Ben Hermans - Hyperion Entertainment Interviewed

[Kees]

We did an interview with Ben Hermans, who agreed to answer some questions from readers of Amiga.org

Check here for his answers ...

Please note that the interview has been moved to it's new home, Here

[Calen]

The time is near :-)

We always knew the answer to Q3, i guess people must have missed those loads of posts that stated that os4 could go on threw Hyperion no matter what happened to A .inc.
Not that anything bad is happening ;-)

[dammy]

Poster: Calen Date: 2003/5/20 10:57:42

We always knew the answer to Q3, i guess people must have missed those loads of posts that stated that os4 could go on threw Hyperion no matter what happened to A .inc.

The issue on licensing is still an issue, regardless on how the contract is written, if/when Amiga Inc goes under.  US Bankruptsy Courts have the final say so on that matter.  Sure, Hyperion can continue to work on their OS regardless of what happens to Amiga Inc, it's their code.  Being able to market it, OTOH, as Amiga OS * is subject to Amiga Inc remaining viable.  Remember, Amiga Inc wants OS5 to be ported to x86, and we all know what Hyperion thinks of x86.  :-D

Dammy

[zee4]

We always knew the answer to Q3,

@Calen,

Yes, it's been stated lots of times, I guess the other part of his answer: "Certain parties are hoping for the demise of Amiga Inc.," comes into play here. Maybe some fokes just want to believe the wost.  Relax.

Zoltan

[redrumloa]

I'm glad their not completely throwing out the idea of a Peggy port. :-)

BTW: good job on the interview Kees!

[MiniBobF]

The issue on licensing is still an issue

Something only a politition or Murray Walker would say ;-)

Neil Thomas, AKA MiniBobF

[carls]

He didn't answer my question :-(

[System]

He dodged my question like true politician!  Why do they need all this stuff from Genesi about the Pegasos specs?  None of the developers of the OS's that run on Pegasos currently have needed such things.

At least they haven't ruled it out.  If AInc go under, maybe they will release it for Peg then.

[zee4]

I'm glad their not completely throwing out the idea of a Peggy port

@redrumloa,

Me too, I like the idea of being able to run several OS on a board.

I just read an interview with Dave Hayne about his PIOS days (on ann.lu) and he mentions that at the time MacOS had twice the market share it does now. I know IBM does some PPC-based designs (servers, that PDA reference design), but if we are going to get PPC machines down in cost, it's good if we can run more than 1-2 OS's on each board.

Zoltan

[Kees]

@ Carls

Don't blame Ben ... i made a list of questions that we send to him ... not every question was relayed.

Sorry ... maybe next time

[olegil]

Final remark: when shrinking partitions, you'll likely to end up with an highly  defragmented partition. So what you usually do is to defragment. So almost each  file will be read and rewritten; that's more or less the same as backing up all the data, repartitioning, reformatting, and restoring the backup.

Ex cept it's being done transparently, and in Windows you can't actually copy all files to another partition and back again anyway (at least not Win95 system files can't be moved?)

Of course, what one COULD do is to make an application that makes the whole process a bit more transparent to the user. I do it all the time on Linux systems with tar and fdisk, but some users might not be comfortable with that :-)

[SlimJim]

He dodged my question like true politician! Why do
they need all this stuff from Genesi about the Pegasos
specs? None of the developers of the OS's that run on
Pegasos currently have needed such things.

At least they haven't ruled it out. If AInc go under, maybe
they will release it for Peg then.

Well, I believe it's nothing much to dodge. Hyperion *is*
after all only licensing AOS from AInc (I use "only" in a very
loose sense though)  - the fail-safe thing is resting unless
AInc goes bust. In order to open up another hardware
market (like the Pegasos), it's rather logical that AInc has
to have its say. And if they say they need the hardware
licenced and Genesi won't licence it (for whatever reason),
Hyperion simply can't port to it. I belive Ben is quite correct
referring to AInc in this matter. It *is* still their OS, no
matter what some might think or like about it.
 
(A disclaimer: I haven't seen the licensing agreement
between Hyperion and AInc, so this is all conjecture on my
part.)
.
SlimJim

[Kay]

@mdma:

Dodged the question? He gave *three* good reasons why they aren't currently working on a Pegasos version:
*No license. Why should Hyperion strain their resources further just to make a version that can not, and may never, be legally used with the Pegasos?
*Small market. Does an *absolute maximum* of 600 sales (and this is a maximum they would be unlikely to reach) justify the extra development effort?
*No documentation. I somehow doubt that writing low-level stuff without a hardware documentation is as convenient as writing it with full documentation.

How could he have been more direct? (Seriously, please explain, I really don't see how)

Kay

[carls]

@nOMAAM
So it's YOUR fault! I'm FURIOUS!

No, actually, I'm not blaming anyone :-)
Perhaps someone else knows how many developers are working on OS4?

[meerschaum]

you act as though pegasos is 'done' ... as a board... sure the Peg1 is done...but Peg2 is comming out this year ...and will definitly be superior to the A1 in its current iteration... it would be wise to get OS4 onto superior hardware.

I personally dont care about OS4 now... and wouldnt want the name Amiga on my board/os/etc when I buy my Pegasos...