It's been a while...
Still on a pay-through-your-nose-per-minute modem, so this will be another one of those everything in one go posts.
Catohagen wrote:
why do pegasos need OS4 ? Morphos isn't enough ?The Pegasos doesn't "need" AmigaOS. Neither does any other hardware.
The compulsory licensing/bundling/dongling policy would only make a tiny bit of sense if there actually were a commercial need for AmigaOS among hardware makers/vendors. Now, it doesn't make even a tiny bit of sense.
"MorphOS isn't enough"? Are you referring to the needs/desires of the Pegasos
users, or the company that sells the Pegasos? In the latter case, see above. In the first case, that would suggest that you're posing your question from some strange campist perspective, i.e. a hardware owner must like and choose ONE OS only (which unfortunately seems to be the case with some deluded people, c.f. the Red vs Blue Troll Wars).
plus, of the 600 morphos users out there, how many percent would run/buy OS4 ?
(I assume you mean Pegasos users)
I think this is rather symptomatic of the way some people seem to be thinking; The market is static - there are X potential customers, anyone marketing an Amigaish product must fight over this set of X people, and the people must belong to a camp based on what companies there are fighting over our money.
Which is so wrong that it hurts my head just thinking about it.
If a company should limit its goals to only fight over a share of a static market consisting of some X hundred people, then that company and its product (provided it's consumer stuff like a motherboard or an OS) are screwed. Do you expect Genesi to think "OK, we sold 600 boards, that's all we want and can expect, let's call it quits and sit around rolling our thumbs."
I just can't see why some think it's a Good thing that AInc's "planning" for AmigaOS obviously is limited to "let's actively and arbitrarily restrict the possible market for AmigaOS to a thousand or so, max, current Amiga users who are prepared to buy a dongled Teron with a 'special' name at a 'special' price from a 'special' dealer".
Then it's that campist thing again. To extrapolate from your rhetorical question and paraphrase: "People won't buy AmigaOS for the Pegasos, because only MorphOS users have a Pegasos and they hate/don't want/whatever AmigaOS, and nobody else would buy a Pegasos." This also assumes that we who are interested in AmigaOS are brainwashed tools, and could only be interested in buying whatever hardware that for some reason has been labelled "AmigaOne" by somebody, and would not be interested in buying anything else (like a Pegasos (II), un-renamed Teron, Mac, or whatever).
most people seems happy with morphos, so why pay 50-100 $ or
whatever the price might be for OS4 ?
I am not (currently anyway) a MorphOS user. I would pay $50-100 or whatever for AmigaOS 4. Whom I choose to buy my hardware from is of nobody's business but myself and the one I buy my hardware from, be it a Pegasos, Teron, Mac or a frigging Abit mobo! Again, your question is posed under the prerequisite that only people who currently own a Pegasos could possibly be interested in AmigaOS-on-Pegasos, and furthermore those people are all campist freaks who would refuse to pay for and install anything but MorphOS.
Blomberg wrote:
>>So what's preventing Hyperion from porting OS4 to the pegasos?
Genesi's unwillingness to obtain the proper license from Amiga Inc, AFAIK.Nobody wants to obtain that "proper license". AmigaOS is not commercially interesting, at least not to the degree that a hardware maker/vendor would agree to pay license fees for the privilege of selling and supporting a "special" dongled perversion of his hardware bundled with AmigaOS. If AInc were Microsoft and they were selling WinXP, then such a deal
could be attractive, although MS wouldn't be so stupid, as they'd lose marketshare when people notice that they're only allowed to buy "special" hardware from "special" vendors at "special" prices if they want to use WinXP.
The obstacle is the compulsory nature of the AmigaOS distribution policies. Bundled OS/hardware sales AND dongled hardware AND software support for AmigaOS, or no AmigaOS in any (legal and payed for) shape or form for the hardware in question.
If you make OS Y, and you naturally want an as large as possible install base, and thus also want your OS on hardware X, and nobody is interested in getting this particular kind of ridiculous license, then the basic obstacle is naturally the existence of the licensing requirement, not that the vendor of hardware X don't want your silly license.
Rogue wrote:
There is no contract to limit to a certain hardware, otherwise there wouldn't be a CyberStormPPC version now would it?What do you mean? AInc/Eyetech has limited the distribution of AmigaOS to ONLY be sold in bundles with licensed and dongled hardware from licensed vendors.
