Does Hyperion own the rights to OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9?

[commodorejohn]

You know, it would be really nice to just clean-room reimplement the whole damn thing and sidestep this entire disgraceful corporate toddler fight. Maybe I'm just talking crazy talk, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard; the documentation in the ROM Kernel Reference Manual, coupled with the fact that the whole OS is based around application reuse of what other OSes would consider to be OS-internal structures and code, gives a remarkably clear window into how the system works without even needing to get into disassemblies of Kickstart binaries.

(P.S. I know someone's going to mention AROS, but no. Whatever its other merits, it has exactly one 68k port, which is deprecated and not even for the Amiga, and one PPC port, which seems to require an existing Linux install. It might be an Amiga-inspired or Amiga-based operating system, but it's not an Amiga operating system.)

[commodorejohn]

FYI, it has a native non-Linux hosted x86 port and in the last couple of weeks, the native 68k Amiga port has finally been revived and is making serious steps forward.

Uh, "native x86 port" is kind of missing the point, when the Amiga has never used x86 in any form. I mean, again, good for them, but that doesn't help anybody with an Amiga. The Amiga 68k port is good news, though; even for those of us not particularily interested in AROS, an open Kickstart would be a huge step towards getting past this stupid corporate pissing contest.

[commodorejohn]

Clean-room reimplementation? Well, then MorphOS is exactly what you are asking for!

Uh, well, I was thinking more of an open-source effort so that we could get away from this stupid "who's allowed to use the software" bitchfest. Having a proprietary third-party OS (which, emulation aside, isn't even for 68k Amigas) that's a reimplementation of a proprietary first-party OS isn't a step forward so much as a step sideways.

[commodorejohn]

Sure, MorphOS is a proprietary OS, but there are certainly no Amiga trade marks, no Amiga sources or no other Amiga IP whatsoever involved in MorphOS.

So? It's not tied to this stupid rights-fight, but it's still tied to one rights-holder, so it's entirely possible for it to get into this kind of trouble. And it's still incompatible with non-PPC Amigas, which means people like me, with neither the money nor the inclination to move into the PPC country club or slap a boing-ball sticker on a Macintosh and pretend it's an Amiga, are shit out of luck.

[commodorejohn]

This is true, and it would be silly to act like even careful coding will bring an 030 box up to the computing power of a modern x86 machine (although the way Microsoft keeps amping up their minimum OS specs, you never know :rolleyes:) Still, I don't like and frankly don't accept the notion that 68k machines are a dead-end and either PPC/MorphOS or x86/AROS are the one true "new future" of the Amiga. (I'm not going to begrudge those systems their development, although it  still baffles me how certain people can claim that being free of the  Amiga-rights Gordian knot is as good as being free software, but I  don't like the idea that 68k machines should just be left by the wayside  to rust :|)

You can still do a lot with a 20-30MHz machine (to say nothing of the 150MHz NatAmi's claiming to achieve,) a programmer-friendly CPU like the 680x0, and a simple, open OS like the Kickstart/AmigaDOS combo. I'll never be playing Flash-based streaming video on my 2500, but that doesn't mean there's not room for an improved web browser, a more intuitive and integrated file manager than Workbench, or new games that don't require a PPC and AGA to run, and I wish more people realized that. At least AROS's open Kickstart replacement should provide some solid groundwork for any such future efforts.

[commodorejohn]

I'm going to be blunt about this. Sit down, take a deep breath: Amiga has no future. PPC is as much a dead end arch (as far as the desktop goes) as 68k is. AROS will probably carry on thanks to it being OSS, but really, it's time as anything other than a hobby machine for people who grew up with it and those handful with a retro fetish is long gone.

I wasn't intending to imply otherwise. Barring some sort of divine intervention, it's never going to become a mainstream computing platform, but on the other hand, just because it's a "hobby machine" doesn't mean that new development efforts for it aren't worthwhile. I think there has to be some middle ground between a strictly preservationist "classic car" view and the "we'll just slap an Amiga nameplate on any computer hardware we can get" approach.

(But should some sort of divine intervention appear, you bet I'll be at the forefront of the new revolution After all, even Linux started off as a "hobby project" of one Swede teaching himself assembler...)

[commodorejohn]

Ooo, that's gonna piss the Finns off.

Damnation! I knew I should have looked it up. I'm afraid that, growing up in northern Minnesota, the different Scandinavians groups all tend to run together in my mind :/

I think in line with that thinking, the  MinimigAGA is a great piece of work to show to younger folks who never  got to play with Amiga the first time around to get a taste of what the  old kit was like, but without the fragility that comes with it being old  kit.

Huh, and that's kind of exactly what I was saying, so I guess I misunderstood what you were saying. Well, wouldn't be my first time debating with someone over an issue we actually agree on :rolleyes:

[commodorejohn]

It doesn't. The legal situation surrounding Amiga has effectively killed it.

It doesn't have to be that way. There are ways to get around this kind of thing, thankfully. While I may have my problems with both MorphOS and AROS, they have the right idea - skirt the whole thing by re-implementing the software cleanly. And Minimig and NatAmi are doing the same thing for the hardware end. The Amiga might have a future without the Amiga name on it, but it may still have a future.

I know you do, and perhaps I'm not explaining it right. But it doesn't change the fact that the Amiga is dead.

It seems to me that you're working off a different definition of "dead" than most of us. Dead as a mainstream computing platform, sure. Maybe even dead as a commercial product (though we'll see about that.) But it still has an active community (if not as active as the CBM 8-bitters) pouring time and effort into it, and I don't think you can call anything with that truly dead.