AmigaOS petition update

[Seehund]

As it's a cloudy summer day here today, I took the time to do some updating of the information site for the AmigaOS Distribution Policies petition. If you have not signed the petition yet, please do so here.

Since a couple of days we are over 700 people who publicly express our wish that Amiga Inc. should not apply any artificial and unnecessary chains restricting future versions of our favourite OS and its market by only letting it run on licensed versions of third party hardware from licensed distributors.

The first batch of signatures was sent off to Amiga Inc. almost one month ago by now, but we have yet to hear a reply from the company.

I have also added a new selection of comments from disappointed users and developers.

(While I'm at it, I'd like to ask new signatories to please use their full names when signing. If you wish to use an alias/nickname, please check the box to make your e-mail address "available to the petition author". It's been quite a chore to bug PetitionOnline to track some people down to verify/delete signatures.)

[Seehund]

Crispy_Beef wrote:

If a company wants to use the Amiga brand (owned by Amiga Inc.), they have to adhere to the terms, and that's fact, and the way it should be.

Of course they should, but you're completely missing the point if you think that's what this is about.
(One of) The issue(s) is that they shouldn't have to become licensees for anyone if customers wish to use their hardware to run whatever OS they bloody well like. The petition is against the compulsory licensing/bundling/dongling required to let companies sell their own products to AmigaOS users. Hardware companies don't want to limit their hardware and become licensees of a tiny software/licensing company. The trademark has to be guaranteed or necessary to attract a huge amount of customers (à la "Made for Windows") for anyone to bother..

And I still ain't signing

Fine, but I wish you'd at least bother reading the petition (and preferrably the introduction and the FAQ as well) before coming to any decision.

[edit: forgot to attribute the quotes...]

[Seehund]

ilgulamc wrote:

why you and your 700 friends don't reach in your pokets, pay amiga inc or hyperion for amigaos rights and do whatever you want with it?!

That's exactly what I want myself and others to be able to do. Pay AI/Hyperion for AmigaOS and pay any hardware vendor/maker I prefer for the hardware of my choice (it might even be a licensed piece of hardware, but I want to be able to make that decision by myself, thankyouverymuch).

I want my choice of hardware to be decided by compatibility issues and my personal preferences alone, not by licensed trademarks and petty political wars.

I want AmigaOS to be allowed to be made to run on any potentially compatible hardware, not only licensed, dongled and bundled hardware.

I want AmigaOS to have a fair chance at even a moderate success, not being limited and chained to a niche market even tinier and more pathetic than when "Amiga" used to be a proprietary computer with no development abandoned by its bankrupted manufacturer.

There's this new OS. What's the best way to get as many users as possible? Totally unnecessarily restricting its hardware base and hardware market and not selling it separate from chosen hardware, or  make it run on as much hardware as possible and sell, sell, sell to anyone who's interested?

As far as i am concerned, I like amigaOS but i don't allow my self to judge what amiga does.

It's a commercial company, or so it says, not a deity for crying out loud! A commercial company ought to be interested in maximising market penetration and making its product commercially attractive.

[Seehund]

In what way is the Amiga-enabling ROM a limitation on the hardware?

Hardware X: This can be sold to anyone, regardless of OS. It doesn't come with any OS bundled, it doesn't license any software company's trademarks, it doesn't have any hardware license verification mechanism (in marketing a.k.a. "anti-piracy measures" or "Amiga-enabling ROM").

Hardware X, but in its licensed (per)version: This has to be sold bundled with AmigaOS after having been modified in "any way which the vendor chooses" (to paraphrase Ben Hermans attempt at "clarification") and after the vendor has become an Amiga Inc. licensee. Of course this also has to be more expensive than the same hardware in its normal shape, due to the licensing process and the following limited market size.

Which board is limited in the eyes of the consumer who doesn't give a crap about AmigaOS? And why shouldn't he have the possibility to buy AmigaOS separately to install on his hardware if he so chooses at a later time? Is his money less worth to Amiga Inc. because he cares more about the capabilities and price of his hardware than what comes bundled with it at the time of purchase?

The very essence of all this is that the hardware market for AmigaOS users is unnecessarily (as in: for no technical reasons) limited.

Are you saying that an abolishment of the compulsory dongling/bundling/licensing idea would be any more limiting?

Unless you can successfully answer this question with only hard facts and logical reasoning, you are going to be written off as an Idiot by many who up to now merely considered you a bit thoughtless.

That's alright, you should be used to insulting me by now...

Remember, you are speaking to someone currently running Linux on the AmigaOne with the ROM already in place.

Oh really!? Well, I have a black bicycle with red stripes!! So what? :-P

[Seehund]

HeUnique wrote:

It is quite unfortunate that someone is doing such a "petition" without trying to understand Amiga's position quite well (or so the petition author seems to mis-understand).