The Amiga (CS-PPC) version of AmigaOS is the only exception from that policy, and understandably so since there are not even imaginary license fees to be collected from an already existing and obsolete hardware base, and Eyetech doesn't sell new CS-PPCs. I appreciate the gesture to also make an Amiga version of AmigaOS 4, but commercially the Amiga is dead, buried and irrelevant, compared to modern third party hardware.
Why do people think that licencing schemes are so much of a problem?Do they?
Come on! Please! What I and over 900 others, at least, object to is the nature of THIS particular licensing scheme.
They're in place everywhere. If you want a port of, say, Heretic II, you don't send a free Amiga to Activision. You obtain a licence. What's so strange about this concept?I'm sorry, but I fail to see what relevance that example has to do with this discussion at all? You might as well ask what's so strange about a driver's license.
For a more relevant comparison, it would be like Activision didn't sell Heretic II themselves, but depended on "HII-licensed" hardware vendors to sell it for them, and only bundled with "official" rebadged "HII hardware".
SidMan wrote:
Companies need to make money, and in a market where we can't count on mass sales (unlike the PC clone and Microsoft markets) there has to be some give. The license fee for a hardware producer to run an OS is perfectly viable. I'm sure hardware phone manufacturers have to pay certain royalties for using an OS on their system.As long as we can't count on mass sales (for AmigaOS), we can't keep pretending that there's a need or desire to have "Amiga hardware" again or that hardware vendors would be interested in supplying such. As you say, companies need to make money. "Some give"? All this is practically devised as a charity for Eyetech, an old Amiga vendor that has been made redundant by the death of Amiga hardware, a "partner" that helped AInc to come up with this insanity. I disagree with that AmigaOS is supposed to be seen as a means of artificial respiration for "special" hardware vendors, and this is to be payed with imposed limitations of the AmigaOS market, its sales figures and user base, and inflated prices on AmigaOS compatible hardware.
I don't think it makes sense to compare a desktop OS, which is easily replaced and easily booted side by side with other OS's, which is installed on hardware that doesn't "have to" ship with an OS pre-installed, to an OS on a phone or embedded device. Besides, if AmigaOS was made for phones et c. and was as commercially uninteresting for hardware vendors as it is now when it's up against the desktop OS competition, it still wouldn't make sense to make its future exclusively dependent on bundling and the existence of interested licensees.
At the end of the day the only current license for new PPC based OS4 systems is Eyetech's Amiga One. If YOUR REQUIRED OS wont run on on your PREFERRED hardware then I can only say that you purchased the wrong board.If a licensing scheme puts an effective stop to any chances of seeing an OS on the customers' preferred hardware, from their preferred vendors, then I can only say that the OS company (AInc) chose the wrong business "plan". It's not about saying "tough luck, Mr. Disappointed Customer". It's "tough luck, AmigaOS and Hyperion and AInc, and anybody interested in a viable future for AmigaOS".
Don't get me wrong I want to see AOS everywhere, but business is money and without money we won't see AOS anywhere.
The money made on AmigaOS is made on
sales of AmigaOS. Those sales could be on both bundled and licensed systems, and separately sold copies installed on hardware regardless of who sold that hardware. As things unfortunately are, AmigaOS can ONLY bring in money on AmigaOS+Teron bundles, and only when sold via Eyetech. Without MORE money than that, we'll only see AmigaOS in the hands of a few of us hardcore enthusiasts, i.e. nothing has changed compared to 1, 2, 5... years ago, AmigaOS would still be dying, the "new thing" would merely be that its
lit de parade would be on not-so-obsolete hardware this time. It's quite understandable that it's not to be expected that AmigaOS won't reach a bigger audience, at least initially, but to actively and effectively PREVENT things from ever looking better is simply mindboggling.
HyperionMP wrote:
If hardware manufacturer x wants to bundle its hardware with operating y whichi s proprietary, he needs to charge his customers.But nobody wants to dongle, sell and support licensed AmigaOS/hardware bundles. Eyetech saturated the restricted market of that little monopoly the moment they invented it. Even if somebody would want to play a silly round of "fight with Eyetech over a thousand customers", AInc has still declined the money of every customer that doesn't feel like buying his hardware from such a manufacturer/vendor, or customers who already own the hardware, or buy it second hand, or whatever.
