New improved intuition.library version from the Kickstart 3.1

[OlafS3]

Whether it is open or closed source I do not even mind. What I would mind is that it is maintained.  

No matter what you think, "Open Source" does not mean unpaid work. I currently participating a little bit in the linux intel driver development (only very minor), yet you find that people there *are* getting paid by the big players that have some interest in the platform.

You seem to believe that everything that needs to happen is to make the source publically available, and the problem will be solved. That's not the case. It will replace one problem by another problem unless somebody "wears the hat" as we say here, i.e. has the final say what goes into the repository and what won't. No, I don't think that the average Amiga hacker is disciplined enough to accept a "no" in case it is a "no".

Then, in the end, it does not matter whether the sources are released or not as long as somebody cares. Currently, they are closed, and I frankly say that nobody cares, at least not for the 68K branch. Sad enough. There are enough things that could be done if there would be a way to do that without actually causing irritiation by anyone.    And how does that change with Open Source? It is just the same, as soon as the development team just considers the old software obsolete, you may have the source, cool, but you cannot really do anything about it because it's just a big pile of code you do not know how to work with. Projects got abandoned, and nobody picked them up. Open Source code is very volatile - whether your source still compiles with the latest version of libIdoNotcare.so you never know.

I worked in both ways, each has its advantages and its drawbacks, but just throwing the code into an OpenSource repository is not going to help much - unless somebody really cares about the result.  

Not really. In the end, somebody has to pay the party. Even for OpenSource if you care about quality or consistency. Again, I'm not against it. I'm against leaving it unmaintained.

Open Sourcing is not solving everything, you still not only need someone for coordination you need developers contributing at all. There are lots of amiga sources on sourceforge, aminet or elsewhere that nobody develops on (ignition just one example that comes to my mind). But at least it is theoretical possible in opposite to many closed software where developers have vanished and any bugfix or adding features has become impossible. That is what Wawa meant. In my view Aros 68k is the only realistic path for 68k platform because there are people who care, f.e. Aros 68k automatically benefits of changes on the big brothers (X86...) on the other hand these benfit too because Aros can be tested against real working software. So a win-win. AmigaOS 68k will never be developed again because sticking between Hyperion and AmigaInc. and both are not interested in it.

Who will pay developers for coordinating development on AmigaOS 68k?

[OlafS3]

I don't really think so. I believe if you'd know whom to ask and what to ask for, it should be very well possible to obtain them if you'd want them. Of course, this requires approaching people politely and having a reputation as software engineer (not as hacker), so I would assume that Cosmos is out.  

But anyhow, it's not my problem.  

I, however, believe they are. There are always methods to interact and approach the right people to get what you want. Not as open source, for certain. The guerilla type approach of course does not work. It is pretty much a matter of thrust.

It would be great if a developer with such experience like you would contribute and help on Aros 68k because I think it is not that far away from fully replacing AmigaOS, in UAE it is already (in my view). I am not more interested in a future with the ghosts of the past who are just doing their own politics and attacking each other instead of cooperating. The old sources should rest in peace we now have a new and open OS and a open Rom. In my view the parties involved have no interest in 68k, why should they support the development and I have no interest to be dependent on the grace of others.

[OlafS3]

OS3.9 contains various components from various companies (ie: Haage&Partner iirc). I guess you'd better off starting with OS3.x if you would like to open source something.

And seeing it's still been sold by Cloanto I'm afraid you'll have a hard time convincing anyone to open source it.

Releasing for free OS1.x (binaries only, except say/narrator stuff) could be possible though, and would be a good start.

It is a illusion to even think they could open source it. The sources would potentially speed up development on both AROS and MorphOS (regarding compatibility) and that would not be in the interest of everyone. Then the legal situation is (politely) a little "uncertain" so with whom do you want to negotiate? AmigaInc.? Hyperion? Both? And then there is still some money made with it so even if all problems would be solved how much money do you think the bounty should reach? 6000$ would certainly not be enough and the sums I think of are out of any reach today. And I personal think we now have a good replacement already that is open (Aros 68k) so instead of wasting money for old sources it would be better to invest in Aros 68k.

