Given all the recent drama regarding the current situation in Amiga RTG land, I propose that we finally sit down and create our own open standard and have community control over our own future.
At this point, we can't count on the potentially opened CGX sources. I'm afraid that may be tied up in license hell for some time to come. If we do get that, great, but we can't count on it.
I suggest that we start pulling from and feeding into the Aros CGX-like implementation since nobody seems to have issues with the legal status and it is pretty far along already.
I do have issues with the Aros codebase that are directly related to their development process.
They jumped to an new architecture and completely foreign compiler without making 68k stable first.
That in turn made testing any one component a nightmare and introduced code that has seemingly more macros than actual code. It's like reading a foreign language in places.
I strongly believe that if they had replaced just one library at a time on a 68k system using all other stock libraries, we'd have a stable, fast 68k Aros by now.
This also allowed them to weave in Aros specifics throughout all components to the point that it's almost all or nothing. For example, graphics devices currently need their HID, etc.
So IMHO, that makes Aros more like a reference than usable code, but it's still very valuable.
My suggestion is to do what they could have done to start with.
1. Use a real Amiga compiler such as vbcc since it is still developed and the developer is quick to fix bugs or add features if the Amiga community needs them.
2. Using Aros code as a reference, write a new, APL licensed Graphics.library compatible replacement that doesn't use any Aros specific code. It should drop into any Amiga system and just work. At this point, even Picasso96 and CGX should still work with this new library because it's a OS3.x work-alike.
3. Do this for each library that requires heavy patching for RTG.
4. Port the Aros RTG code to our new libraries. This may or may not break the ability to run Picasso96 or CGX on our libraries.
This approach also gives us a start on being in control of the OS itself.
The existing version of OpenPCI gives us a way to support Mediator PCI backplanes without signing an NDA.
I have the authority to relicense the OpenPCI source as I see fit as long as it's open, so this could go APL in order to support future PCI backplanes.
What are your thoughts?
Edit: Also posted at
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=82760