Again, there is no requirement to ship every Pegasos with OS 4, there is only a requirement to ship certain Pegasos machines with OS 4 when customers have indicated that is their OS of choice.Exactly, a pathetic, harmful and entirely unjustified division of what could've been ONE product for whatever OS market into "hardware X allowed to be bought by AmigaOS users" and "hardware X for everybody else". Guess which of those markets is and always will be the bigger? The most open? The one with the most competition and development? The one with the most vendor options? The one with the lowest prices? Yes, that's right. Not the artificially restricted, dongled and bundled one.
The second reason for the license is to have a contractual mechanism in place to protect consumers from the quite frankly criminal behavior of certain companies who defrauded customers through lack of legally required repairs and total neglect of warranty obligations.You must be talking about Mai, Terrasoft and Inguard, right? I.e. the "unlicensed" vendors and once-vendors-to-be of the Teron boards.
No? Is it the late Phase5, with a thinly veiled juvenile stab at Genesi?
Sure, if you are a hotshot developer, BBRV can pull some strings for you and you'll get your board repaired or replaced but other than that, you can forget about it.So it was phase5 you meant then, with an implication aimed at their former employees' new employer. How extremely disappointingly childish.
While we're off topic, perhaps we could bring up how the Evil Unlicensed recalled hundreds of motherboards and replaced them at no cost and no questions asked ("hotshot developer"? "pull some strings"? Honestly, WTF?), while the Great Licensed lied about the origins of "their" hardware ("AmigaOne G3SE" explicitly described as "it's not a Teron CX"), they sold a buggy evaluation board that never was intended for "public consumption" and that never had (and in it's newer versions still hasn't) been anywhere near the advanced QA labs / bicycle tire repair shop in Snoqualmie, not to mention the nonexistence of even an early alpha of AmigaOS4 running on it at the time it was already sold as a licensed "AmigaOne", or the firmware that needed replacement, or the sudden discontinuation of the Teron CX which left customers who had ordered an "AmigaOne SE" with a "great upgrade offer", or the bugs that didn't exist and then were "fixed" but no boards were replaced free of charge, and let's not forget the constant delays and absolute lack of control over development and the future of the product, and how about that great customer support provided on some Yahoo Groups ML by fellow customers. Thanks, but I think the market for cheaper hardware from dodgy little unlicensed basement operations like Genesi, or Apple for that matter, is quite a bit healthier.
In case it wasn't obvious to someone right from the start, it's now repeatedly proven beyond both reasonable and unreasonable doubt that the "QA", "support" and "customer assurance" arguments for compulsory bundling/dongling/licensing with no separately sold AmigaOS are at best contradictory and meaningless and at worst outright lies - and everything I've seen has turned me even more cynical than before all this, so, perhaps we can leave that subject?
amigaguy wrote:
But since BBRV wants the Pegasos to have the ablity to run OS4 with out a copy protection scheme, Hyperion should gladly do it?Where do you guys come up with things like this?
All this has squat, zero, nada, nichts, niente, rien, ingenting, to do with "anti piracy measures". Like you have given examples of, there's no extra security against piracy if you require a hardware vendor to provide some form of anti-piracy measure with OS/hardware bundles, compared to you as the OS vendor doing the same with separately sold copies as well.
Since none of the excuses presented make any sense, to me it's apparent that it's all simply about this:
A: Throwing a bone to a former "hardware partner" that's no longer relevant. Let 'em have a monopoly, we couldn't care less about what happens to that there AmigaOS thingy anyway.
B: Expecting, in vain, to rake in some licensing petty cash in the short run, just in case someone would actually be interested in a license. Not that any of that imaginary money would ever be funneled back into Hyperion and AmigaOS development.
Rogue wrote:
It doesn't exactly take rocket science to figure out that an OS doesn't port itself to a different platform. Neither does it take a PhD in weird superstringy abstract physics to figure out that no hardware maker is interested in doing that job for you with the bundling/dongling/licensing requirement in place, or to pay for you to do it. Furthermore, since AmigaOS won't be available separate from hardware, there's not any point with a third party (bedroom coder, hardware manf., whatever) to even try to write drivers for other hardware. AmigaOS running by means of such a 3rd party "enabler kit" could currently not be a legally sold and income-bringing copy. AInc/Eyetech has painted you and AmigaOS into a nice little corner there.