[OlafS3]

While I agree AROS 68k has made great progress and may now substitue Amiga ROM in some cases (emulation), it still needs a lot of polish, optimisations and stability fixes to really replace it. The small WB replacement app for example (I'm not talking about the MUI one but the one written by Jason) is real slow and is missing lots of functionalities for example (and hasn't been updated for what.. a full year ?).

It seems AROS lacks focus: lots of things are started but never really finished. And it hasn't changed.

What exactly do you mean by "WB replacement app"? You mean the desktop? It has not been updated for years. It is in the process of being updated as far as I know but I do not know when. But (at least on 68k) it is not really important because you can use Magellan and Scalos (Scalos only works with certain older MUI classes so I do not support it). Icaros desktop 2.0 will be using Magellan too.

I must admit that it sometimes lacks focus in development. Priority should have been (from day one) 68k integration, stable and modern desktop, MUI on at least 3.8. and others. The priorities of Aros devs were different so people did not use it. But on 68k you can integrate 68k components like on MorphOS or AmigaOS (propably even better), so I have replaced Zune with MUI38 and Wanderer with Magellan. And that is only two examples. What is missing is optimizations and more support for classic hardware.

Next Icaros desktop sounds very promising but of course 68k still works as a blackbox and that will stay the same in future.

[OlafS3]

You are putting me in a dangerous position, that's the problem. If you want to drive AROS further and want to avoid any possible claim from Amiga, H&P and Hyperion, you should really develop that in a clean room approach. IOW, as soon as I contribute code, you (and I) are running into the danger-zone. What is always possible is that you ask technical questions and I answer them to the best of my knowledge, including internals. *That* is reasonably safe. Letting anyone look into the code, or me touching AROS code is something I would currently not dare. Not for claims from AROS, but for claims from Amiga.

ok I understand... that is one of the things I hate, "sh..t" NDA, contracts and so on that are related to both Hyperion and/or AmigaInc., with one person always repeating unproved accusations instead of trying to work together in common interest.

Honestly, they can keep both the sources and their NDAs and contracts

H&P will certainly not doing anything, I had contact with Mr. Haage a couple of times in the last years and I think he is not interested anymore in anything amiga-related

[OlafS3]

So you are between a rock and a hard place, tied by legal strings, so you cannot do anything with neither AmigaOS nor AROS, not even if you really want to. Hah, the irony. I suppose there is an opening for you with MorphOS.

Why should there be a opening with MorphOS?

@Thomas

It is a pity but I understand

[OlafS3]

I was referring to the "low-end" 68k AROS targeted at Amiga OCS/ECS with very-little RAM, by WB I meant "Workbook" by Jason McMullan which is supposed be a Workbench.

I guess this is quite different if you target higher-end: then you have plenty of ram/power to use bigger desktop apps like Magellan or Scalos.

But be it high end or low end, it seems focus gets lost after some time and lots of things are almost ready, but not yet, and lack polish: Zune, WorkBook,...

"Workbook" was designed as a kind of minimal desktop as far as I know. Jason has joined Arix and was contributing not much last year because of lack of time (not only for 68k). I have never tested workbook so I cannot say much about it. Do not forget that the project started to bring AmigaOS to X86 so there always were plenty of resources and today even on ARM (the new low-end) you have much more resources than you ever had on Amiga. That meant they never optimized it for classic hardware, for a long time it not even existed on 68k and from Aros devs noone is caring for it at the moment. Toni is doing something and has done some optimizations recently, Jason did do a lot in the past but not some time now. 68k never was really priority or interesting to most Aros devs. Because of that I hoped that there would some of the 68k devs join and help there because it is not that far away. It needs still certainly some optimizations regarding classic hardware and additional support for hardware, nothing impossible and propably only a few months for experienced developers. Up to now I could create some interest in the 68k community but still no developer who helps at the core and that is the place where most has to be done. Lack of direction, yes propably, everyone does what he likes to do but there is no big plan and management like in a company that wants to sell products. It is opensource, that has advantages and disadvantages.

