Amiga, Inc: Close That Open Hardware!

[Seehund]

Woohey, back online after the holidays, and the same old same old is still being thrown around!

mikeymike wrote:
That article is serious flamebait.  It's like going into comp.sys.amiga.advocacy and asking "what makes the Amiga so special".

You mean "I disagree with that article", right?

It may be a sucky idea to some people that dongle'izing the A1 hardware so that OS4 won't run on non-official Amiga hardware, but at the end of the day, Apple made the same kind of decision (stopping the Mac clone market), which may have been for better or worse for it.  Yes, it would be more convenient for consumers to have a greater choice, but [generally, heh :-)] business produce products to make money.

Not the old "MacOS only runs on Macs" again, please!

The Apple situation is totally different from this. Apple is essentially a hardware company. They make a living on selling computers. However sucky it might be for consumers who are only interested in MacOS, it is quite understandable and makes sense business-wise for Apple to prohibit MacOS from running anywhere else than on Apple Macs.

For some strange reason somebody brought up MorphOS and the Pegasos. Even though Genesi/Thendic/whatever several times have stated that they want MorphOS on more hardware than the Pegasos, they're still similar to Apple in this respect. They make and sell their own hardware and OS.

Amiga, Inc. is not a hardware company. AmigaOS depends on availability of and compatibility with third party hardware. Restricting what hardware "their" product, AmigaOS, will run on and from whom AmigaOS customers are allowed to buy that hardware does NOT make sense business-wise. It's painfully counterproductive and it's limiting and marginalising the AmigaOS product.

[Seehund]

jumpship wrote:
People keep on about the OS4 dongle, but when you think about it, even without the "dongle code" OS4 is still tied to certain hardware. How? Drivers.

Well, of course! That's pretty damn self-evident, no?

Where did you see people objecting to software not automagically running on any hardware you can throw at it?

The licensing/dongling/bundling requirement does however not have anything to do with TECHNICAL reasons. It's an additional restriction on top of the valid technical reasons, and it helps preventing the OS to be ported to more hardware in the first place.

When you think about it, the only reason Windows appears to be able to run on any X86 board is because Windows has basic drivers for most motherboard hardware, ether by themselfes or supplied by the H/W manufacture.

But who's arguing for AmigaOS to run on "any" PPC board?
I'm arguing against imposing additional restrictions that are technically irrelevant, but yet will stop technical issues from even being considered.

Unless someone makes a board that is identical in everyway to Eytech's AmigaONE, OS4 still wouldn't run on it. Unless either they make the drivers or Hyperion do.

Huh? It's not like Eyetech is or ever has been the only distributor of Teron boards.

Then again it doesn't matter if the driver/HAL writing would only take 5 minutes by one single guy. Unless the hardware is sold licensed, bundled and dongled by a licensed vendor, AmigaOS will never run on it. Not legally and payed for, anyway, only pirates would benefit from this.

To take the specific Teron/"AmigaOne" example, I can currently buy a Teron board from Eyetech, Terra Soft, Inguard or Mai themselves. Just where is the commercial benefit for AmigaOS, AI and Hyperion in only allowing AmigaOS to be sold bundled with Teron boards from Eyetech? It's bad for AmigaOS, it's bad for AI (unless they're making HUGE money on selling hardware licenses...), it's bad for Hyperion and it's bad for the consumers.

I am not saying the dongle is a good idea or a bad one (although I do think companies do have a right to protect their time and effort), but given the very few PPC mobos around at the moment (that average Joe can buy) it is hardly worth worrying about. And as someone said, Apple seem to be doing resonable well in a closed h/w market, why can't we too? Time will tell. ;-)

Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion are not "protecing their time and efforts" by this. They just made the sales and market penetration of "all future versions of AmigaOS" dependent on simultaneous sales of licensed hardware. The only thing that's protected is the marketshare of one third party hardware distributor, and that's probably only in the short run. When the few faithful have bought their dongled Teron boards via this distributor, then what?

