samface wrote:
The licensing scheme for AmigaOS4 is NOT what is restricting it from running on Mac's.
In
addition to the pixies or whatever you're talking about, yes, the
compulsory licensing scheme is the restriction. Without a licensed distributor bundling the OS with his hardware, there will be no legal port. This prerequisite is known by most people by now, it's been discussed ad nauseam, and I seem to remember you being a participant in those discussions.
Or are you perhaps talking about the obvious technical issues present when porting
any OS to a new piece of hardware? That's not a "restriction", it's the grim face of software development, and it's always present regardless of distribution policies and market restrictions.
1. Where do you find a Mac hardware distributor willing to bundle it with AmigaOS4?
Exactly. You just identified an obstacle put in place by the licensing scheme.
There should be separately sold copies of the OS as well (and that goes for any hardware, not only Macs), then you can forget about this point #1.
Under the current circumstances, there has to be such a licensed distributor for a legal port to happen, and then AmigaOS users would only be allowed to buy a Mac via that distributor, bundled with AmigaOS and sold as a licensed "AmigaOne". You just acknowledged the problem, so you do at least agree with that this is the situation, right?
I mean, do you seriously think the AmigaOS4 will ever be able to compete with MacOSX without beeing bundled with the hardware like the MacOSX is? I'm sorry but few are those willing to try an alternative OS on the MacIntosh computers, even less people are willing to pay for it.
Assuming AmigaOS was ported to Mac hardware, are you honestly suggesting that AmigaOS could have a larger user-base on the Mac if it was
only available
bundled with newly sold Macs from a particular licensed distributor, instead of sold separately (
as well as bundled if that imaginary licensee would appear) for any Mac - new or already in use, from any vendor?
Compete with MacOS? What do you mean with compete in this case? In mass-appeal and commercial success? No, hardly. As you say AmigaOS is an "alternative OS". But that would of course not change by enforcing bundling. Somebody "willing to try an alternative OS" won't run out and buy another Mac from a "special" vendor, relabelled to "AmigaOne", to satisfy his curiosity. The compulsory bundling and distribution restrictions are what's in the way.
*NIX derivates are basicly the only alternative OS's that has managed to stay alive as alternatives on the Mac market, but they on the other hand are not commercial and is therefore not to be fought with commercial means. AmigaOS4 is a commercial product and would cost more than it tastes as an alternative OS to MacOSX.
Non sequitur. The free *nixen you talk about are there regardless of whether the commercial product AmigaOS is only available in bundled form or both bundled and separately. Please explain why you think that
only selling AmigaOS bundled with newly purchased hardware from special dealers could possibly sell more copies than, in addition to bundles, selling separate copies installable on existing hardware or new hardware from
any vendor?
Exactly how many
paying users do you think for example YDL would have, if Terra Soft only made it available for sale with their bundled Mac systems? Personally I would never have started using
that alternative OS if I would have had to buy another Mac to get it.
Or have I misunderstood you, and you think that AmigaOS shouldn't be available
at all for the Mac - the most ubiquitous, well-known, best supported, cheapest and fastest developing consumer PPC platform - only because nobody will license a meaningless "AmigaOne" trademark for it?
If so, I was mistaken when I thought AInc was extreme when it came to throwing out babies with the bathwater...
2. Do you seriously expect the AmigaOS4 to automagicly run on the PowerMac if we just removed to ROM requirement?
If you're replying to anything I've written, then you're not making sense. Please reread my post and you will notice the word "port".
Or do you just assume that the AmigaOS4 developers are willing to do this for free just like those *NIX derivates?
(ed.) Ah, you
did notice the word "port". Then why the initial "do you seriously expect ..." nonsense?
Software development is funded by sales of the developed software.
More sales = Good. Less sales = Bad.
Making software sales dependent on simultaneous sales of a particular "licensed" version of a piece of third party hardware via particular licensed vendors = Less sales = Bad.
Sorry for being condescending, but the tripe you spout about expecting developers to work for free aggravates me.
And in case Hyperion wouldn't expect break-even to be reached if they themselves wrote the necessary drivers, then separately sold copies of AmigaOS could still allow for running it on "Hyperion-unsupported" hardware, like Macs, through the work of third parties. Amithlon, CGX, Picasso96, Power/WarpUp, Poseidon, TurboPrint, Miami MNI drivers, just about any Amiga peripheral manufacturer... Third parties are not to be underestimated, they're what's largely kept the OS alive for a decade.
Furthermore, development costs don't magically disappear or even change if some distributor gets a license to sell his hardware bundled with someone else's OS.
To leave the Macs for a moment, there's no extra porting or development involved
at all to also sell the Teron-version of the OS separately, instead of only bundled with Terons from Eyetech.
