I know both Amiga and Hyperion have said AmigaDE will be incorporated into AOS4.2, but crucially we have heard no such statements from TAO, and yet it is TAO who would have to do the porting, because I haven't heard anything to indicate that Amiga Inc have any license to do any porting themselves.
Amiga certainly has a license to port intent to AmigaOS for PowerPC. I have spoken with Tao and their license is very simple. One buys an SDK for a particular hardware platform. Tao provides the VP layer for the native CPU. The licensee can deploy it as a stand-alone operating system or as an application on another OS. Whatever method is chosen, the RTOS (and it is called "RTOS" by Tao) is always running. The graphical environment, sometimes called elate, is actually a full RTOS with its own VP, memory model, multi-threading system, etc.
Really AmigaOS has two choices: Port intent to AmigaOS for PowerPC or port AmigaOS to intent and then run intent on the bare hardware.
Now, some of you are getting kind of lippy. I don't know much, but I have purchased a license for the AmigaDE SDK and the Tao intent ADK 1.3.1. I have programmed a bit on each. I have had 3 telephone conversations with folks at Tao and some email correnspondance. I have been accessing documents on the Tao developer website. These are not amazing credentials, but they are more than info gleaned from forums and news groups.
I do not know any plans that Amiga, Inc. has. What I do know is that by the nature of Tao licensing, they can do whatever they please with intent technology as long as they pay their licensing fees. The same offer is available to you or I. I can't afford it right now, but at least I know what it takes to license intent because I picked up the phone and asked them.
Pax
