just as open to abuse. Still, all the obvious crap and sabotage attempts will be removed.

If anybody knows of a better place than petitiononline.com you're welcome to share. If Amiga Inc. doesn't listen this time and it gets away with killing off AmigaOS, we could host the petition to make it open source there. :-P

Edit: Sorry, forgot to turn off the damn GIF smileys. The ":-P" was turned into a laughing Down's syndrome patient.

[Seehund]

HeUnique:

People, some history lesson..

It seems you need to go back to history class, sorry.

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!

It failed because people wanted "a Macintosh". Apple couldn't survive on licensing money, neither can Amiga Inc. - and Apple had a larger market than Amiga Inc. Not to mention that Apple designed and sold their own hardware and provided specifications for clone makers. People seem to totally overlook the fact that Amiga Inc. is a software company and that they DON'T design, make, provide specs for or sell any hardware of their own. The "Amiga" as a piece of hardware is officially dead, gestorben, mort, död, shmersh, mors, but AmigaOS is what lives on and it will run on PPC-expanded old Amigas and on POP motherboards. There will be no more "Amigas" made.
Perhaps people are confused because one distributor is selling a POP motherboard under the label "AmigaOne", and this makes people connect it with the Amiga Inc company and either defend or attack this particular POP mobo so vehemently.

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,

I remember a quote from a developer in #ppclinux; "Amiga Inc. is a speck on the windshield of the POP market". Or as Ross Heinlein, developer of the Barbie POP board said next to his signature on the petition; "You need to realise that as Hardware manufacturers, your OS licensing is NOT our concern, we just build hardware, we don't play games and tailor separate product lines for every 'niche-OS' who has crazy ideas, you should rethink yours." That's how the entire third party consumer hardware market works, PPC or not.
Unless Amiga Inc. are planning to exclusively live on AmigaDE/AA in the future, then they're actively committing suicide.
By the way, when was the single currently licensed POP mobo tested by Amiga Inc. for ensured compatibility with AmigaOS4, when did it pass the "strict set of Quality Assurance certifications"?

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

Both Amiga Inc. and Hyperion are software companies. They CAN NOT expect and certainly NOT DEPEND on earning money on anything other than sales of their software, but still they won't sell their software. They expect 3rd party hardware vendors to sell their software for them. It will not work.
They should sell OS4 separately, and they could still make money on licensing if there were any company like Eyetech who'd want to use the "Amiga" trademark and sell bundled computers.

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!

If someone bothers to become licensees and dealers for Amiga Inc.'s products, yes. Even if someone is insane enough to do that, those licensed boards will still be separated for no technical reason from the rest of the POP market. Instead of one POP market you get two smaller "POP" and "POP for AmigaOS" markets. Smaller markets = higher prices and slower development. Everybody loses.

you'll pay less for a good board - it's just math.

Really, what the hell are you talking about?

I loved Amiga and I would love to buy it again as soon as something stable comes out..

Listen: You will never be able to buy a new Amiga because there will be no more Amigas. There will be AmigaOS and there are and will be POP motherboards. (But for some reason Amiga Inc. thinks we are too stupid to choose our own POP motherboards.)

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...

Huh? First, you can't buy MacOS separately, second, don't you think people would already be running MacOS (I presume you mean natively) on POP motherboards if this was possible or even attractive? Or are you saying that a license will magically change a POP mobo's capabilities? Well, reading the marketing in the executive update it almost sounds as if that was the case...

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.

You just provided YET ANOTHER example to why Amiga Inc.'s plans are so harmful.
Look, you have a link to a petition right in front of you that if it was considered by Amiga Inc. (THAT is the company setting the restrictions in the first place remember) would remove any need to complain to any hardware distributor, be it concerning Pegasos, Barbie, Shark or whatever the heck else.
The Shark is not a POP mobo, which would make Amiga Inc.'s/Hyperion's porting efforts (which are the SOFTWARE company's responsibility) more than negible, but the ridiculous non-technical obstacles would be removed.