Ben Hermans still staunchly against x86

[takemehomegrandma]

Moving OS4 to x86 would be a large undertaking, I estimate that it would take $1M. The kind of money that hasn't been invested in the Amiga for a long time. The kind of money that people immediately understand to be serious, beyond the mere vanity and hobby interest. At $75 a pop Mr Hermans would need 13,333 buyers to make the investment back.

Oh, come on! OS4 has been a pure pro bono development project for years. A hobby. So don't suddenly try to add money to the equation; since those doing the developments are doing it free of charge anyway, it's more a matter of what they spend their time doing. They could work on PPC, or they could work on something else, and the cost would still be $0. But the thing is, on x86 they would at least have *a chance* of reaching 13,000 sales (but still highly doubtful). With "X1000" I'd be surprised if they reached 130. Cheap, mainstream hardware that's easily obtainable is the key. Amiga is a hobby, it's not a market, it's not commerce. Only very few people are prepared to take out a second mortgage on their house in order to pay the money A-cube and A-eon are asking, for that level of hardware they are offering, just to run OS4. Cheap and easily available HW would change the picture. MorphOS 2 (also a hobby OS) has had 1,000 sales (I'd guess OS4.1.x has 1/3-1/2 of that in total), and porting the OS to Mac computers really helped. OK, still PPC, but at least high volume, mainstream HW. You have the ultra cheap e-mac, with everything built-in (even the monitor). You have the ultra-small mac mini. You have the cheap yet powerful and expandable Powermac. Laptop support for powerbook is probably imminent now (laptop support for the first time in Amiga history). All these machines runs in circles around anything A-cube has to offer at 5x-10x the money, and puts up a good fight against what A-eon is about to offer at 10x-50x the money (which will by all means still be 2007 level performance hardware). The MorphOS team soon has the whole flora of PPC mainstream machines covered, and when they do, they have *fully* leveraged whatever the PPC *had* to offer. And I said "had" because PPC has been dead for all purposes we Amigans would consider interesting ever since Apple dropped out of the game. Is it three years now?  So by now, two questions are key, and this goes for both the hyperion brothers and the MorphOS Team: 1) Shall we pull the plug and call it a day within a year or two, or shall we migrate to greener pastures where life is still flourishing and where there is a future? And 2) If we have our minds set to continue instead of dropping it, where to go, ARM or x86? So if they want to continue, it's not a question of "if". It's a question of "when" and "where".

[takemehomegrandma]

Are you suggesting the Frieden brothers have been working for free of all along

What I'm suggesting is that the Frieden brothers has gotten whatever money they receive at the end of each month from elsewhere.

how could you possibly know?

Hyperion is a microscopic game porting company that has no products, no real business, and I seriously doubt they have made any serious money at all during the last decade. And with serious money I mean enough to support a couple of full time employees (let alone some 30+ or whatever being claimed occasionally), with salaries, taxes and/or whatever social welfare fees of their country, every month, for a decade. Do the math. Two SW engineers (including taxes) requires margins from sales of at least 1,000,000-1,500,000 EUR for a decade. It's not plausible; somehow I doubt "Gorky 17 for Linux" was (and is!) *that* successful. But by all means, feel free to post a copy of their latest financial report here and prove me wrong. I'm sure it's possible to request it from somewhere. Didn't they change their corporate entity from an unlimited to a limited form some year ago after all? AFAIK, in most countries this means much more rigorous requirements for accounting, financial reports, audits, as well as making this kind of information more accessible to the public.

The figure of 130 sales seems a little pessimistic, a recent survey on Aw.net shows 275 members intending to buy the X1000

275?! Well, it's all fine and dandy then! (Just kidding of course!)

No seriously, what that survey measures (as well as the beta tester inquiry), is how many people bothered to respond to a mail or to a poll. What those "surveys" *doesn't* measure, is how many people that will actually cash up UKP 1,500++/USD 2,400++/EUR 1,700++ for the thing! Real, hard-earned money, in real life! If *only* 275 people bothered to answer to a poll (which most people in Amiga-land do just for political reasons, to make a statement, or to show some support, or numerous other "false" reasons), something that is close to effortless and completely free of charge, then I think it would actually be *optimistic* to think that as many as half of those will actually follow through in real life. It's not peanut money, and the hardware is unproven and nothing spectacular in any way. Ah well, time will tell. But the point is that they could multiply that figure many times over simply by making their OS accessible in a broad scale on mainstream HW, even so if only targeted towards mainstream *PPC* HW...

