Amiga Inc, in 25 questions or less

[ssolie]

@Missing t-shirt people
HMetal (Amiga Inc's webmaster) came on IRC (#amigaworld) last night and said if you are still missing your t-shirt to please email him at webmaster@amiga.com to resolve the issue.

@Wayne and staff
Don't bother asking Bill about t-shirts please. It's been done to death and back again. There are far more important questions.

[tomazkid]

What is Amiga Inc's view on all the different websites offering free download of Kickroms and AmigaOS 3.x and below?

Are you protecting your IP, or is it up to Cloanto in this matter?

[Sodapop]

@Bill Mc Ewen :

How many full-time workers at Amiga Inc. and where are they working (home, Amiga offices...) ?

@Bill Mc Ewen :

What is the sales volume of the AA titles ?


Best regards,
Thank you !!!

[SamuraiCrow]

1)  Since .NET's CLR has gone shared source and consequently been partially ported to other platforms as MONO, and since Apple is similarly backing an open source intermediate code format called LLVM, is there any plans to follow a similar path with AmigaDE for Amiga?

2)  If not, is there a plan to export to the other intermediate code formats as a means of expanding cross-platform support?

[maffoo]

Is there any chance for OS4 to be released commercially and work on existing PPC hardware (such as PPC Macs) rather than being restricted to hardware with specific licenses? If not, is there a specific reason (eg. would it violate some form of contract/license?)

[Magic-Merl]

Simple - From the perspective of Amiga Inc - What DOES the future hold for Amiga computers.  Not AA or DE or whatever because thats software.

[Red_Melons]

Computer operating systems have usually been written to allow the use of a hardware platform - whether IBM, Apple or Commodore etc., and not hardware developed to run an OS.

Does Amiga Inc believe that there is a place for an OS which is not open source, and not tied to a hardware platform?

[amiga_3k]

Great opportunity. Hope this session will shed some light on the Amiga situation.

My few cents:
1) When Gateway bought 'The Amiga' they initially had great plans with it. Rumours had it that Mircrosoft threatned them with a Windows-ban if / when they materialized these plans, leading to a canceling of those plans. If those rumours are true,  are they part of the reason why AmigaOS isn't ported to other platforms?  [hmmm... moderators, I'm not too sure if this is a legitimate question, it's NOT intended as abuse, it's a question that's keeping me busy for quite some time now]

2) The year 2007 would be 25 years after development on the Amiga started. Wouldn't that be a nice oportunity to sell a celebration version of the Amiga? Right now I guess everything ranging frome a one-off production run of the A1000 to a licensed production run of something Minimig-like would be apeciated by the remaining Amiga fans.

Okay... I'll go back dreaming about an Amiga resurrection...

[lempkee]

@wayne, thanks.

I have no questions for Amiga Inc.

[Warface]

Simply - what Amiga Inc does today?

[Elwood]

My questions are:
Do you plan new products other than AmigaDE/AmigaAnywhere?
What do you plan on the audio area on your products?

[peroxidechicken]

How big do you think the potential market for AmigaOS 4 is?  And, based on that figure, how much money does Amiga Inc have to make from each person that wants to use AmigaOS 4?

[fatman2021]

1) Do you have any plans to port AmigaOS x to AmigaAnywhere? It would let people run AmigaOS x on both PPC and x86 computers in hosted mode, and if they have any need to run more powerful programs, they can by an amigaone/clone and run AmigaOS in native mode.
2) Are you willing to releace the Clasic Amiga Hardware specs and AmigaOS 1.0-3.1 source code to the public? This would also help grow the platform, and if they need to run a more powerful program that would not run on AmigaOS 1.0-3.1 they would have to buy an amigaone/clone with AmigaOS 4.0 or above.

[billt]

Do you have any plans to port AmigaOS x to AmigaAnywhere? It would let people run AmigaOS x on both PPC and x86 computers in hosted mode, and if they have any need to run more powerful programs, they can by an amigaone/clone and run AmigaOS in native mode.

So, you want to run OS4 inside of AmigaAnywhere, which itself requires a host OS such as Windows? Hosting Anywhere makes sense to the point that JVMs do, basically hosting a particular application that can run on any host platform. I'm not sure it makes sense to run an OS like AmigaOS4 inside a hosted VM. Why? For that to be useful, then OS4 apps/games must work in that environment, currently they only work in PPC environment. If you need to port your apps to work in the double-hosted OS4, why not just port it to the VM hosting OS4 instead? That effectively gives you the same market, since AmigaOne-native OS4 cannot provide the VM environment, these apps/games would only be usable under the VM hosted OS4 port.They wouldn't gain any potential market for existing OS4 binaries, and developers would have to make at least two binaries for their OS4 stuff, one binary for AmigaOne/PPC, the other for double-hosted VM OS4.

It makes more sense to port AmigaAnywhere to OS4. That way they slightly increase their potential market, as now anywhere apps can be used on everything they already do plus on OS4. Granted, the current Amiga market adding into their existing possible anywhere market would be hard to notice.

[RacerX]

Does Amiga Inc have any future plans regarding desktop Amigas?  OS5?

Will AmigaAnywhere/Amiga DE be ported to Amiga OS4?

How many licensed OS4 hardware builders are there?  What is involved in getting a license?

[Floid]

Mine are multipart as well, but can probably be merged with previous concepts:

-Has the NHL deal borne any sort of fruit?  [Is any of same publically available, and if so, where is it present/available for purchase?]

-Is what's left of Amiga Inc. now tightly focused on the publishing role, similar to what became of the Atari brand, or do other business relationships/'technology partnerships' continue?  [Albeit still with the DE/intent connection, sure.]

-Will a shrinkwrapped development environment ever be available again?  ['Shrinkwrapped' used in the sense of 'generally available without requiring contractual obligations above and beyond a conventional software license.'  Or 'without direct negotiation required,' at least.]