Would it not be better to work together?

[commodorejohn]

Teamwork is great, but not at the expense of whatever it was you were doing in the first place. The different Amiga-like platform projects in development are different because people had honest disagreements about which way things should go, not because they just haven't thought of combining their efforts, and that should be respected. Besides, they can still benefit from each other - the open-source Kickstart that the AROS folks wanted to run AROS on their 68k Amigas, for example, is providing NatAmi with a bootstrap by which they can run 68k software without having to pay licensing fees. As long as these groups keep an attitude of mutual amiability, they can benefit from each other's work without giving up what they are.

[commodorejohn]

Problem for even open source is that it has to be a modern open source to survive.  I think that is the biggest loadstone for the Amiga community, it's just reimplementation of an old school OS (which was cutting edge at the time).  Until that loadstone is gone, any cooperation is going to be futile.  I know, I just touched a third rail, but once the fog of battle clears and the view of the destruction that the community has gone under for the past 17 years, there is not much left worth fixing, it's time to rebuild.  That means the old has to be torn down for the new.

People keep saying this, but if you're going to throw it all out, why even pretend it's the same thing? If your ideal system has nothing in common with the Amiga hardware and nothing in common with the Amiga software, why even call it an Amiga? Just accept that the Amiga doesn't suit your needs and build your own thing.

[commodorejohn]

I'm not saying anything bad about 68K, it's a good medium that can be emulated and integrated into a next generation system.  My problem is what being called next generation because they are reimplementation of 68K and not next generation.

That's not wholly true; at least one project is a significant leap forward over the original 68k Amigas. Besides, what does "next generation" even mean in this context, and why? If something like NatAmi isn't a "next generation" Amiga project, what would it take to make it one?

[commodorejohn]

To me, Next Generation (for hardware) is modern, if not bleeding edge, technology and it would be expected for the end user to fully use it to it's maximum hardware capabilities.

I guess I still don't get this mindset. If it's modern computing power you want, that's easily had with any of the countless x86 PCs out there. Amiga-upgrade projects are (barring one of us suddenly winning the lottery) never going to match the raw horsepower of the PC clone market, as you yourself have pointed out before, and so people start suggesting that the Amiga should just become another PC clone. Why should we sacrifice everything that makes the Amiga the Amiga just so that we can claim it's modern? It'd be like sticking a Tucker emblem on a modern utility sedan and claiming it's a Tucker Torpedo.