And again, any comparison of AI/Hyperion with Apple in this respect is irrelevant.

There are no more Amigas, I don't want a new Amiga (unless it's cheaper and better than what everyone else on the consumer hardware market can come up with, although this won't/can't happen, but even then I'd like options). I want to buy AmigaOS. Who sells me what hardware is none of the software producers' concern.

[Seehund]

samface wrote:

Seehund wrote:
The licensing/dongling/bundling requirement does however not have anything to do with TECHNICAL reasons. It's an additional restriction on top of the valid technical reasons, and it helps preventing the OS to be ported to more hardware in the first place.

Despite that I have disputed this argument of yours at several occasions

No you haven't, and you didn't address the argument quoted above in this post either.

Once more, dispute this if you can:

1. Anyone can make any PPC hardware officially supported AmigaOS4 hardware by simply applying for a license and sharing a developer board and/or as extensive as possible hardware documentation. Hyperion will then create the neccessary hardware drivers, HAL and AmigaOS4 ROM. Compare that with Apple's approach if you like.

I won't dispute that, and I never have done so. You just described the problem. There is a licensing/bundling/dongling requirement. What's your point?

And again, Apple's approach has nothing to do with this. Apple's livelihood is selling computers. AI's/Hyperion's is not.

2. The ONLY thing preventing AmigaOS4 from running on basicly any PPC hardware is if Hyperion has for some reason no access to the hardware nor proper hardware documentation and therefore cannot make it happen even if they wanted to.

You just contradicted your point #1 above. The licensing/dongling/bundling requirement, remember. Hardware documentation, cooperation from HW developers, ease of porting and all those VALID and RELEVANT issues don't mean squat unless "somebody" also gets himself and his product licensed. Even in the highly unlikely event that this ever happened, AmigaOS would still be limited to running on this new hardware ONLY when it's sold bundled with dongled hardware from a particular vendor or distributor, á la the situation with Teron boards only being allowed for AmigaOS users when sold by Eyetech.

All this naturally goes for any other hardware as well.

An example of this is the Pegasos, they even applied for a developer board themselves but has still not as of today recieved one, AFAIK.

AFAIK(!), Hyperion never actually ordered a board, they filled out this form, put online by bplan in December 2001, reporting their preliminary interest in the MorphOS + Pegasos developer's platform.
Read it and you'll note things like "Da nur eine begrenzte Anzahl an Entwicklungssystemen zur Verfügung steht behalten wir uns eine Prüfung der gemachten Angaben vor", "Die Registrierung ist keine Bestellung [there's even a big fat tag there!] der oben aufgeführten Entwicklungsumgebung" and "Nach erfolgreicher und akzeptierter Registration erhalten Sie per mail eine Auftragsbestätigung die Preis / Liefertermin / Konditionen beinhaltet.
Diese muß 14 Tage nach Erhalt per Post oder FAX zurück an die bplan GmbH übertragen werden und gilt dann als nichtübertragbare Bestellung." I doubt the developers of a competing OS was placed very high on the list of receivers of developer boards, and even if they were approved, the "word on the street" is that the final order/confirmation was never returned...

Anyway, whatever happened is moot. AmigaOS will never run (legally and payed for) on a Pegasos as long as the compulsory licensing/dongling/bundling requirement is in effect. Genesi will not apply for a license for the "privilege" of selling somebody's competing OS, and if somebody else actually applies it still means that AmigaOS users will only be allowed to buy their Pegasos boards via that distributor. NOW it's relevant to start comparing with Apple; "License Omega-what? Get lost."

You see, even though some of the chipsets are the same as the AmigaOne, the Pegasos obviously has a different design. For this reason Hyperion cannot and will not guarantee interoperability with their OS which is fully understandable, don't you think?

Of course. No need to try to be patronising, really. But again, there can be no (legal) port, documentation or not, as long as there's a licensing/bundling/dongling requirement.

3. Hyperion are very much willing to support as much hardware as possible and is actually using this licensing scheme for preventing the OS to be restricted at a technical level.

