@bloodline
I made a suggestion that AmigaOS x86 was an effort to displace AROS. It was a possiblity, not fact, and I presented it as such.
Public knowledge shows that it was
not a possibility. It's a known fact that McBill admitted at AmiWest two years ago that they only saw Amithlon for the first time a few days before the show - literally. So how it is that you jump from that to the possible conclusion that it was somehow Amiga Inc's effort to displace AROS is totally beyond my comprehension.
As for the rest, I don't disagree with your assessment of Amiga Inc's performance at all, but I don't agree with your presentation of events. AOS4 was not developed in response to MOS, Amithlon was not developed in response to AROS, and in both cases Amiga Inc had either very little or nothing at all to do with them coming about.
Regarding AOS4, the sequence of events as I recall it goes a little like this:
- Amino buy the Amiga rights from Gateway and then change their name to Amiga Inc. They have no interest in "Classic Amiga" development, concentrating on the AmigaDE future. H&P are due to develop a PPC native AOS4 for use on the existing "Classic" PPC expansion cards. Relations between H&P and AI are not good and getting worse.
- Eyetech make their plans for a custom PPC based AmigaOne public, and AI see an opportunity to sell a desktop OS again (meanwhile their plans for DE turn out to be wildly optimistic). They are still in agreement that H&P should to the job, but with far less freedom and priviledges than H&P had grown accustomed with. H&P are even less happy about AI.
- H&P disagree with the conditions and direction AI want to go in and quietly drop any AOS4 development, probably also due to not getting any financial support from AI towards development. They concentrate on other directions - which later turn out to be a UAE port to QNX. Meanwhile Eyetech also encounter growing problems with Escena.
- AI's reaction to H&P's action is to talk to the MOS developers about possibly turning MOS into the next official AOS. We've all heard the stories relating to how that turned out. So the result is that AI have no OS to present to Eyetech for AmigaOne, but this seems unimportant as Escena seem incapable of delivering a working board anyway. Everything grinds to a halt, with the exception of MOS, but no one thinks it would be a good idea to tell the public about it (and they are probably right).
(I don't know much about the Thendic/Pegasos timeline - but I wasn't even aware of their existence at this stage)
- AmiWest 2001 comes about, and Amithlon is presented as "Amiga x86". All hell breaks loose and the PPC vs x86 wars hit the road in earnest. Hyperion and Eyetech supremos make very public and very damning comments about what they see as utterly disatrous involvement with the x86 market, but it dawns on them that their own PPC solution is virtually kaput. AOS4 development is stalled, and Eyetech have virtually given up on Escena. What to do?
- AI lose/give up Amithlon pulication to H&P and cease talking about it. They concentrate all their talk on the PPC future and the "Triumvirate" is formed. Hyperion offer to do the OS, Eyetech promise to get the hardware project restarted and Amiga Inc... well, Amiga Inc see the "money for nothing" signs and say "Sure, go ahead. We're right behind you."
During all this time Thendic's profile grows as their alliance with the MOS team is strengthened.
I can't see how any of this leads you to believe that AOS4 was devised in response to MOS or Amithlon developed to displace AROS.
You might argue that I don't list AROS as a significant factor in any of the events above, and you'd be right. AROS was never a threat to anyone, and it still isn't. The only role it had was as an indirect factor in the way Amithlon was conceived. (The original idea was to use AROS and integrate the JIT 68k emulation into it to result in a closed source commercial product. This ended up being rejected for a number of reasons, being replaced with the Linux+JIT+AOS combination that finally hit the market).
In conclusion: have Genesi done more for the community than Amiga Inc? Assuredly so. Have Amiga Inc demonstrated incompetence time after time? Yup. Have they proved incapable of learning from past mistakes? 'fraid so. Do I think your interpretation of events has even the remotest possibility of being accurate? Nope.
