Petition: AmigaOS distribution policies and PPC hardware

[Kay]

No way am I signing that. I don't feel strongly either way
about their licensing policy, as it is way outside my field
of expertise. What I do know, however, is that I'd look a
bit like an imbecile if my name was associated with those
comments. The top 5 comments I don't want listed near my
name:
1."sue bplan and die amino clowns" -5, troll
2."DIE AMIGA!!! MORPHOS 0Wnz j00000" -5, deranged or not serious
3."Yes, It's time for competitive mind, not closed ONE!" -2, confusing
4."To be rude; what's with the Microsoft tactics, huh?" -2, clearly doesn't know much about MS tactics, yet he talks about it
5."BTW soldered CPU SuXX big time" -1, seems to have misunderstood what the petition is about an who it is targetted at

Kay

[jumpship]

I won't be signing either.

The one big advantage of this system is that Amiga have the chance of making sure that the new H/W is 100% compatable and that the correct system compliant drivers are writen (OK maybe not Amiga themselves but Hyperion)

What is the one thing Amigans preach about our machines? Stability. The only way to get a very stable maching is to know excatly what H/W it is going to be running on. Take Windoze, one of the reasons it is likely to crash often is because M$ have to account for the almost limitless amount of H/W there is out there. They can't controll who makes all the drivers so you have some compaines taking shortcuts that the system doesn't like and the machine crashes.

This may well be a simplified way of putting it, but it is how I uderstand it and have been told.

[jumpship]

Oh and BTW the use of italics makes it very hard to read in AWEB :-)

[Rodney]

I will not sign this petition untill the method Amiga Inc is showing is seriously hurting on niche market...

I dont see these licencing terms as a bad thing. They will not limit quality hardware in the Amiga market, only limit hardware that isnt up to their standards and only limit hardware that comes from shops/manufactorers that cant provide the level of support specified in the licenece. This is as i see it, a brilliant way of doing things because we are garrenteed quality hardware and quality support whilst also having a great range of hardware.

The classic Amigas always gaves us great hardware and we had pretty good support, but now, with anyone allowed to make Amiga boards, we have that great range of hardware.

I dont no understand the constant bashing of this licence. I will only sign this petition when it seems like it isnt doing any good. Right now, i dont see that, we have AmigaOne, Cyberstorm, Shark and Blizzard PPC cards for our taking. Thats a great range of hardware.

If these guys can put up with going through an Amiga Inc quality audit then, any suitable hardware vender can. If they cant, i wont be buying hardware form them .

[Rodney]

Please STOP thinking about only two pieces of hardware called Pegasos and AmigaOne. If there was no compulsory licensing, no compulsory BIOS modifications, and no compulsory OS/hardware bundling, you could choose unrestricted between these two and whatever other POP mobos there are and might be.

I understand what your saying, and this is certainly a downside to the Amiga Inc licence. I too would like to be able to buy whatever board i see fit.

However, with the licence Amiga Inc makes the hardware suppliers go through to be able to sell their boards as OS4 compatible, it gives the community both garrenteed quality products and quality support which is a brilliant thing to have.

If you also think about this from Amgia Inc perspective, they are going to be well known from here on for selling or being associated with a quality product. Once this has been astablished, people will remember the name Amgia when ever they hear the word quality. This will surly work in their direction. This polly isnt just to get quality hardware and support into the community, but put a picture in the minds of everyone that Amiga Inc can provide quality software and hardware solutions for customers.

So while having a licence has its good and bad bits as done not having a licence, ill still have to say , not to signing it, and see what happens. If things do indeed seemto be going backwards well, hopfully by then Amiga Inc have forseen the danger and are ready do what ever needs to be done to reverse this trend.

[DaveP]

Wise words.

Note that at time of following up only 37 people had signed the petition. This might grow next week but look at it this way.

(rumour stats)
200 developers managed to get an A1 board on order with tenfold that *requesting* a board. Therefore we have nearly 10-1 willing to vote with their wallet FOR A1 and therefore the branding scheme.
(/rumour)

If you take out some of the clueless signatures on the petition which I seriously hopes that Seehund has the ability to clean up....

(opinion)
The petition itself seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding - or miscommunication on AIncs part.
(/opinion)

This is discussed on a thread on ANN if anyones interested.

I appear to have an amusing namesake on ANN. Well close enough.

wise monkeys

[Alkemyst]

oh & who says that a SW firm cant put there name to HW.
 
ever seen Mircrosoft on joysticks,mouses,rollerballs,stearingwheels ?
 
they had to go to MS to get aproval & so that MS could make sure it worked right with windows & then pay MS for ever bit of HW that was sold with the Mircrosoft stamped on it.
there is nothing wrong with that, but in Amiga.inc case you only have to pay for AmigaOs & the roms.
 
