Roadshow for 68K -Needs your support!

[kolla]

I really don't see the point, yet another utterly limited and primitive IP stack for Amiga, and also this time one is supposed to pay for it - why bother?

Edit: The only thing I'd be willing to pay for, is for the sources to be released under open source license.

I strongly refuse to pay for binaries when it comes to Amiga these days, not because I cannot afford it, but because I have experienced how painfull it is with these binaries after relatively short time, as authors abandon them.

[kolla]

Currently it is impossible get any TCP/IP stack for real Amigas unless you pirate Miami.

Really? What, AmiTCP 2.3 suddenly no longer works? Or AmiTCP3.0beta2 or whatever it ended up on.

[kolla]

Try connecting to an ADSL modem using AmiTCP V3 without frustration pouring out of you.

Right... what's an ADSL modem again? It's like complaining about how much it sucks at ISDN, really.

There has to be a better way to do this.

Yes, join forces, put aside old difference and nickpickings, set up a working group for implementing an open and modern TCP stack for all Amiga plattforms.

Just to be blunt, how much would be enough for you to hand out Roadshow sources?

[kolla]

And if that hasn't happen yet, it's because the need isn't as great as you may feel it is.

I don't think there is much of a need, since amiga people are blatantly ignorant about the entire networking thing. Till the day their oh so beloved supermodern browser, be it OWB or TimberWolf, stops working that is. I'm just saying that I don't see much point in Roadshow either at this point, what does it bring to the table that one cannot do already with old AmiTCP? Is it really that much better? What features are there? Will you continue to develop it, like some people here seem to think? If so, what is the road.. heh.. map?

In my view Hyperion are fools to think they can continue to maintain an IP stack in-house, they also have plenty of other things to worry about, like USB stack and whatnot.

Well, if I were free to give it away, which I am not, I wouldn't sell it. I would give it away. Not everything is just for sale. Where would be the fun in that?

Indeed, where is the fun in that - let me rephrase the question - how much would it cost to buy out Roadshow from whoever own it, Hyperion I presume?

I'm not looking to get rich, it just bothers me that Roadshow never made it into the hands of the people who would have found it useful, and I never got the kind of feedback for it which I would have gotten if Roadshow had been properly released.

What, OS4 users don't offer good enough feedback? Shocking! :roflmao:

[kolla]

well, you configure it when installing the OS, after that it works in the background doing it's thing.

Right, and OS4 users aren't crazy enough to try using their machines as routers or bridges, sharing uplinks, having multi homed systems, sharing media from their machines over DLNA etc. At least I have used my A3000 as a router once

[kolla]

no, a standalone router is better suited and more energy effecient...

How is running a router and an OS4.1 computer more energy efficient than just running an OS4.1 computer?

besides, amigaos isn't a server os as you probably know.

In my view there is no "server OS", that's just a term certain people invented in attempts to justify the shortcommings in their beloved system. Once you have a machine online, noone cares if the OS you're running is "server os" or not, it's what you do with it that matters, and shuffling around traffic as a router or bridge does not even sort under "server" activities.

[kolla]

When your ADSL modem is built into your router, you don't really have much alternative. Besides, most people have more than one networked device. Who would want to run a full computer to service them all when a compact little router does the job for a few watts of power?

This is getting totally side tracked, but some points...
* not every Amiga in the world is connected via ADSL (sheesh)
* many m68k Amiga systems do not have ethernet
* many m68k Amiga systems have alternatives, floppy link, ARCNet, parnet etc.
* to get those online, you typically end up using an Amiga with ethernet as a router or bridge between the various oddball links - a typical "standalone router" will not suffice.
* routing traffic is not "serving", it's something any half decent IP stack is supposed to be capable of.

[kolla]

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones

Heh, that's funny - I meant it the other way around, not all Amiga users are unlucky enough to have to suffer from the misbehaviour that ADSL causes :lol:

[kolla]

I personally thought it was less of a headache to set up, and it has a couple of features which other TCP/IP stacks, owing to their age, could not bring to the table.

Would you mind sharing exactly what those are?

For example multicast, does Roadshow do multicast at all?

Nothing is ever certain. I'm not going to walk away from Roadshow, and how it evolves depends upon the user feedback. If you don't know what it takes to make a better product, it probably won't become one.

