AmigaOS petition update

[Seehund]

As it's a cloudy summer day here today, I took the time to do some updating of the information site for the AmigaOS Distribution Policies petition. If you have not signed the petition yet, please do so here.

Since a couple of days we are over 700 people who publicly express our wish that Amiga Inc. should not apply any artificial and unnecessary chains restricting future versions of our favourite OS and its market by only letting it run on licensed versions of third party hardware from licensed distributors.

The first batch of signatures was sent off to Amiga Inc. almost one month ago by now, but we have yet to hear a reply from the company.

I have also added a new selection of comments from disappointed users and developers.

(While I'm at it, I'd like to ask new signatories to please use their full names when signing. If you wish to use an alias/nickname, please check the box to make your e-mail address "available to the petition author". It's been quite a chore to bug PetitionOnline to track some people down to verify/delete signatures.)

[Crispy_Beef]

I still think this petition is a waste of time.  What's the point?  Amiga Inc. are protecting themselves and the consumer against dodgy companies producing dodgy products with the Amiga name, it's as simple as that.

If a company wants to use the Amiga brand (owned by Amiga Inc.), they have to adhere to the terms, and that's fact, and the way it should be.


And I still ain't signing   :-P

[ilgulamc]

The first batch of signatures was sent off to Amiga Inc. almost one month ago by now, but we have yet to hear a reply from the company.

why you and your 700 friends don't reach in your pokets, pay amiga inc or hyperion for amigaos rights and do whatever you want with it?!

As far as i am concerned, I like amigaOS but i don't allow my self to judge what amiga does. I know we are all stakeholders of this company, but hey they're not mama-amiga!

[Elektro]

Ehm no crispy this ain't about making 'amiga' branded mobos and not paying amiga inc. its royalties. That's a completely diff. matter.

[Seehund]

Crispy_Beef wrote:

If a company wants to use the Amiga brand (owned by Amiga Inc.), they have to adhere to the terms, and that's fact, and the way it should be.

Of course they should, but you're completely missing the point if you think that's what this is about.
(One of) The issue(s) is that they shouldn't have to become licensees for anyone if customers wish to use their hardware to run whatever OS they bloody well like. The petition is against the compulsory licensing/bundling/dongling required to let companies sell their own products to AmigaOS users. Hardware companies don't want to limit their hardware and become licensees of a tiny software/licensing company. The trademark has to be guaranteed or necessary to attract a huge amount of customers (à la "Made for Windows") for anyone to bother..

And I still ain't signing

Fine, but I wish you'd at least bother reading the petition (and preferrably the introduction and the FAQ as well) before coming to any decision.

[edit: forgot to attribute the quotes...]

[Crispy_Beef]

Ehm no crispy this ain't about making 'amiga' branded mobos and not paying amiga inc. its royalties. That's a completely diff. matter.

Your correct, it's not.  It's about making sure that the hardware is up to spec and is up to the job, it's about making sure there is a quality product that works, and if there is a problem it can be supported, it's about stopping pirated copies of the OS being run.

The last point being quite important, it's fine for Linux/Unix and other 'free' OSs, but I don't think Amiga Inc. could survive a lot of piracy of the OS.

It's all about protecting interests, which seeing as the patents etc. are theirs they have every right to do.

Nothing is stopping any other company getting and license distributing the OS with their hardware.

[anarchic_teapot]

Seehund spouted blithely:

Hardware companies don't want to limit their hardware and become licensees of a tiny software/licensing company.

In what way is the Amiga-enabling ROM a limitation on the hardware?
Unless you can successfully answer this question with only hard facts and logical reasoning, you are going to be written off as an Idiot by many who up to now merely considered you a bit thoughtless.

Remember, you are speaking to someone currently running Linux on the AmigaOne with the ROM already in place.

Limited hardware, my backside cache.

[Seehund]

ilgulamc wrote:

why you and your 700 friends don't reach in your pokets, pay amiga inc or hyperion for amigaos rights and do whatever you want with it?!

That's exactly what I want myself and others to be able to do. Pay AI/Hyperion for AmigaOS and pay any hardware vendor/maker I prefer for the hardware of my choice (it might even be a licensed piece of hardware, but I want to be able to make that decision by myself, thankyouverymuch).

I want my choice of hardware to be decided by compatibility issues and my personal preferences alone, not by licensed trademarks and petty political wars.

I want AmigaOS to be allowed to be made to run on any potentially compatible hardware, not only licensed, dongled and bundled hardware.

I want AmigaOS to have a fair chance at even a moderate success, not being limited and chained to a niche market even tinier and more pathetic than when "Amiga" used to be a proprietary computer with no development abandoned by its bankrupted manufacturer.

There's this new OS. What's the best way to get as many users as possible? Totally unnecessarily restricting its hardware base and hardware market and not selling it separate from chosen hardware, or  make it run on as much hardware as possible and sell, sell, sell to anyone who's interested?

As far as i am concerned, I like amigaOS but i don't allow my self to judge what amiga does.