Why the quotation marks?

By allowing anyone under the sun to ship boards with Amiga OS without any qualifications - you'll get tons of nightmares in terms of support.

But once again, that's not at all what this is about! Of course someone wanting to sell his h/w bundled with AmigaOS or use an Amiga trademark should have to get a license!
It's about allowing "anyone under the sun" to sell their hardware just as they've always done not bothering about what OS the end user uses. It's about selling AmigaOS separately from hardware for the end-user to install on any compatible hardware he likes from whomever he chooses (and it's of course up to AI/Hyperion to make the OS compatible with as much h/w as possible and announce this hardware in a HCL, it's not up to anyone  else) or to nail to the wall as decoration if that's what the end user prefers!

Lets not forget one more thing - if Amiga will start selling AOS 4.0 with the plug to anyone - then maybe 50 people will buy - and the rest will copy it! I really don't think that it will be that hard to hack AOS 4.0 to work without the Amiga Inc's special ROM - so 50 will buy it, and 5000 people will copy it.

Which is exactly why the official "anti-piracy" argument is totally bogus. There's no need for the hardware vendor to provide somebody else's software protection, it'll be cracked anyway, all it does is restricting the hardware market for AmigaOS, making it a shunned curiosity, "that OS which only runs on perverted hardware". A USB dongle or whatever delivered in a separately sold AmigaOS carton would be just as good/bad protection, but it wouldn't affect our hardware choice and the market of hardware vendors.
Also, AmigaOS will actually be sold separately but only for ancient PPC accelerators for Amiga computers. How come there's no need to protect that software from piracy at all?

I really hope that Amiga Inc. will start selling AOS 4.0 soon

They won't. You'll have to buy it bundled with licensed and modified third party hardware from licensed vendors.

HeUnique eh, are you the one who rejected all stories people say they've submitted about this to /., while publishing nonsense stories about "new Amiga computers" and free pre-order/coupon/membership advertising?

[Seehund]

Crispy_Beef:

"it can be loaded and used on other Amiga PPC products and systems [that] are certified for OS 4.0"

AmigaOS 4.0 will run on the AmigaOne and other Amiga PPC certified products...

Which is... tadaaa! The board Eyetech will be distributing.
AmigaOS is only allowed to run on licensed hardware from licensed vendors. That sounds familiar somehow... :-P

[Seehund]

anarchic_teapot:

Rose, if you can't behave like a civilised adult I don't see why you're trying to participate in discussions where people's opinions can be expected to differ from those of your own.

Being buddy with Alan Redhouse could maybe be overlooked when assessing your credibility in this particular issue, but throwing insults and ad hominem attacks over something that doesn't even concern your person removes any shred of credibility that could have remained.

I'm not biting. Take a deep breath. Read a book. If you still feel the need to spew insults, don't bother replying to the subject that somehow bothers you so much.

[Seehund]

MikeB:

Allow me to cut'n'paste my reply to a similar post of yours on ANN:

 Although admittedly a harsh wording of a headline, there's nothing FUD about it. The article wasn't demoting any product, only pointing out the flaws in the business decisions behind its future distribution, and I'm no competitor trying to promote my own product by doing so. "I am an independent AmigaOS fan and a member of the Amiga community." [As you described yourself on ANN.]
The product AmigaOS != Amiga Inc's corporate planning.

Once again: The product AmigaOS != Amiga Inc's corporate planning. The merits of AmigaOS are not those of the company named Amiga Inc. and the business decisions made in Snoqualmie, and vice versa.

A computer/software user community is not defined by the opinions on any corporate decisions that each individual in the community might have. I doubt that many people would willingly want to be part of such a "community". That wouldn't be a community, that would be a dogmatic sect founded on homogenicity by brain-washing.

"I am Amiga" indeed. :-P

Personally I believe you want to weaken our oppertunity to enable a competitor to offer more competition.

:-D
If you weren't joking, that's plain ridiculous.

Also, "we"/"our" != the commercial entity Amiga Incorporated (or any other company for that matter).

[Seehund]

HeUnique:

many of the slashdot authors refuse to post stories about Amiga until some stuff will be out..

LOL! In that case the Boing-ball wouldn't have been seen on the Slashdot frontpage since OS 3.9 was released.

so you cannot say we ignore the Amiga.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm merely wondering why most of the later Amiga stories have been either about having a laugh at  vapourware or uncritical forwarding of transparent marketing material, like all the silliness lately about "new Amiga hardware". It's not surprising that  your readers bitch about vapourware and "let it die already" when they're only fed stuff like that. FYI, AmigaOS is supposed to be running on third party hardware, which unfortunately has to be distributed by licensed vendors only. There aren't and most likely will never be any plans, designs, specifications, manufacturing or sales of any hardware specifically made for AmigaOS. (And unless someone with resources like Sony or nVidia buys the Amiga trademarks, releases a cheap killer machine once again revolutionising personal computing and KEEPS it ahead of the rest, I doubt that many people actually would want a custom made "Amiga".)