I'm probably the only person in the entire Amiga community who gives a rats ass about IPv6, but I'll repeat it - IPv6 is coming, whether people like it or not, and IPv4 will in short time (in amiga terms anyways) be obsoleted. Tough luck for those who want to use any of the NG systems as some sort of main system, and those who think a clever router will solve all your problems, then please elaborate how that is supposed to happen.

Gee, you seem to have the wrong idea how OS4 is developed. While Hyperion has in-house developers working on the product, at least half of the work being done on the whole package is contributed by third party developers.

I consider any development done by anyone who signs NDA with Hyperion as in-house, it's as close to in-house they can get anyhow - I do not have any illusion of Hyperion actually having a house... heh... :laughing:

I own it alright. It's just that I am contractually restricted from doing with it whatever might strike my fancy. There are limits to what I can do.

So in reality, you dont own it, and appearantly you're not pleased with that fact.

More people can run 68k software than can run OS4.

Sure, but a TCP stack? Considering that a vast majority of those running 68k software are doing so in UAE where bsdsocket.device is offered by emulator, I doubt that there really are that many.

Even if each member of each groups (or sets; one being a superset of the other) were to come up with one bug report and one enhancement request each, the amount of feedback to come from OS4 users would still be very small by comparison.

No doubt, but I really don't see one single person being able to maintain an entire IP stack over time, it just isn't realistic.

[kolla]

@olsen
The "amigazation" and access to inner workings of packets and connections is very nice. I have never had need for PPPoE, but PPP I use quite a bit, "tethering" (?), or lately on MiniMig using nullmodem or bluetooth link, and my experience is that stability is a heck lot more important than speed.

Zeroconf is nice (never needed it), but what I miss is media players capable of playing content streamed over multicast, which means support for PIM-SM, SDM, SSM...

As for IPv6, I think it's probably best to use KAME, since that is what "all the others" in the BSD camp are using already. And as you probably know, it's not just a matter of "switching to IPv6", there's also the issue of running dual stack and deal with various transition technologies. What I hear more and more from ISPs is that they want to just push IPv6 to the end user and use NAT64/DNS64 to make IPv4 only services available - the implication of this is dropping native IPv4 on the customer side, but for a vast majority of users this is perfectly fine, since all major operating systems have been IPv6 ready for half a decade or more now. It's by far the easiest transition, is already implemented and proven to work well, and is also being deployed in a growing number of places (often for wireless networks with large number of clients)

Current estimate for IPv4 exhaustion is summer next year, we ("amiga land") are already a decade late in terms of what should have been done, and at least half a decade behind just about any other platform. Other hobbyist OSes already have projects for this, but none of the Amiga ones as far as I know. I'm just saying, the "switch" (as in "no more IPv4 address for you!") to IPv6 is predicted to become quite brutal in general, but many pretend that it's kinda like a Y2K problem that is all just hype, people have all kinds of weird theories as for why they think that it will never take off. For totally unprepared and happily ignorant Amiga users I suspect it will become quite entertaining... not only will there have to be a new IP stack, all the networking software will need to be rebuildt as well. Oh joy!

If I were completely free to make the software open, I could just dump the thing and leave it to its own devices.

And what guarantees are there that you wont do the same when selling it? I mean, seriously, it's not like it would be the first time in history of Amiga that this happens. I'll admit that your promises count alot more than most others, though.

My suspicion is that it would stay largely untouched and unloved. The whole premise that once a package is open sourced great things are inevitably going to happen to it is too optimistic.

That's totally beside the point, what is the point is that whoever willing then have a much better chance to fix whatever is bugging him/her without needing to contact some author who's no longer around, doesn't care anymore, no longer has the sources, has changed email address etc. as is the typical case for most 68k Amiga software. The point is to have the sources around so that there at least is a _chance_ to fix things when needed, by not having sources available you more or less guarantee that it will eventually be abandonware with dubious legal status, various incompatible dodgy binary patches etc. - all the stuff we hate about AmigaOS already.

I fix things in open source software all the time, but only rarely bother to contribute these fixes back upstream, as they're more quick work-arounds for my particual situations than anything else - I'm after all not a programmer. If there are stright out bugs, I do report them, but I don't think I'm at all qualified to suggest what the proper fix is, however quite alot of these bugs I can avoid simply by building the software with options to exclude the buggy part of the code, for example. Also, with open source software I can consult with programmers who are not involved with the code at all, to hear their oppinion on what might be wrong at a specific part of code - these things happen all the time and is what open source software is about.