& for a SW firm making there own HW, do you think that MS made the Xbox them selfs, do you think that all inventors make the products then selfs, no they just give the HW specs to the HW firm to make on there behalf, its normal.

look at the GF green lean grilling machine or the tony little fitness range of products they dont make them, a HW firm makes them on there behalf.
 
it would be silly for an inventor to be hampered by having to get the £ to set up his own firm cos the ppl buying the product would moan that the inventor did not make the HW him selfs.
 
90% of inventors go to existing HW firm to get there invention on the market.
 
& i think what Amiga.inc is doing right now is the safest thing to do At this moment intime.
 
some ppl forget that 90% of the the pc world is not that savy about a wide aspect of SW & HW they just use it for the task at hand & when things go wrong they call for help.
 
if amiga.inc had a licenced & a open version & told that only ppl who go licenced can get AmigaOs help support do you real think that ppl who bought open would not try & still email/ring the amigaOs support system.
 
ofcorse they would as some ppl are stupid, just like what happned with the AOS4 screen shots even tho it clearly states that this is not final look on the page, ppl still talked as if it was.
 
i see loads of ppl haveing problems in totally opens platform lots of PC related problem with HW & SW even tho windows XP is running fine on there setup an apps or game is not cos of HW issues
 
you dont see that kind of problem so much in the Mac world.

& even having totaly open SW can lead to problems as well, linux is forking & the only reason why that is useable to alot of ppl is cos the bistros go out of there way to put things together for you that work, STRICO,YAM problems on the amiga you get a really stable version then the next version has 1001 bugs.

 
anyway we dont want to see ppl going & getting a non aproved ppcmobo buying Aos4 then emailing/phoneing for help then not getting any then saying AmigaOs is crap & unstable when infact its the crap ppc mobo at fault then throwing Aos in then bin & telling his mates & everyone eles that AmigaOs is crap.
 
but thats not Seehounds problem tho is it. im all right jack.

[Oli_hd]

Hmmm, I will say that the letter posted on amiga.com is not nice for hardware developers,

AmigaOS4 and all future versions will ship only on those hardware products to which Amiga Inc has specifically granted a license after reviewing the capabilities of both the solution provider and their product.

Ermm, Not your place to do that, Now yes a "seal of approval" sceme could be implemented but making it madatory? I think you wont get many developers that way.

Currently this hardware comprises: Cyberstorm-PPC accelerators by phase 5/DCE.

Did DCE pay for the licence? I dont think they would have, If they didnt OS4.0 would have been in trouble from the start.

have also been approached by and are currently in negotiation with the following companies for the licencing: Elbox, Matay & Merlancia

Again you will anger a lot of people if teh Shark wont run OS4.0, It does seem a very "up them selves" attitude.

I  concur with CB. If you want to market your product under the Amiga name then you have to follow Amiga, Inc.'s

(amiga.org)
Yes but what if you dont want to use the name?
As long as you run the OS you have to pay for a licence and get all of your hardware vetted by Amiga (USA), Then if they like your hardware they will let you buy the OS off them, Ermm not worth it guys, They will just install OS3.9.

It's just that the board sold under the Amiga name

And an Amiga PPC upgrade? Should they have to pay just so there card can have a licence to run Os4.0? Now the Amiga one boards yes, If they carry the word Amiga then fine, the Cyberstorm never, The Shark wont, Matay`s PPC card wont but they still have to have it vetted by Amiga, There is a CE mark you get hardware tested to, Thats all that is needed, Large companys trying to get the smaller ones to pay them money each time a card for the Amiga is releaced is stupid, Its like the Microsoft licenced software drivers (I hate them to)

Obviously, that can't be right.

From the post it really does look that way.

You can't force someone to licence your product from you.

No but if you wont sell them the OS until they pay you for a licence?

I will not do anything against Amiga! I trust Amiga, untill they fail!

im so sick of all this anti

What would have happened if your Cyberstorm or Blizzard would have needed a licence before you can install OS4.0? still wouldnt do anything?
As for the trust, Well I am happy Amiga are still making Workbench (Well not Amiga but then have Amiga actually made anything?) and it is always an improvement but there is something up.
PS: To they fall? MMmmm positive, The wont fail, They have gone to far, Its just how many customers they get from OS4.0 and the Amiga DE.

How do we then certify that said software and hardware are going to work together?

Thats the job of the developers, If the product doesnt do what it says everyone are in there rights

All this whining about something that, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't even exist yet.

OS4.0 isnt far away, Screen shots are out, The Amiga one is shipping (Well its ment to be) but thats already got a licence (I wonder if Eyetech paid for it?) So everyone who put a deposit on a shark are going to get one major shock when they get it and no OS makes use of it, Not because it wont run but because Amiga have made it so it will only run on Amiga licenced cards. Anyone remember the posts about Microsoft stopping Windows running on Sun machines (It was sun wasnt it?)
If your talking about the licence not existing then wrong, It already does, Amiga say that people are already talking to them about getting a licence.