If this wasn't the case, Hyperion/Amiga would need to exclusively take care about support, which would also mean having access to all hardware platforms it is supposed to run onYes, and? What makes AInc/Hyperion so unique that this would be such a daunting task? OK, with AInc I can understand, but...
And if AmigaOS was also sold separately, and people installed it on hardware that's NOT on your official hardware compatibility list (which wouldn't be all that long anyway, we're talking PPC after all...) then those customers should turn to the ones who provided them with the drivers for that hardware.
And then we still haven't mentioned that licensed and unlicensed hardware would be exactly the same (cf. Teron and "AmigaOne"). People who bought a Teron would have the same hardware and support questions as those who bought a licensed "AmigaOne". Those who bought a Pegasos II would have the same hardware as those who bought a licensed "AmiPeg II", and PowerMac G4 Windtunnel vs. "AmiMac G4", and so on.
After all, it [bundled AmigaOS on a licensed machine] might be a selling argument for the hardware manufacturer too.In that case, so would the ADDITIONAL availability of separately sold copies of AmigaOS for the "normal" hardware in question be. Only now, both AmigaOS and the hardware vendors lost that market. For hardware vendors that might not be such a big deal. For AmigaOS it is. I disagree with that this could be a valid argument for the currently presented scheme.
HyperionMP wrote:
This means that any party wanting to offer OS 4 FOR THOSE CUSTOMERS THAT WANT IT must be willing to enter into a license scheme that at least somewhat guarantees a return on investment for us.Here's a novel idea: You make an OS. Presumably and hopefully, you're interested in a return on investment and even a profit. *gasp* So, you or AInc OFFER OS4 FOR THOSE CUSTOMERS THAT WANT IT, according to what you judge to be commercially viable. Hardware vendors have nothing to do with your product. If hardware vendors are interested, then great. But restricting AmigaOS's market to only such hardware is Not Wise, to put it calmly.
Let me tell you why: because the same hardware producer is pushing an alternative operating system and has a vested intrest in that.Bingo! One problem acknowledged. Now, is it still wise to tell customers interested in your product to go bugging such hardware vendors to sign AInc's/Eyetech's silly license to sell the hardware bundled with somebody else's commercial proprietary OS?
When one doesn't have hardware of one's own, or any control over third party hardware development, it is not wise to make one's software product solely dependent on the benevolence of third party hardware vendors. Especially not those who sell their own OS's. See Genesi. See Apple.
Plus if they would enter into the license agreement, they would be required to cough up all hardware and firmware specifications in order for OS 4 to happen.That's no problem today. With the licensing scheme, it could as you say possibly become a problem with other hardware. Why even ask anyone for specs when they need a license to make a port possible anyway? But today, neither Pegasoses nor Terons nor Macs are secrets. Well, OK, each new Mac usually takes a few months, tops, for people to figure out what Apple hasn't already willingly shared, actively or via Darwin.
mdma wrote:
I know that the main problem would be supporting several models etc, but couldn't you just say AOS4 will run on these 3 models of mac only, and then release it?Of course. But that'd make sense. We don't need no steenking HCL's. That's for
common people. We need licensing, bundling and dongling, lest we're "unprotected".
Or would Apple have to pay you a license fee to allow your OS to run on their hardware too?With the current scheme, yes, of course. Dunno about the fee though, but that's irrelevant, there's a cost and obligement. "Official" replies on the fee subject usually get evasive anyway, you know; "do you even know what, if any, fees there are?" - instead of just telling us.
Of course Apple will never get a license, with or without a fee.
I really would love to run OS4 on an Mac laptop, and would pay upto US$100 for the priveledge.You're obviously out to deprive AInc/Hyperion of income and to pirate AmigaOS! You MOS ppl!
Warface wrote:
>>... cough up all hardware and firmware specifications ...
Do you mean the ZICO specs?
HyperionMP wrote:
Secondly, the warranty and support obligations are a legal standard set by the European and national legislators, not by Hyperion.
All we want is to make sure that a hardware manufacturer or reseller is equipped to handle support and warranty repairs as required by the law.This is getting silly. AInc's role is not to enforce the law. As you said, there are consumer protection laws. The degree to which hardware vendors abide or don't abide to existing laws has nothing to do with some little software vendor's/licensor's odd licensing schemes. If a customer has a problem with a hardware vendor breaking laws, he turns to the proper authorities, not to AInc.