You're joking, surely?

An example of this approach is the old PPC accelerator boards from Phase5; despite having no contact with the original manufacturers, very poor documentation, probable reduction of AmigaOne sales, very custom and different hardware design from the one of the AmigaOne, they will be supported by the AmigaOS4. How could this be if it was about restricting the AmigaOS4 to run on the AmigaOne from Eyetech only?

Heh. Aren't we lucky that AI didn't require Amiga-owners to send their old PPC-cards to a licensee to sell them back dongled and bundled with AmigaOS... Seriously, what relevance does ancient hardware that people already own have to this? If anything, it's contradictory to the lame excuses we've heard from AI about the compulsory licensing. It will sell shrinkwrapped copies of AmigaOS (and even unprotected from piracy at that, mind you!), something that otherwise apparently is A Very Bad Thing for some weird reasons (even with protection).

Wouldn't this be impossible if the AmigaOS4 was made POP + ArticiaS chipset only?

Uh, yes, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that this should be done. What are you talking about?

4. The Microsoft approach of supporting the most common hardware standard and let the hardware manufacturers worry about the rest simply isn't feasible on the PPC market. There is no common PPC hardware standard. No, POP doesn't count as it will still require a common chipset standard.

I haven't suggested that there's a common PPC hardware/chip-set standard (as in: an OS will run unaltered with the same drivers on all boards of that kind), so again I don't see what you want me to dispute, and similarly there's no common "PC" hardware/chip-set standard either. Honestly, what's your point? Drivers need to be written. Nobody can expect hardware developers to write drivers for a marginal niche OS, especially not if a license is required for the drivers to ever be used. The latter is a very efficient deterrent to any possible cooperation.

So, I'm sure MAI would be delighted if we made the AmigaOS4 dependant on their ArticiaS chipset but we would still have a very restricted OS. In fact, it would be even more restricted and give the us even less hardware options.

Are you suggesting that AmigaOS should only run on Articia S based boards, or are you suggesting that I or anyone else have said something like that? I really can't make any sense out of this.


(No, I won't dignify those last off-topic insults with a reply)

[Seehund]

samface wrote:
BTW, please not that this article at OSopinion.com is written by Emanuel Mair, A.K.A Seehund. There is similar articles on Slashdot and OSNews, all by the very same author.

Duly noted, thanks for the heads-up!
Though there's no Slashdot article by me on this subject.

This kind of publicity will surely boost the Amiga comeback, now won't it?

"The Amiga comeback"? Sigh. The Amiga died in the mid-90's and it's not due for a come back, thank heavens. Where have you been the last decade?

Well, that was irony on my behalf, I really do think that if something will kill the Amiga, then it is this kind of FUD mongering by people that don't even know what's best for themselves.  :roll:

LOL. What was it you said? Ah, yes... "But please, atleast tone down a bit rather than making such a fool out of yourself."

(Does nobody know what things like "FUD" and "troll" mean? No, it's not to be used as soon as one personally happens to disagree with someone else.)

[Seehund]

gary_c wrote:

I agree fully, but:

The OS company can either go the route of guaranteeing compatibility (Amiga/Hyperion's present course) or just sell shrinkwrapped boxes with a disclaimer about use on untested boards.

I don't see those two routes as mutually exclusive.

[Seehund]

samface wrote:

Not a bad scam if you look at the whole picture.

I also disagree with the "scam" bit. It's not a scam or anything illegal, it's just business. Not necessarily commercially sound business in the long run for Eyetech and it's directly harmful for AmigaOS and its users, but it's not a "scam".

I didn't think I would have to go into this as well but since you couldn't restrain yourself from cooking up this lame conspiracy theory, I simply have to.

I'm sure Paul_Gadd shakes in his boots.
Do you always take yourself so seriously?

There are more issues involved such as preparing the hardware ROM,

The dongle-bit? An unnecessary and extra cost.