I do not think that "Workbook" will be updated in future, I know there is a updated version of Wanderer in future and you can use Magellan and Scalos as desktop. Bring Zune to at least 38 should have highest priority but it propably is a complicated task. For me personal there is no problem because on Aros 68k you can simply add original MUI38 and replace Zune. The only problem is that the original Prefs do not work anymore, I partly solved that by using other prefs and predefining prefs files.

[OlafS3]

That's a good point.

+1

I would integrate any improvements in my distribution, it would help everyone and of course it would be perfectly legal

@Thomas

You see it too much as a engineer but AmigaOS on 68k is completely dead, there will be no development anymore there, noone paying for coordination. AmigaInc. are not interested in it, the same for Hyperion and the old sources sticking legally between both. That developers like you are hindered to help by old contracts just because they have had access to the old sources just show me that this community only has future if we move on with open sources (and there is only Aros) and forget all that were part of the past. For me AmigaOS 68k is dead and future only with Aros 68k. I know that some still think different but I hope people in the 68k community start to change mind in future.

[OlafS3]

I was referring to legitimate bugs. There's always the possibility that some software was written not against the API as documented, but rather to the observed behavior.

It may not be an issue, but that's the only reason I can see for breaking existing applications.



I go back and forth on this issue but I tend to agree with you.

You can either try to put more in ROM or provide a more complete disk loading mechanism. (probably a few other options I'm not thinking of)

For a while he's been trying to get a few more items available early in the boot process, such as working RTG, and packing more into the ROM is one valid way of getting there.

With the lack of development in general, having the libraries in a ROM starts to look appealing too.



It's still risky, but I think fewer and fewer people care. Leaving it alone isn't getting us anywhere either because the owners don't seem to care about the code until they can litigate over it.



I can't speak for why he doesn't work with AROS.

I don't contribute because I don't like the direction they took. It seems like they work backwards from x86 while adding third-party features, making it a massive, untestable, never ending ordeal.

IMHO, they should have replaced one library from the ROM at a time on 68k before they even started on disk libraries.

That ROM replacement would have given us a start on owning the OS as a community and the ability to legally make the changes you mentioned such as loading from disk.



He's not saving the platform, but he's having fun and quite a few people are interested in it. No more of a loss than playing a game or reading a book, yet a few people will enjoy using his changes.

As Wawa said we need people that contribute to Aros 68k. You do not contribute because of the direction it takes? What direction do you mean? The thread is about 68k so we do not talk (or be in interested in) the direction X86 takes. It is very compatible already, it runs most of the newer applications, many games, WHDLoad and many others. You can replace almost everything easily by copying 68k files, I do that extensively on my distribution. I use Magellan as desktop, I use MUI38 instead of Zune, I have added tons of components from 68k world, original are of course basic libs like dos.library, gadtools, intuition, AHI and CybergraphX 3. On UAE it runs very well, what still needs more love is supporting classic hardware (expecially optimizations that it runs faster). I do not more know what I can do additionally to persuade people what big chances it offers. I think of making a survey and perhaps a bounty for that, then people will have a chance to show interest, if not I personal will concentrate on Aros 68k on emulation.

[OlafS3]

Main purpose of AROS/m68k kickstart really was just to have enough for launching games and demos with WinUAE, and for that it has come a long way.

Wawa explained it very good. People (both users and developers) on 68k have to decide what they want, hack around with the old codebase, adding patches that do not really make it better or supporting a new clean platform that makes it easy to integrate patches in the OS (something that already has happened). Of course progress does not happen if people only sit there twiddling thumbs and moan about the situation. If people want future the choice is clear.

[OlafS3]

AROS is no solution, it is still missing functionality that was in OS3.5 15 years ago...

What exactly is missing? And again if you talk about 68k you can (almost) replace everything with original 68k libraries. By this I have f.e. added MUI38 (and removed Zune). That almost works for everything.