I'm not going to sign this and I urge everyone else with a positive

But what happens if they start licencing software programs too? I am unsure if I should sign or not but I dont think what Amiga are doing is right

If a board hasn't been officially endorsed by Amiga, Inc. how can we, as users, expect a board, developed by a third party with absolutely no involvement with Amiga, Inc. whatsoever, to be completely 100% AmigaOS compatible?

Because if its sold for a task then it must do it otherwise you can send it back. We have lived without this for so long why do we need it now?

The model adopted by Amiga, Inc. may seem draconian but it ensures they don't fall into the the same trap that other OS developers

It will stop people developing for the Amiga,
And if Amiga licence the Cyberstorm which people really find a poor card then whats stopping them licencing really bad cards, Its just pay me for your hard work.  :-?

Oh, for heavens sake grow up kids! This won't happen, not ever hopefully.

Ermm, Like the Amiga.com site says, eyetech and DCE already have a licence, Elbox and Matay have applied for it, Its very much happening.

Anyway I think it is happening, It is bad and I hope people do sign the poll, Not sure if I will yet, Have to read a bit more into it, Dont want to cast the wrong vote but Amiga`s web page is not nice reading.

Oliver Hannaford-Day

[DaveP]

It has been stated elsewhere that it is not a *fee*
based branding scheme.

If you dont agree with 100% of what the petition sayes then dont sign.

If you have different views to the petition create a different one and sign that.

If you want to sell a board that is capable of running AmigaOS it has to have hardware modifications made ( not a generic PPC board ) and then it has to be branded.

I dont agree with your points though. :-)

Dave

[System]

Thank God 90% of the comments here are from people with common sense
so I won't repeat them. But in addition, you've never been able to buy
an Amiga without the OS, Commadore never sold an A1200 without OS3.X.
All they are saying is if you are selling an Amiga system that means
hardware and software. Who would want to buy an "Amiga" without the
OS! Oh yes, pirating scum that have done nothing to further the
communitites fortunes!

Regards
James

[Alkemyst]

Poster: Oli_hd Date: 2002/5/26 17:59:46

Hmmm, I will say that the letter posted on amiga.com is not nice for hardware developers,


Quote:
 
i say at first reading it could look bad as its not that clear.
 
but to ppl who have been following up regualy on amiga news would of seen the replys by fleecy & hyperion & eyetech about the letter on amiga.com
 
stating what it realy ment.

[Herewegoagain]

Well, I have to say that I have mixed feelings about the whole "must sell one with the other" but I do understand why they are doing it.  

Even when Apple was allowing Mac clones, there were about a half dozen or so clone vendors, and they all had to sell a copy of MacOS with thier hardware.  It was part of the licensing agreement.

The only thing I have a concern about is this:  If you have a board that is just out of warranty and it dies; You want to buy a replacement board to put back into the same machine.  Should you also incur the cost of the OS yet again?  I don't think so.  There will have to be a way of tracking registered users so that this will not happen.

I still will not sign a petition against the licensing.

[seer]

Ok, I have posted on ANN (Under my real name Guido if anyone is interested) but here's how I see the license from A Inc,

Every PPC made board that is to be sold with OS4 must have the boot extension (otherwise OS4 wont boot  :-) )

Every PPC made board (with or without boot extension) can be sold with any other OS out there.

Every PPC board WITH OS4 boot extension MUST be sold with OS4;

PPC with boot ext. but no OS4 = no
PPC with boot ext. and OS 4 = ok
PPC with boot ext. and OS 4 and some other OS= ok
PPC without boot ext. and OS 4 = no
PPC without boot ext. other OS = ok

Did I forget someting ?

Well, I have no problems with this scheme  :-)

[Ivan]

Seehund:
You suffer from a number of misconceptions here. The major one being that this announcement is the actuall licensing agreement. I dont mean to ridicule you but you must have realised this is not a contract posted to the net. It's an announcement to the public and eliminates a number of the finer legal points for simplicitys sake.

>Exactly. That's not "just", that's a software company trying to tell hardware distributors and users what to do. Amiga Inc. do not have the weight to throw around to do such a thing successfully. It's an unnecessary obstacle without technological relevance against having AmigaOS running on as many hardware products as possible available from as many distributors as possible.
>Well, of course not! The point is that nobody should have to license and use this name to begin with in order to sell their own hardware, regardless of what OS the buyers are using. If someone wants to use the Amiga trademark or sell OS/hardware bundles they should of course have to get a license, but not just to sell their hardware, regardless if their customer uses OS X, Y or Z. Please read the petition before you decide to sign it or not.