Unless you're talking about the actual and functional firmware, which is the same on all Teron boards regardless of distributor. I.e. the adaptation of PPCBoot/U-boot and SciTech's x86emu project (adapted by Hyperion, funded by Mai)?
 

distribution to Amiga hardware dealers,

Which is cheaper than e.g. Terra Soft selling single boards to end users. But it's still more expensive to buy directly from Eyetech bypassing those pesky "Amiga hardware dealers" than it is to buy from Mai or Terra Soft.

product demand,

Ah, exactly. AmigaOS users could otherwise have bought their Teron boards (and whatever future HW there might be) from the same unified market as e.g. Linux users.
== larger volumes, competition, lower prices

 providing Hyperion and other important AmigaOne software developers with developer boards,

Selling boards is an income, and don't these boards ship directly from Mai? Would seem to be a pretty awkward arrangement otherwise. What other important Teron software developers are there that must get their boards via Eyetech?

providing hardware support

I.e. the same cost as any other hardware vendor has...

 for AmigaOS4 and LinuxPPC users and developers, etc.

Again, the software support should be included in the price of AmigaOS, and I haven't seen any figures saying that the separate copies of OS4 for Amigas will cost way over $100.

Unless Eyetech will sell their own Linux distro, then Linux support is provided by - GASP! - the Linux distro company.

 All of these things costs and affect the price.

I don't think Eyetech invented these compulsory licensing ideas only to be able to sell Teron boards more expensively than others. Far more important is a monopoly on hardware for AmigaOS users. A price markup is less valuable than a 100% marketshare.

[Edit]
You also forgot to mention the trademark licensing fee for calling the Teron boards "AmigaOne".
[/Edit]

[Seehund]

OK, I suffer from mild ethanol intoxication right now, but it actually seems like you wrote what I'm reading, Alkemyst!

Alkemyst wrote:
The petition is total crap.

Its not about saving AmigaOS.
How could all of us not buying Aone/Aos4 save amigaOS.
That would kill it out right.

If you really mean what you said, it seems like you haven't understood that AmigaOS will run on third party hardware, the compulsory licensing/bundling/dongling, and the objections against this and the petition you're talking about.

Being allowed to BUY AMIGAOS is one fundamental part of the petition. BUY IT, get it? Without being restricted to certain vendors for the hardware, and hope for licensees to appear to ever see the OS on more hardware and even if that happened still only being allowed to buy the newly licensed hardware from this highly hypothetical licensee.

NOT maximising sales of AmigaOS, NOT making every effort to have it run on as much hardware as possible without extra, artificially constructed obstacles, and being dependent on the existance and licensees' sales of licensed hardware mainly attracts a subset of the pitiful current Amiga "market" is what makes a high risk for the ultimate death of AmigaOS, IMO.

Eyetech will continue with the Linux version of the mobo.

There's no need or desire for a damn "special" perverted version (dongled, it's the one and only difference) of a motherboard for AmigaOS users. Why in heaven's name should there be an "any OS" and an "AmigaOS" version/distributor of one motherboard to begin with? Isn't the PPC market already tiny, slowly developing and expensive as it is?

This petition is like a terrorist out fit. Do it My way or ill kill you off.

Your logic and frames of reference are astonishing...
Exactly how does a bunch of consumers telling a company that they'd like the OPTION to actually BUY their product without limitations regarding ANOTHER product that has nothing to do with the company in question equal a "terrorist outfit"? Are all consumers who don't buy any particular product "terrorists"? I suppose you equal market research with terrorism too? After all, some companies adapt their development, products, sales and marketing to consumer demand in order to make an attractive product and maximise sales.

This petition will not change the plans of Amiga.inc,Hyperion,Eyetech.
All it could do is change the plans of the users to not buy anything & the end result is ITS ALL OVER FOR AMIGAOS.

