HeUnique:
People, some history lesson..
It seems you need to go back to history class, sorry.
Bottom line for that Apple deal - did they make lots of money? no they didn't because there wasn't actually a good certification program!
It failed because people wanted "a Macintosh". Apple couldn't survive on licensing money, neither can Amiga Inc. - and Apple had a larger market than Amiga Inc. Not to mention that Apple designed and sold their own hardware and provided specifications for clone makers. People seem to totally overlook the fact that Amiga Inc. is a software company and that they DON'T design, make, provide specs for or sell any hardware of their own. The "Amiga" as a piece of hardware is officially dead, gestorben, mort, död, shmersh, mors, but AmigaOS is what lives on and it will run on PPC-expanded old Amigas and on POP motherboards. There will be no more "Amigas" made.
Perhaps people are confused because one distributor is selling a POP motherboard under the label "AmigaOne", and this makes people connect it with the Amiga Inc company and either defend or attack this particular POP mobo so vehemently.
I belive Bill's way is a very good way - if a company wants to sell their boards to run Amiga OS 4.x and future versions - then they have to pass a board (or series of boards) to Amiga Inc for testing and verifications,
I remember a quote from a developer in #ppclinux; "Amiga Inc. is a speck on the windshield of the POP market". Or as Ross Heinlein, developer of the Barbie POP board said next to his signature on the petition; "You need to realise that as Hardware manufacturers, your OS licensing is NOT our concern, we just build hardware, we don't play games and tailor separate product lines for every 'niche-OS' who has crazy ideas, you should rethink yours." That's how the entire third party consumer hardware market works, PPC or not.
Unless Amiga Inc. are planning to exclusively live on AmigaDE/AA in the future, then they're actively committing suicide.
By the way, when was the single currently licensed POP mobo tested by Amiga Inc. for ensured compatibility with AmigaOS4, when did it pass the "strict set of Quality Assurance certifications"?
and both sides win - Amiga Inc get some money from the verification procedures, royalties for using the Amiga Inc, and some sales of ROM chip + Amiga OS 4.0, Hyperion will get some money from the AOS 4.0 + ROM Sales
Both Amiga Inc. and Hyperion are software companies. They CAN NOT expect and certainly NOT DEPEND on earning money on anything other than sales of their software, but still they won't sell their software. They expect 3rd party hardware vendors to sell their software for them. It will not work.
They should sell OS4 separately, and they could still make money on licensing if there were any company like Eyetech who'd want to use the "Amiga" trademark and sell bundled computers.
If a board manufacturer can sell a G4 or G3 board very cheaply and the board is approved by Amiga Inc. - then users are winning!
If someone bothers to become licensees and dealers for Amiga Inc.'s products, yes. Even if someone is insane enough to do that, those licensed boards will still be separated for no technical reason from the rest of the POP market. Instead of one POP market you get two smaller "POP" and "POP for AmigaOS" markets. Smaller markets = higher prices and slower development. Everybody loses.
you'll pay less for a good board - it's just math.
Really, what the hell are you talking about?
I loved Amiga and I would love to buy it again as soon as something stable comes out..
Listen: You will never be able to buy a new Amiga because there will be no more Amigas. There will be AmigaOS and there are and will be POP motherboards. (But for some reason Amiga Inc. thinks we are too stupid to choose our own POP motherboards.)
One more issue that people do forget - since these boards are based on PowerPC - there's (almost) nothing stopping you from running Mac OS 8.X (and 9.x if I'm not mistaken) - all it takes is few hacks to use an image of a NewWorld ROM of Apple's PPC machines...
Huh? First, you can't buy MacOS separately, second, don't you think people would already be running MacOS (I presume you mean natively) on POP motherboards if this was possible or even attractive? Or are you saying that a license will magically change a POP mobo's capabilities? Well, reading the marketing in the executive update it almost sounds as if that was the case...
Regarding the Shark board - I belive that people should complain to the Shark manufacturer and encourage him to do some deal with Amiga so their board could be certified - it's for the users and for their business.
You just provided YET ANOTHER example to why Amiga Inc.'s plans are so harmful.
Look, you have a link to a petition right in front of you that if it was considered by Amiga Inc. (THAT is the company setting the restrictions in the first place remember) would remove any need to complain to any hardware distributor, be it concerning Pegasos, Barbie, Shark or whatever the heck else.
The Shark is not a POP mobo, which would make Amiga Inc.'s/Hyperion's porting efforts (which are the SOFTWARE company's responsibility) more than negible, but the ridiculous non-technical obstacles would be removed.
