"Amiga Inc who have done absolutely nothing in this example except put their name on TAO's product."
Wayne, you are simply quite wrong here. The AmigaDE is much more than simply a re-badged Intent. If it were not, TAO would not be allowing them to do use their technology, would they?
See this analogy... the 'Intent' is the computer/CPU (a virtual one) and AmigaDE is a collection of API's/Wrappers/Engines AND Intent.
OS5 will be the AmigaOS running natively in that AmigaDE environment. This paramount goal will have AmigaOS running everywhere. The argument that 'AmigaDE is not an Amiga' does not hold up here, it is moreso an Amiga than AOS3.X running in an amiga emulator. OS5 will bear a resemblance to the earlier Amiga OS's and will bear ultimate scalability. It certainly will be more Amiga-like than MOS/AROS.
While you may be skeptical about OS5 ever being a reality (and I'm not saying you shouldn't be), it is simply wrong to say AmigaDE is Intent with a different name on it. That is simply not true.
While I by no means can be certain, I am confident that Amiga have been doing a lot more than man-handling court cases these last three years. They may be taking much longer than they said (and yes, I will accept that they -lied- occasionally), but the contract developers must have been doing something all this time, and indeed there is evidence of this.
Also, I am amazed by Bill McEwen's inability to foretell things accurately. Fleecy has oft stated on Amigaworld.net that 'Prediction is not an exact science', well that phrase is given a whole new meaning with Amiga Inc.
In 2000, for instance, Bill McEwen stated that OS4 should be ready in a few months. WHAT. What on earth could possess him to say such a thing? This is before they had Hyperion working on OS4 (at least I'm pretty sure it is). Why would he think that could be even remotely possible, and then have it turn out to be over 300% innacurate (and counting)? Was he just saying that to get people optimistic, disregarding the fact that they almost certainly would end up dissapointed? Or was their some grand plan we were never told about that fell through? Or did he simply have no grasp of the concept of OS programming and made a gross miscalculation on lack of experience? Either way, I don't trust McEwen for many reasons like this one, but there is more to Amiga Inc. than him and I think their motives are pure and their intended goals are very promising.