Oh yeah, it'd be the fault of the messengers and the protestors, not the people (AI/Eyetech) who wrote the message that's being forwarded and protested against. If everyone just shut up and clenched their fists in their pockets and grinned like idiots at each other, praising the absolute technical and business genius in restricting a small OS dependent on third party hardware to only ever run on and be sold with licensed perversions of this hardware from licensed vendors, then I'm sure AmigaOS would sell like mad. As we all know, all computer savvy consumers are nutjobs who will pay anything for anything with a licensed boingball on it. :-P

[Seehund]

Korodny wrote:

Can you imagine Ben Hermans facial expression if you would have asked him 15 months ago to develop OS4 as a "secondary" OS for Apple and Pegasos customers? I can.

I'm not sure. The classic "dollar-signs in the eyes" expression?

Hyperion's most important condition was that somebody provides a dedicated hardware platform for their OS.

Ah, but there is no dedicated hardware platform for AmigaOS. The Teron boards are not dedicated to any OS. A mobo will run any OS that's compatible with it. For the Teron boards that has predominantly been Linux.

The distribution of some of the Teron boards, and the distributor of those is artificially dedicated to AmigaOS, and there can be no alternatives. That's what's so grotesque.

Escena had left a few months earlier and the Pegasos runs MOS. Eyetech was the only candidate left, and as they don't have the neccessary engineering skills or the money to fund an external development team, they had to adopt an existing design - the TeronCX/PX.

No, Eyetech has never been a sole alternative since the Escena A1-1200/4000 projects failed. They're "just" another computer shop and distributor. The Teron boards have never been dependent on Eyetech. The more distributors the merrier though. The current dependency on Eyetech is an artificial invention, which has arisen from a licensing deal.

Despite the fact that they're using a finished motherboard design, Eyetech have pumped serious amounts of money into the A1-G3/XE. But now other companies (Terrasoft) will be selling the very same motherboards (this was planned from the beginning) at a lower price, as they don't have to pay licensing fees to Amiga Inc. Would you buy an Eyetech AmigaOne if you could get the same motherboard from Terrasoft - at a lower price? I know I wouldn't.

Precisely. There's no reason to why a user of AmigaOS should be treated as a retard compared to if he was running e.g. Linux. If a customer prefers one vendor (for whatever reason; price, support, geographic proximity, ugliness of the logo, whatever) over another for the EXACT SAME product, he should naturally be allowed to choose that vendor for his purchase. This is healthy and desperately needed competition.

Whatever money one distributor has pumped into the sales of somebody else's product is irrelevant to the end-customers. We're not here to play charity. AmigaOS can't be dependent on that people should be prepared to pay extra for one third-party hardware distributors' "investments" (and even the Escena failure!). If a customer feels that "this distributor has payed more money for selling the same board" (which is odd...) would be relevant to his selection of vendor, then fine, let him have the OPTION to buy from there.

By the way, even before Terra Soft became a Mai VAR/distributor (which of course has been anticipated since the first hints that they were testing YDL on the boards), Mai sold the boards themselves, cheaper than Eyetech. I don't know what Inguard charges for their complete Teron systems.

The licensing scheme (amongst other things) protects Eyetech's investments into the AmigaOne. Without such a protection, Eyetech wouldn't have started the project at all (IMHO). Without the A1, there wouldn't be OS4.

Nonsense. The very existence and the development and sales of Teron boards have never been dependent on Eyetech. That's a ludicrous notion. If anything, OS4 has been dependent on Mai. The invented dependency on Eyetech (and all those other eagerly waiting hypothetical licensees... ) is a business construction - and it's totally unnecessary, IMO.

As for the licensing scheme protecting Eyetech's investments in Teron boards, whatever those investments might be... I can only say that it's highly unfortunate and sad that AmigaOS, its possible hardware base, marketshare, commercial potential and customers are to suffer and pay for the costs of a third party hardware distributor. If a distributor has invested money it is to be recovered by sales of the product he's distributing. If he can't compete with other dstributors, tough luck! Then customers of ANOTHER product - AmigaOS - should be allowed to turn elsewhere for their hardware neds.