You sound as if Amiga is declaring that all manufacturers of POP based boards around the planet need to sell AmigaOS or they can't make hardware at all. Firstly, Amiga isn't telling any hardware company or the users what to do. They are only requireing a hardware based dongle to be present on any hardware sold with the Amiga in mind. This is not about technical relevence but solely for the purpose of eliminating priacy of the OS and its something i agree with 100%. Take Eyetech as an example. The Eyetech motherboard can be sold without the rom dongle as a PPC linux machine. If you buy a board from them to run AmigaOS you get the OS packed up with the board. The OS bundle of course will add maybe $50-$100. Worth every penny to me but if you choose not to run AmigaOS on your Eyetech board they wont charge you for it and you wont be forced to have it. Amiga DOES NOT require that the OEM sell the OS with every product the OEM manufactures, only with Amiga based motherboards. There is still as much of a choice as ever. Any other OEM making a POP based board would loose the Amiga market by not supporting the anti-piracy measures and good riddance to them.

>Please STOP thinking about only two pieces of hardware called Pegasos and AmigaOne.

Good point, but then i'm not thinking of that either.

>If there was no compulsory licensing, no compulsory BIOS modifications, and no compulsory OS/hardware bundling, you could choose unrestricted between these two and whatever other POP mobos there are and might be.

There would also be rampant piracy of the OS.

>Before someone comes along and says "but AOS must still be compatible with the hardware...", yes of course. But if a hardware distributor must modify potentially compatible hardware, get a license and start selling OS4, then the chances that OS4 will ever run on that hardware are drastically reduced before any compatibility work can even be planned for OS4.

The form of the dongle doesnt have to be a bios extension. The dongle itself can take many forms. ROM, USB, etc. Hyperion have stated before that the bios extension to the Eyetech motherboard was chosen by all parties as the best possible method to make that board an Amiga board. Other manufactuers will undoubtedly choose other soultions and with no need to redesign thier motherboards to gain AmigaOS support for thier hardware. bPlan for example could go with a USB based dongle. IBM (yeah keep dreaming) could design a board and go with yet another hardware solution. There are no restrictions other than there must be something on or with the hardware to keep the OS from being spread illegaly. The additional costs will only be for the Amiga based systems and the only people who will be charged for the protection are the users who buy AmigaOS and nobody else. I don't mind a bit and i won't sign your petition.
 
 
Ivan

[Herewegoagain]

IBM (yeah keep dreaming) could design a board and go with yet another hardware solution.

I would think IBM or Motorola either one would be happy to have another "Consumer Level" OS to run on thier PPC systems.  They don't have one as it is and it would give them another market.  A simple license with Amiga could give them just that!

[Seehund]

While it's nice to see that people are being generally civil, it's sad to see that so few seem to even have read the petition or tried to understand it before coming to a decision.

No, for hopefully the last time, this is not for or against any company, product or entity. Read the petition. Someone for some utterly odd reason even found it relevant to write that he wouldn't want to "hurt" Amiga Inc. and a bunch of other companies. Well, I have no idea how you can come up with the notion that the petition is meant to hurt anyone. Read the petition, think for yourself and for once try to forget about labels, camps and factions.

I see a whole lot of people merely repeating what's said in the April executive update. Hey, guess what, the undersigned don't agree with that. Duh. That's why there's a petition. If you feel the need to argue against the petition, at least provide your own arguments or try to explain WHY you agree with the compulsory bundling and licensing and WHY you think the arguments you're reusing are valid or relevant. There is no point of mere repetition.
Most of my arguments and reasoning are there to read in the petition.

I'll provide a simple step by step instruction:

1: Read the petition and read the April executive update. Compare what's being said.

2: Think. For yourself. This can be difficult, we're all flock animals. If names like MorphOS, AmigaOne, bplan etc. pop up, then clear your mind and start over. This is not about old flamewars and imagined factions. There is no "Amiga" anymore. There is AmigaOS and there is hardware. The company behind AmigaOS has nothing to do with hardware. The companies behind the hardware have nothing to do with AmigaOS.

3: Read the petition and the executive update again and try to think forward, imagining consequenses.

4: Come to a decision. Sign or don't sign. Simple as that. Noone but moron zealots who invent factions and see "the competition" as personal enemies are going to hold your decision against you, whatever it may be. Just make sure you have read and understood for yourself.

Regarding the fsckwits who post abuse in the comments to the petition - the obvious abuse will of course be removed before it's all handed over. Noone has to worry about ending up in "bad company". Whenever you sign a petition you naturally only agree with what's said in the petition, not with any of the personal comments from the undersigned. I'm not gonna censor anything based on if it's "stupid" or ill-informed or just not exactly what I think.