Why not support Aros 68k instead of patching old binaries?

[OlafS3]

The CybergraphX thread was closed so I could not answer there and decided to make a new one.

The issues with patching or not distributing abandoned binaries with or without permission of author pops up regularly here. I do not want to start a bashing thread about authors but we all know that many old projects are either completely abandoned (author not accessible anymore) or authors still active (on one of the NG platforms) and reluctant to support 68k anymore.

My conclusion and question is... we do not need the old binaries anymore because there is a replacement for it: Aros 68k together with Rom Replacements from Toni Wilen. It is opensource and sources are legally accessible and it is possible to change and improve them. The Aros project lacks developers so if people want to improve the situation why do they not help there.

In this case CybergraphX 3 is implemented in Aros, why not helping to improve it? The situation regarding the old sources will not change anymore so why not accepting it and start somewhere new. Additionally Aros 68k benefits from the Aros developments so it is very sophisiticated and gets new software. Forget the old stuff... where Aros needs improvements when running on old hardware is mainly improvements in speed. And on API level some are very good implemented, in others stuff is missing. But it offers future... What do people here think?

[OlafS3]

Just out of curiosity is CGX in Aros (68k) remake by Aros team or is
it the one created by original author ?

Whole thread seemed pointless to me , if Cosmos fixed some tiny bug in
some OS4 library he would be cheered form there to the moon probably.
And about what Cosmos said about kickstarts it can only be seen as wall
of silence from people and companies who know who has what rights.
Not to mention that you need Amiga to use them (or at leas you had to
spend a lot of time on one for them to be any use to you).

From what I can read Hyperion is right company to contact for licensing
Amiga Kickstart (3.1?) for hardware projects but even better way would be
just ignore whole legal "you better not 'cause you know" and let end-user
get what he needs himself.Those who are not able will be advised on how
to do it anyways.

Aros is always a "rewrite" of the libraries so CybergraphX is certainly not based on original resources but original API. I think there were also contributions by orginal authors but core components are certainly not based on any orginal library source.

Regarding Cosmos... he can offer a patch without original binary and noone can do anything about it. Thomas Richter sees it from a professional software engineering point of view and is not wrong with one problem... 68k is not getting supported anymore. That is the case for most core components today, in most cases no souces are available. AHI is the only exception that comes to my mind.

Regarding Roms I would additionally think of Cloanto but I do not know that exactly. Finally (at least for me) it is irrelevant because I use Aros and replacements for the Roms. For me the more promising path is to support a platform that is in development than to patch some old binaries. But everybody how he likes it...

[OlafS3]

Problem with Aros68k is that it obviously won't work on regular not
heavily expanded Amiga but it might be a treasure trove of software
that can be run on modest Amiga configurations.Lot of AROS software
doesn't need that much memory / cpu power (I mean things under 2-3
Mb when compiled , Netsurf68k is good example).

I think Cloanto is the right company to contact for licensing emulation
like projects (no way to know).When new more powerful 68k hardware
FPGAs start showing up then Aros68k will shine.And who say PPC is the
more future these days than FPGAs or RPis should check their facts.

For me PPC has no future anyway... today you have either Intel-based hardware (or AMD) or ARM. For Amiga fans certainly FPGA based hardware offers most chances. Netsurf68k with only 2-3 MB RAM or do you mean on HD? Modern software like new OWB need much more RAM.

[OlafS3]

No , not Netsurf but it's pretty low demanding.I was thinking of maybe
some IRC Client stuff , Telnet , more advanced drawing program that
have more functionality then old stuff.NEW SHELL !

And it's irritating when thing that were adopted as standard such as MUI ,
AHI , P96 , CGX etc. are now somewhere in between of not being developed
but maybe if many people ask then original author who is now coding for
PPC will suffer to implement few things.

This kind of stuff happened all the time before.I see no problem if there is
CGX library (pathced by Cosmos) available somewhere and programs that
want use it can just put in readme that you need Cosmo's patched version
instead yet more patches upon patches upon patches.