[takemehomegrandma]

In the late 90's PPC was considered by many in the Amiga community to be the rightful successor to the 68k. Just sayin.

...much because this was the migration path Apple used for their Mac's. But then again, Apples migration path for their Mac's didn't stop at PPC, it continued to... X86!

[takemehomegrandma]

No, it was alot more about sticking with Motorola

"Sticking with Motorola" could perhaps have played a part for those mainly responsible for executing the PPC route for Amiga (Phase5); they probably had good and solid relations to people over at Motorola since they were already into the 68k business. That, in combination with Apples chosen route, probably made PPC look like the natural path for Amiga as well. After all, there was a solid road map for the PPC desktop CPU's, and the future looked bright. This is probably also why "In the late 90's PPC was considered by many in the Amiga community to be the rightful successor to the 68k". But then again, as some MorphOS developer has said in a forum post, and as bPlan has said by their actions (and both of them being related to former Phase5): "If we had known back then, what we know today about PPC, we would have chosen differently".

[takemehomegrandma]

Actually Hyperion got AmigaOS and the source code in the lawsuit.  It's not a license, Hyperion are the owners.

No, they are certainly *not*, please read the settlement!

The document is actually *overly clear* on this point, it's "the Amiga Parties" (Amiga Inc) who are the sole and undisputed owners of Amiga OS 3.1 ("Grant 1a"), but Hyperion has *the right to use it* ("Grant 1b") much in any way they want, during the duration of the agreement.  

In fact, the agreement means in practice that Hyperion aren't even the sole owners of OS4:

Hyperion has built a house (AmigaOS4). They have built it using construction materials that *in major parts* are *loaned* (Amiga OS 3.1). Hyperion actually acknowledge in the settlement that the loaned bricks and planks (Amiga OS 3.1) used to build the OS4 house are indeed owned by Amiga Inc. Amiga Inc acknowledge in the settlement that the house is owned by Hyperion, *except* for the loaned bricks and planks they used to actually build the house, which are still owned by Amiga Inc.

Now, who owns the house?

The situation gets even more problematic if you actually consider OS4 to be true derivate work, since there are several unattended ownership/copyright issues surrounding various parts of Amiga OS 3.1. Third party entities (like Cloanto for example) claimed to be co-authors (hence a stake holder) of Amiga OS 3. William S. Hawes is the author of AREXX, which Commodore included in OS 3 without his permission, which Hyperion still does AFAIK. There are others. Heck, even the entire path of transferring of Amiga IP from Commodore, through the previous IP owners, to what's today known as Amiga Inc is dubious:

http://sites.google.com/site/freeamiga/

Reading that site raises the question of how much this agreement between Amiga Inc and Hyperion is worth at all? Does Amiga Inc even have the right to make deals with Hyperion regarding the IP in the first place? It might work just fine as long as no old stake holder with his documents in order is opposing it? Like a house built of a deck of cards; it might look like a pretty construction as long as it's left alone. But as soon as someone opens the window on a windy day and let the drag in, it can collapse in an instant.

[takemehomegrandma]

The last I heard, they had sold the Amiga name to CommodoreUSA, a company with even LESS business sense than the old A Inc.

No, it was a *license to use*. Much like in Hyperion's case (they don't own any trade marks either).

Hyperion has a license to four marks: "AmigaOS", "Amiga OS", "AmigaOne", "Amiga One", limited for marketing of OS4 and HW needed to operate it.

Commodore has a license to the mark: "Amiga", for marketing of their "All-in-one" computers.

[takemehomegrandma]

Serious question: How does that differ from ownership?

In the long run, there is no real difference

Well, for one thing, you can't sell what you don't own.

[takemehomegrandma]

I imagine that whilst there is some truth to that, the idea of other OS's running up and possibly beating them on their own hardware didn't make Jobs all that happy. This is backed up by the fact that they refused point blank to supply the necessary info to Be Inc regarding post CHRP hardware.

The desktop flora would look very different today, had Jobs had acted differently regarding the clones. As would the situation for PPC.

[takemehomegrandma]

How many times have you heard an Apple customer tout something he thinks is superior (that Apple constricts in features or how its used) and defends paying more than he would for it in a more open market (maybe because he likes Steve mining his pockets while telling him what he can do with his purchase).