Another misconception. There never has been talk of "adding" chips on the mainboard. This is something some MorphOS enthusiasts came up with.What? This is really disturbing. Sometimes it seems like a teenage participant in the tiresome Red vs Blue Troll Wars has hacked your amiga.org account, Ben.
No, this is what the
only official statement on amiga.com on the matter and Eyetech used to say. Not "some MorphOS enthusiasts". Could we please lay off the campist nonsense for a minute?
We either require access to the already present flashrom or are willing to consider some kind of external dongle like a USB token.Yes, you (and nobody else, certainly not AInc) have explained that before, and either way it puts an obligation on the hardware vendor to provide some form of anti piracy mechanism together with his hardware when he sells it bundled with AmigaOS for you.
Furthermore, we are not charging the hardware manfucturer as such but only a per unit royalty for every copy of OS 4 sold.Great, then there aren't even licensing fees to lose, should AInc/Eyetech let you get access to an additional shrinkwrapped market.
Unless you're just talking about what you (Hyperion) are charging, not including AInc. Could you please elaborate on that?
1. [dropping AInc's distribution policies] would put a strain on us as we would need to put into place an infrastructure for shipping, warehousing and distribution which goes beyond what we have now for selling our games.(So AInc is supposed to do NOTHING but get payed for a license of their(?) IP to Hyperion? What a wonderful deal...)
If you expect to sell that many separate copies that you'd need further investments in infrastructure, I say GO FOR IT damn it! :-O
Especially considering that you won't get any relevant hardware vendors to apply for a distribution license.
Don't be afraid of success, and AInc shouldn't do everything to prevent success.
2. We would end up at the losing end of all the piracy. At least with the OEM scheme we'd be reasonably sure that every board sold for the explicit purpose of running OS 4, would actually have a paid for copy of OS 4.That's a bloody big "at least". In practice, it's saying "no thank you" to sales out of an unfounded fear of piracy. Out with bathwater, baby, soap and the frigging pram too, all at once. Again, an anti-piracy implementation is not more secure just because it's supplied by a hardware vendor, instead of with the software that's supposed to be protected.
There WILL be piracy, no matter what path is chosen. The question is if there will be enough sales.
>>Does the manufacturer HAVE to ship OS4 with the board or can the
>> end user say "I don't want OS4 thanks" and therefore pay less?
The answer is obvious from 1) the fact that Eyetech also sells boards in the Linux market 2) my post above.As AmigaOS 4 is not released, Eyetech does not yet ship Terons with the dongle additions to its firmware, do they? When they do, they'll naturally have to sell "normal Terons for everyone" and "reflashed Terons for AmigaOS users" separately.
Desolator wrote:
Ehm, Am I the only one here that is actually happy that we GET an OS4 at all?Ehm, no.
OTOH the whole project seems to be made somewhat futile by AInc's playing around with "Amiga hardware market" inventions and condemning "all future versions of AmigaOS" to stay a curiosity among a subset of us current users. I think that many see a staggering negligence and lack of planning and a formulated vision from AInc., almost to the extent that one asks oneself "so what's the point?". A part of the same old shrinking userbase, paying the same high prices, still on a "special" tiny market, with the same and still decreasing number of developers and apps. It's just that now it all happens on moderately modern hardware.
Dietmar + HyperionMP wrote:
> Ben, you have lost me now. Taking this statement alone,
> it appears that Hyperion will give the OS to the mainboard
> distributors for a bundled sale, and take royalties for sold
> units? That would be a perfectly normal scheme. Until now,
> I was under the impression that Hyperion plans a
> certified-hardware licensing scheme (on top of selling the
> OS and taking royalties).
No. That was never the intention.
Now you lost me too, Ben. What was never the intention?
There obviously is a compulsory certified-hardware licensing scheme, with bundling and dongling as prerequisites, vehemently defended by yourself as far as I can see, by those who presented it and let it be invented and by the one that helped invent it and who will benefit from it. Did all this happen unintentionally, or what?
Crud, the
thread was 9 pages long when I started on this, and I'll be damned if I should have to reload and see whether something interesting has been posted since then...
I'll just post this separately and alleviate some of the strain on the server and avoid the Star Wars discussion at the end of the old thread. And, as usual, thanks to takemehomegrandma for those posts of yours, +5 Insightful/Interesting.
Oh yeah, to those who haven't yet let AInc know what you think of their distribution policies, you know what to
do.