Original library is still there and if it's hosted on Aminet nobody but the
author can change it.As market shrinks few companies that remain will
have to find every possible way to make money to survive to it's under-
standable that new player won't be welcomed with open arms but that
should not be the case when they are just offering free upgrade for
end users.

I see it this way... of course many authors left and let it back abandoned and without sources. From a legal point of view you cannot distribute it patched but only the patch.

Some stuff like CybergraphX and MUI is still in development but the authors changed to PPC and different OS platforms so the chance that they will offer updates or even bug fixes is pretty small. There is theoreticall the chance to improve Aros then you can use it directly with Aros 68k or backport it to AmigaOS 3.X. Or offer patches without original binaries but we all know that stability and compatibility not rises by this.

[OlafS3]

Leaving a couple of possible legal aspects aside, there is more philosophical aspect to it. Certainly I would pick PC hardware as basis given that its cheaply and readily available. I believe we agree on this.

My concern is rather that AmigaOs - or rather its design principles - are not exactly fit for some recent developments. Take SMP for example. With Forbid()/Permit() locking in AmigaOs, SMP is extremely hard to implement (if possible at all). Actually, I'd rather believe it is not.

In the end, given that we had something like an AmigaOs port on PC, it would probably be a nice software to toy around with, but you'll have a hard time updating it for today's requirements. There's probably not much left what defined the Amiga.

Let's say that the "Amiga feeling" is the workbench: I could certainly write a desktop replacement for another kernel (say, Linux, for example) that mimics the look and feel of the Amiga workbench. This would still be a couple of years behind the look & feel of state-of-the art desktops. I could possibly write an API compatibility layer that, for example, offers intituition calls and addresses the corresponding X11 interfaces on the other side, but I would get user interfaces from past century.

Somehow, I have the feeling that such a project is ill-defined. I'm not really sure what it is about (in the same sense that I'm not sure what OS4 or Morphos is really about, even though I have there much stronger doubts).

IOW, does it really make sense to "update the Amiga" anymore? The hardware is as obsolote as it could be. The Os has too many constructional weaknesses to allow porting it to modern hardware.

So what's left? It's probably "electronic archaeology", to keep the memory of a historically interesting system alive. But for that, I don't need OS4 or Morphos or ... AROS. (Sorry!) The system I have is "as good as it goes", and any attempt to modernize it would give me a system that can neither compete with the PC and modern Os'es, nor could it compete with the Amiga because it deviates from it.

Don't shoot. Just thinking...

Boom... :-)

As I understand it all tries regarding SMP (at the moment done on Aros port to Raspberry) is to use different cores efficiently and automatically to get as much speed for the primary core. You cannot write software that uses more than one core. It is certainly difficult to write a updated OS that does not break with everything. The MorphOS devs seem to go in that direction, they might get a nice modernized platform but finally without software. Aros is source compatible between platforms so a radical break is not best solution.

For me it is fun... in normal life I have to work and develop on Windows, on one side lots of better software on the other side a really complicated OS. So using something amiga related is relaxation against that (except when you want to develop). I do not expect a updated AmigaOS or AROS or whatever to compete with Windows or Macs so I am personal quiet happy how it is. But if people want updates and developments investing in something that is in development anyway and where sources are available makes more sense to me than patching old binaries.

[OlafS3]

Well, but that doesn't quite answer my question, right? I mean, where does the fun stop? Is Morphos or Os4 less fun than AmigaOs? If so, why? Would be Linux more fun than Morphos? If so, why?

I can only speak for myself. For me, Amiga is a hobby pet project I run because the hardware was (back then) a breakthrough and I have a software basis to work with. That also includes compilers, assemblers and my legacy code. You cannot recreate a breakthrough by including the same design errors in a modern re-creation, let it be Morphos, OS4 or ARos. The classics are - classic old computes in a classic old environment.