Thought you were talking about AmigaInc/Hyperion and the Amigaworld fans there for a while, very familiar...

[takemehomegrandma]

Meanwhile, in the real world, the idea that all potential customers would ever vote in a poll on a forum is considered ridiculous, and any sales or marketing guy would expect sales to far outstrip any results you'd get on a poll like that.

Even the idea that all potential customers are even reading a specific website - even in a small market like the Amiga market - is patently ridiculous.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the idea that actually anyone else outside the very small and tight amigaworld.net/amigans.net circle *would even consider* chipping up a staggering UKP 1,500++/USD 2,400++/EUR 1,700++ (ANYONE AT ALL!!) for this kind of unproven, 2007 level performance HW, that has no other benefit than being able to run a "gimmick" (to anyone else but the above mentioned tight circle) OS4, is nothing short of ridiculous. "Hmm, what to do, take my entire family on a nice vacation next summer, or buy this 2007 level computing technology so I can see what this gimmick thing called 'OS4' is about, at the same cost? Hmm, difficult choice..."

I'd say that a poll or an offer for a betatest program on those two sites alone *more* than covers the whole potential user customer base, since this is where the people are that will pay *any amount* of money for *anything at all* with the right trade mark slapped on it!

[takemehomegrandma]

Ive seen blizzard PPC cards and A4000Ts go for 600 dollars on multiple occasions.

Insane, I agree.

But those things are at least collectibles. Personally, I see a lot more value in an A4000T than an "Teron/AmigaOne" for instance. Don't you?

The route Hyperion is on is very difficult to understand. They deliberately opt out safe, easily obtainable HW that everyone can find and afford, in favor of something "new" (albeit not performance wise) hence unproven, at a price that most people consider being science fiction, and totally out of reach.

I am still puzzled why?

But reconnecting to the topic of this thread - When Hyperion isn't even considering the *PPC* mainstream HW options, what are the chances that they will ever consider the x86?

[takemehomegrandma]

well, they still sell OS4 for the SAM boards so they have that as income as well. The X1000 won't be the primary or presumably even main machine for OS4

Yes, they have those mandatory sales for the sam boards to count on. No single Sam sale wihtout OS4.1.x! That counts for something, I guess. AFAIK, the threshold for making a batch of those Sam boards is 30 or so, and I am sure they have sold at least a couple of batches.

They have also had some income from the "Timberwolf" bounty.

And they have recently raised some capital from the "X1000" pre-payment beta tester program AFAIK. (Has payments been confirmed for this? Anyone knows?)

And now they are planning some new sales of OS4.1.x towards Classic users. I'm sure they will get at least a 50 sold, or so. That's also some money...

What more, "income" wise?

Time for some merchandise sales? Probably. A shame that Hyperion can't do that...

As for why they aren't to X86, I am guessing the same reasons I suspect Morph OS isn't moving to x86. A ton of work,

Absolutely! That work effort is not to be underestimated. It's overwhelming, and that's probably why it will never happen.

with uncertain return on investment,

Please don't mix financial terms into the equations. The work on OS4 is not funded like "normal" commercial SW development project; it's mainly done on a hobby basis. So it's more a matter of what the developers are spending their time doing, rather than some cost. The cost would be the same, be them working on PPC, or X86.

competition with AROS,

Huh?!??

a much bigger pond to swim in etc.

A *living* pond, perhaps even enough to make some profit from...

[takemehomegrandma]

Errmmm... ok. Which one are you going to do? :confused:

Well, I could really use a vacation, while a "X1000" would be completely useless for me, so...

[takemehomegrandma]

Hyperion has built a house (AmigaOS4). They have built it using construction materials that *in major parts* are *loaned* (Amiga OS 3.1). Hyperion actually acknowledge in the settlement that the loaned bricks and planks (Amiga OS 3.1) used to build the OS4 house are indeed owned by Amiga Inc. Amiga Inc acknowledge in the settlement that the house is owned by Hyperion, *except* for the loaned bricks and planks they used to actually build the house, which are still owned by Amiga Inc.

Now, who owns the house?

...

Like a house built of a deck of cards; it might look like a pretty construction as long as it's left alone. But as soon as someone opens the window on a windy day and let the drag in, it can collapse in an instant.

Serious question: How does that differ from ownership?

In the long run, there is no real difference

Well guess what?

Pluritas ... is currently accepting offers to acquire the worldwide rights to the AMIGA trademarks and associated intellectual property

Wow...