Some funny things are possible with a 68k TCP/IP stack that runs inside the emulation rather than interfaces to the host's TCP/IP stack by means of a proxy.

Sure, but this is not something "most users" bother with.

The code that's hard-wired to WinUAE will stay AmiTCP V3 compatible until the bitter end.

Uhm, I dont get this part. The reason to stay AmiTCP V3 compatible is that this is what all software today use. Create an IPv6 stack tomorrow, it will still be the case. Nothing prevents an IPv6 capable bsdsocket.device in UAE. But on an emulator it is not so desperatly needed, due to perfectly functional IPv6 support in host OS. I run eUAE on Linux alot and the emulated Amiga can access filesystems I have made available over SSH, WebDAV, NFS, SMB, LUFS...  over IPv6 as well as IPv4. And I prefer using hosts web browsers than messing around with mostly dysfunctional Amiga web browsers.

Anyways, WinUAE recently got A2065 emulation (iirc) - so anyone who want to play around with that can do so, but i really don't think there are many.

It's not as if you have to keep up with a boatload of code changes to keep this TCP/IP stack implementation reasonably robust and sound. One man can do it.

OK, I'm almost tempted to register in order to give you hell, then :laughing:

Btw - on a related note, people have been moaning about wireless stack for about half a decade as well now, feel free to port wpa_supplicant, opensea, open1x or make your own ... hohum... AirShow too. I can keep you busy there with testing and bug reports for years, really. And funny things are often needed to be changed in the IP stack as well when you start playing with wireless, the OSI model is after all just that - a model, in real life the layers typically become much more entangled

PS: Thanks for Term, although I admit I most often end up using VLTjr that doesn't suck up all that much RAM. I once started looking at how to strip off all the unneeded fluff in Term, but like so much I start doing on amiga, it never got far.

[kolla]

Kolla,
  I have to ask, we're you born this cheerfull or did it take years to get to this point?

I wa's born this cheerfull

Reading some of your responses(good/accurate info aside),i think you could depress the most cheerfull people.

Well, excuse me for pointing at the elephants in the room. This community is sometimes way too busy digging their heads in the sand, that's what really is depressing here, or entertaining, depending on how you chose to look at it. Life is short, so I prefer to be cheerfull rather than depressed about everything being done wrong in amiga land. Feel free to consider my rants therapy, if you like :laughing:

[kolla]

I dont get it, why so many people think open sourcing will save the world. It works well on platforms with large communities of developers and users but its not our current situation. Olaf is around for ages, take care, Raidshow works great as part of OS4, will work great as 68k tcp/ip stack, there are people who would like to purchase it.

So whats kolla's (and few others) problem?

I dont care for whether open sourcing saves the world or not, I only care for the bit where it makes my life easier. To use the size of the community as some sort of argument for why open source is not the way to go is just blatantly silly, a lot of devlopers have left Amiga exactly because one cannot do jack with amiga software without stepping on people's toes.

Look at who's fixing updates and patches for AmigaOS 3.x today - every single one of them have stated that they want OS3.x to be open sourced, to simplify their work, distribution and all.

[kolla]

I suspect that this is just the tone of the community these days. Talk, talk, talk rather than do, do, do.

I understand that what you're saying is that Amiga as a platform is only meant for developers, an not users. People who for various reasons do not write software themselves should have no saying around here, right?

It's quite like how I see the MorphOS situation; MorphOS is mostly about some developers doing an OS and software for themselves, and the rest of us are just a bunch of annoying whiners who at least should pay to compensate for all the unneeded noise we make.

[kolla]

I really don't get it...

Is it already really too much from Olaf to ask for a little donation for the time he spent implementing an TCP/IP stack?

No, ofcourse not, but it's a tad late to come dragging with this stack now, and many of us much more want to pay a large donation and get the sources too, that's all. It is either that or the old game of dealing with keyfiles, "how many machines am I allowed to use this on", various futile attempts at copy protections that many find of great joy in circumventing, binary patches to fix this and that.. all the nonsense that we have become used to.

Instead you could have a "here's my IP stack, here are the sources, here's the license and here's my paypal account - please donate if you find this usefull" - yeah, I know, way too boring, huh?

[kolla]

then you don't have a product, even if it has been open sourced.

And there is where you're flawed - thinking of software as products, that's just way old fashioned.