Rather, if I want to have some fun with modern machines, I'd rather go for a modern Os and play with that. Works, too.  

Anyhow, it's a personal decision. I'm just trying to get a picture on what other people think.

When I started with my distribution it was the pure interest how far I can get it. More or less I am happy how it is, it more or less satisfies my nostalgic needs already and I want to do a little with Hollywood and Free Pascal on it. I do not expect it (any of the NG platforms) realistic to take over the world, the maximum would be to have a niche market that is bigger than now. But if you invest time in improving something than it makes more sense to invest time in a open platform with free access to sources than in a closed platform, expecially if you have to sign strict NDAs and are no longer able to do what you want.

the fun is nostalgy and reach goals with limited means (easier to do the same on Windows or Mac of course but that can do everyone then ). A little weird I must admit.

[OlafS3]

Thanks for telling me what my objection is. Allow me to correct you - BTW, you got it wrong.

Point one is that I'm not (primarely) concerned about copyright, at least not right now. Copyright is a much more serious matter for commercial use than it is for hobby use. Point is simply:

If you patch a program, make a good attempt reaching the author. If that fails, try again, or ask somebody else with contacts to him. See what the author has to say, listen carefully and try to understand the point, whatever the point might be. For or against, no matter. Be respectful.

If all this fails, there are *still* options to probably organize improvements on old software. Probably even without patching. The danger of this binary patching stuff is: You never know what the intentions of the author might have been, you cannot read the source, and you cannot read the comments in the source. It might be just your problem that you did not understand the interface, or that there is a bug in *your* program instead of the author's code. The second danger is that this causes a chaotic "anti-development" of the software in question because somebody else might *also* have an idea what would need fixing. And probably such "fixes" do not even work with each other, or mess up the software completely. In worst case, we end up with N totally incompatible versions of the software, and program A working with version 1 but not with version 2, and program B just the other way around...

So for example, if you want to update such old software, probably try to find a group of people that are interested in the same old code, get organized, and - after some good testing - release a patch and make this group of people responsible for the code. Or try to reach the author as a group, organize a petition.... There are many ways. These ways are more complicated, but they will probably yield better software, or - gosh! - even legal software. (There is the copyright argument).

Problem is: Nothing of that happened. In fact, this was a wild-west style shoot-first-ask-later attempt at fixing a potentially, though likely bug, without any coordination and without any attempt of giving the author a chance to even react.

In this particular case, the author is even still around, can be contacted, and should at least be given a *chance* to say something about the problem. Probably not even fixing it, but probably give hints or provide direction. Whatever the answer is: Respect it. It's not your software.

If there is no answer, there is still time to do something. But only then.

Patches are as old as amiga. As long the original binary is not distributed nobody can say anything about it. It is up to the user if he uses a patch or not. You have yourself admitted that Hyperion gives a sh*t about 68k except perhaps as resource of potential customers. The same is true for other devs. To me the discussion is a little dogmatic, there are some devs who patch a binary to make it faster or remove a bug and offer it to others with similar problems who either use it or not. Nobody expects today the original authors to make support or bugixes to the old 68k versions, what would be for me the only reason not to offer a patch but work together with the devs. If 68k is abandoned I really see no reason why anybody would be affected. In a perfect world 68k would be supported and we would need not to discuss but it is not.

[OlafS3]

I don't know... maybe because we want to use AmigaOS and not a replacement OS?

I fully understand the potential problems that an unofficial patch can create but I can only see it as a problam for the creater and user of such a patch, as long as we make sure things work with official files I let other worry about what problem they cause for them selves.

People have to decide what they want

Regarding Patches... Patches are for sure legal, there are propably hundreds on aminet. If the 68k version is still supported then contacting author would make more sense but for abandoned software (even if there are still PPC versions in development) I see no real problem or harm in it. Finally it is up to the users then if they use a modified binary then and as long only the patch but neither the original binary or a modified one is distributed without permission.