[OlafS3]

I thought someone was working on it (Tony) ? Now I understand why it's so slow.

Toni did something lately but now he is busy with PPC. And Jason has changed to Arix a long time ago.

[OlafS3]

I mean working on x86 first, then eventually trying to port that back to 68k. That's just insane from simplicity,  testing and performance standpoints.

If you go from 68k to x86, the growing pains aren't so bad. You have a reasonably stable 68k codebase and add the required hardware support. If it was fast enough on 68k, then it's going to be stupidly fast on x86.

Stripping out the x86-isms to make a 68k port will in many cases be worse than starting from scratch.

We only needed about 2MB of 68k binaries to have accomplished something, but because of the development process they chose, it's taking literally decades with no clear end in sight.

Keep in mind, these were just my personal reasons. I signed up to contribute, then quit after I got a feel for the project.

I've got nothing against AROS at all, I hope like hell they get it to work, but my gut instinct is that I won't see worthwhile results for the time I would invest.



We can't help but talk about x86 AROS when AROS is mentioned, that's their main platform and we're getting PC code ported to 68k.



That's interesting, I didn't realize that you could mix and match to that extent.



If it doesn't run fast on UAE, there are some serious problems. The last time I tried a complete AROS 68k in WinUAE, even it was extremely sluggish and crashed easily, but that was over a year ago.

Is the code stable enough to optimize yet? It's easy to miss obvious optimizations when writing for fast x86 CPUs, so there may be some easy targets, but if it's still as buggy as I remember, making the code less readable would be a huge mistake.

Honestly, I'd think a lot of the drawing code shouldn't even be shared with x86 and that seemed to be one of the worst offenders when I last tried it.

I agree with you that they should have started on 68k first and then port it to new platforms, that would have added lots of users and made development much easier but that is past.

As far as I know it is no problem to add/replace code in a branch, I can remember that Amiblitz compiled software did not run but after some devs were interested and looked at it they found a specific solution so I think it must be possible. The graphic part is certainly the most critical part so if someone with enough experience would look at it the biggest problems would be solved. That is of course the biggest problem for "real hardware", on fast platforms like UAE you do not see anything.

[OlafS3]

olaf: would you or one of the other AROS 68K users be interested in creating a guide on which libraries and tools we can use from AOS on our AROS installs? that would be hugely helpful to us noobs.

-- eliyahu

I can only document regarding 68k branch, AROS X86, ARM and so on is different. But yes I can (and partly already have). I will try to update that (expecially regarding programmers).

[OlafS3]

I got it from Ben Hermans' mouth. You can read the interview here: https://web.archive.org/web/20041020081420/http://www.swaug.org.uk/int010402.html

The relevant part is:

"SWAUG: Has Haage&Partner given you access to OS3.9 source code to be used in OS 4.0?
BH: No."

Obviously they have OS4.1 source code, which is what I assume you are referring to. However, that is not going to be very useful for people who are targetting Classic Amigas, even if they were willing to share it which I very much doubt. They've also shown no inclination to release the OS3.1 sources which they also hold. AFAICT there is no legal impediment to it but IANAL.



Last time I checked, it was/is missing the entire official AmigaOS GUI (ie. ReAction), as well as some less important components. I suppose those files can be copied over from OS3.9. But in that case, why not just use the proper OS3.9 instead rather than some mishmash of AROS+OS3.9?

Aweb needs classact not reaction and is easy to include

OS3.9 is suddendly free and the source codes available? Really? Please show me the link? When you are not able to then I do not understand what you are saying. I am a little nerved of such comments, I think most try to find reasons not do anything. The 68k community has the chance to get a successor for AmigaOS, if they are not interested I am fine with it because I can use it very good on UAE, BTW emulated environments will be more important than the "real" ones that many here prefer in my view. So I will see in near future if there is interest, if not I will not push anything in that direction anymore. I am the same opinion as Wawa, the reasons not to do anything on Aros are strange, to say it politely and sound to me more like excuses why people do not want to contribute.