[Seehund]

HeUnique:

As for the certification stuff - I run Office 2000 under Linux on my X86 using CrossOver office. Has it been certified by MS to run on this configuration? nope, but it runs - same thing with AOS 4.0 - you can buy it, but they're not responsible if it will run on unsupported hardware.

Micros~1 haven't built in any code in Office that checks for hardware-license verification means in your machine. AmigaOS will be restricted to hardware that is tainted with such a mechanism.
If it weren't, then you just described what we're yearning for - sell the OS bundled with certified/licensed hardware, but for chrissake sell it separately for users to install on "unlicensed" hardware of our choice as well! We're mostly geeks, remember? Let us decide if we want the "protection" of Amiga Inc. when it comes to our hardware choices.

"OS 4.0 will run on other PPC products besides the AmigaOne, like the CyberStorm and Blizzard PPC accelerator cards. That's because you, the members of The Community, with many and varied needs, wanted this support."

Who gives a crap about ancient hacks on ancient machines? Well, many give a crap (including me ), but that stuff is totally irrelevant to a future for AmigaOS. And why is there apparently no need at all for any copy-protection whatsoever when the hardware isn't for sale by Eyetech?

Over 700 members of the community and newcomers publicly say they want to have the option to buy AmigaOS separately and buy whatever hardware they want from whomever they want.  The way things look today, that appears to be a significant amount of potential customers for Amiga Inc.

[Seehund]

We did posted Amiga stories. Some examples:

BTW, don't forget the latest embarrassing "news" item about "Linux on POP board runs Mac-On-Linux! Whoop Whoop!" (but it was described as "New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS" :-D )

Now what was the purpose of that?

[Seehund]

createcoms:

I think if you do a WHOIS on the ip of the petition organiser you'll see it's located at an american mental ward.

y00 = da funney man111!!1!!

:-P

193.11.228.9

h4xx0r away.
plz fix k thx.

This is my indirect way of saying how much I think this Petition sux.

Oh. For a minute I almost thought you were talking about the petition organiser. Silly me. I guess I shouldn't ask about  your feelings about all the people who endorse it, or even ask why you think it "sux".

[Seehund]

Hammer:

There's nothing wrong with certification.

I agree, certification is good. The petition isn't about that.

[Seehund]

ShadesOfGrey:

AFAIK bPlan have not announced any licensing terms, OEM or retail.

Not AFAIK either.

And why would we who want to buy AmigaOS and want to see changed distribution policies for AmigaOS start a petition to the MorphOS team, because they might or might not do something more or less similar to what Amiga Inc. has announced? If fans of a certain model of car were to petition the manufacturer of that car to prevent the model to be discontinued, would they be obliged to start petitioning every other car manufacturer to prevent the discontinuation of every other car model in order to keep the "validity" of their original petition?

Q: Will MorphOS support any other hardware?
A: MorphOS is open to any new platform or hardware. To have support it
requires complete specs of the hardware to port the low level
hardware code.

I can see the "low level hardware code" as being a dongle. No less than that of the A1's BIOS extension.

I can see the "low level hardware code" as being just that; functional firmware code, code for handling chipsets et c., rather than hardware vendor provided extensions without a practical purpose for the functioning of the OS and hardware, like a serial number or whatnot, with no other purpose than sitting statically to be checked up on by license verification code in the OS.

But I don't know.

I doubt that MorphOS, which probably will have an even smaller initial userbase than AmigaOS, would even be considered to be limited in the AmigaOS way. If things turned out like that I could very well consider signing a petition to the MorphOS team, but that's all unlikely speculation so far. Although I'm of course open to alternatives and hope to get a chance to try e.g. MorphOS, I'm personally more interested in AmigaOS ATM, and that's what this petition is about - the announced distribution policies are for all future versions of AmigaOS.

[Seehund]

zudobug:

There simply isn't time to listen to the ranting and raving of people that hate them for having a go.

I realise you're generalising, but after that I think I might have to clarify for others that I don't "hate" any company and the petition is most certainly NOT about anything even remotely like that. This is all about one issue, one single corporate decision, a stroke of the pen, that the petitioners as potential AmigaOS4+ users / Amiga Inc. customers wish to see changed to make AmigaOS a better, more attractive product and with that getting at least a chance to be successful.

AmigaOS != Amiga Inc. != the announced distribution policies for AmigaOS

I'd like to think at least that is clear by now.

Apologies to anyone who doesn't like what I've said.

Don't apologise for your opinion!