It's a commercial company, or so it says, not a deity for crying out loud! A commercial company ought to be interested in maximising market penetration and making its product commercially attractive.

[Crispy_Beef]

@Seehund

Actually I have bothered to read the petition and FAQ, and I still think there is now point in signing.

Every copy of AmigaOS needs to count, every time a pirated copy is run it damages the platforms future.

There is nothing to stop a dongled version of the OS (USB) becoming available later on so users can run on unlicensed hardware if they want to, but if a company wants to sell the OS with their board, then they are going to need a license as they are actively putting the combo together.

What happens when the OS doesn't run on an uncertified bit of hardware, your average Joe will say, "This OS is crap, it doesn't even run on the board I bought it with."

[HeUnique]

It is quite unfortunate that someone is doing such a "petition" without trying to understand Amiga's position quite well (or so the petition author seems to mis-understand).

Amiga Inc. wants to be back in life, and prefferable - back in business. A business is created for profit. By allowing anyone under the sun to ship boards with Amiga OS without any qualifications - you'll get tons of nightmares in terms of support. I'm sure that if Amiga will give up their requirment for qualifications and approval - there will be hardware vendors which will supply either bad parts or partially compatible boards which the user won't know about them until the user will have a problem - and point the finger to Amiga Inc.

Amiga Inc. doesn't want much - all they want to do is to have a formal licenseing program which the vendor submits his board for approval that it works with Amiga OS 4. This is exactly the same thing that graphics card manufacturers doing today to get an "OpenGL approved" qualifications (from SGI) or to get "DirectX approved" from Microsoft. Do you see a petition to refuse those qualifications from users? I don't.

Amiga Inc. wants to have this approval procedure - and it's not about the money (trust me - I've been at the business of qualifying boards for industrial use) - the money that a hardware vendor needs to pay is pretty small actually - something like few thousand dollars - which needs to cover the costs of testing, and red-tape.

Amiga Inc. also stated clearly that they are supporting MORE then EyeTech's boards! go look at Bill's latest executive update and see that he names 2 more names other then Eyetech's. If your preffered hardware vendor wants to play cheap and refuse to work with Amiga - then you should consider email him and ask him to talk to Amiga. Of course, if your hardware vendor belives that MorphOS or other OS is better then the upcoming AOS 4.0 and your vendor (which you already purchased a board from) doesn't want to qualify his hardware - then it's really a problem for you and him.

If I was a PPC board hardware vendor, I would be happy to be an Amiga OS licensee - after all, if I set my price competitivly with EyeTech (and lets face it - 800$ for a PPC board with upgradable CPU socket and G4 processor is very profitable to them) - then I could sell quite a lot of those boards! I'm pretty sure that Amiga Inc. won't sell the AOS for $50 for the OEM - which is a nice (although small) additional profit to me - whats wrong with that? and all I need to do (if I was a motherboard vendor ) is to pay some money to Amiga for test passing - and it's worth it! it's called "business"..

Lets not forget one more thing - if Amiga will start selling AOS 4.0 with the plug to anyone - then maybe 50 people will buy - and the rest will copy it! I really don't think that it will be that hard to hack AOS 4.0 to work without the Amiga Inc's special ROM - so 50 will buy it, and 5000 people will copy it. See the newsgroups messages with AOS 3.5 went out.

I really hope that Amiga Inc. will start selling AOS 4.0 soon (and I hope Hyperion will finish AOS 4.0 development soon - guys, some news from you about status update will help a bit) and we can prove to the world - Amiga is back, and it's in the stores!

Thanks,
Hetz Ben Hamo
heunique@slashdot.org

[Argo]

Assuming your scenario, What our your choices other than the AmigaOne G3 SE?

[HeUnique]

You wrote:
"(One of) The issue(s) is that they shouldn't have to become licensees for anyone if customers wish to use their hardware to run whatever OS they bloody well like. The petition is against the compulsory licensing/bundling/dongling required to let companies sell their own products to AmigaOS users."

Excuse me - signing with Amiga DOES NOT limit the vendor to anything! for all they care - the vendor can sell competing OS's as well - be it MorphOS, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, or anything your vendor want!

Nothing really stops you from buying a board from a non licensed company and buy AOS 4.0 seperately - it's just that your hardware will not be supported by Amiga. Got AGP/Gart problems? USB problems with AOS 4.0? call your vendor, Amiga won't help you.

Hetz

[Crispy_Beef]

@HeUnique

This is exactly what I have been saying, Amiga Inc. would end up in a support nightmare, and gain a bad reputation from it.

I really do think this is a good choice, and will benefit both the company and the end users.

[Kronos]

Nothing really stops you from buying a board from a non licensed company and buy AOS 4.0 seperately

The OS4-version that will be available seperatly will ONLY run on the
old Phase5-card, and thats what the whole petition is about.

[Crispy_Beef]

The OS4-version that will be available seperatly will ONLY run on the
old Phase5-card, and thats what the whole petition is about.

Well technically that's not entirely true.  It could also run on the Shark if they they pulled their finger out and sent Hyperion some hardware to work with.  Same goes for Pegasos too.