Why not support Aros 68k instead of patching old binaries?

[OlafS3]

The CybergraphX thread was closed so I could not answer there and decided to make a new one.

The issues with patching or not distributing abandoned binaries with or without permission of author pops up regularly here. I do not want to start a bashing thread about authors but we all know that many old projects are either completely abandoned (author not accessible anymore) or authors still active (on one of the NG platforms) and reluctant to support 68k anymore.

My conclusion and question is... we do not need the old binaries anymore because there is a replacement for it: Aros 68k together with Rom Replacements from Toni Wilen. It is opensource and sources are legally accessible and it is possible to change and improve them. The Aros project lacks developers so if people want to improve the situation why do they not help there.

In this case CybergraphX 3 is implemented in Aros, why not helping to improve it? The situation regarding the old sources will not change anymore so why not accepting it and start somewhere new. Additionally Aros 68k benefits from the Aros developments so it is very sophisiticated and gets new software. Forget the old stuff... where Aros needs improvements when running on old hardware is mainly improvements in speed. And on API level some are very good implemented, in others stuff is missing. But it offers future... What do people here think?

[Blizz1220]

Just out of curiosity is CGX in Aros (68k) remake by Aros team or is
it the one created by original author ?

Whole thread seemed pointless to me , if Cosmos fixed some tiny bug in
some OS4 library he would be cheered form there to the moon probably.
And about what Cosmos said about kickstarts it can only be seen as wall
of silence from people and companies who know who has what rights.
Not to mention that you need Amiga to use them (or at leas you had to
spend a lot of time on one for them to be any use to you).

From what I can read Hyperion is right company to contact for licensing
Amiga Kickstart (3.1?) for hardware projects but even better way would be
just ignore whole legal "you better not 'cause you know" and let end-user
get what he needs himself.Those who are not able will be advised on how
to do it anyways.

[OlafS3]

Just out of curiosity is CGX in Aros (68k) remake by Aros team or is
it the one created by original author ?

Whole thread seemed pointless to me , if Cosmos fixed some tiny bug in
some OS4 library he would be cheered form there to the moon probably.
And about what Cosmos said about kickstarts it can only be seen as wall
of silence from people and companies who know who has what rights.
Not to mention that you need Amiga to use them (or at leas you had to
spend a lot of time on one for them to be any use to you).

From what I can read Hyperion is right company to contact for licensing
Amiga Kickstart (3.1?) for hardware projects but even better way would be
just ignore whole legal "you better not 'cause you know" and let end-user
get what he needs himself.Those who are not able will be advised on how
to do it anyways.

Aros is always a "rewrite" of the libraries so CybergraphX is certainly not based on original resources but original API. I think there were also contributions by orginal authors but core components are certainly not based on any orginal library source.

Regarding Cosmos... he can offer a patch without original binary and noone can do anything about it. Thomas Richter sees it from a professional software engineering point of view and is not wrong with one problem... 68k is not getting supported anymore. That is the case for most core components today, in most cases no souces are available. AHI is the only exception that comes to my mind.

Regarding Roms I would additionally think of Cloanto but I do not know that exactly. Finally (at least for me) it is irrelevant because I use Aros and replacements for the Roms. For me the more promising path is to support a platform that is in development than to patch some old binaries. But everybody how he likes it...

[Blizz1220]

Problem with Aros68k is that it obviously won't work on regular not
heavily expanded Amiga but it might be a treasure trove of software
that can be run on modest Amiga configurations.Lot of AROS software
doesn't need that much memory / cpu power (I mean things under 2-3
Mb when compiled , Netsurf68k is good example).

I think Cloanto is the right company to contact for licensing emulation
like projects (no way to know).When new more powerful 68k hardware
FPGAs start showing up then Aros68k will shine.And who say PPC is the
more future these days than FPGAs or RPis should check their facts.

[OlafS3]

Problem with Aros68k is that it obviously won't work on regular not
heavily expanded Amiga but it might be a treasure trove of software
that can be run on modest Amiga configurations.Lot of AROS software
doesn't need that much memory / cpu power (I mean things under 2-3
Mb when compiled , Netsurf68k is good example).

I think Cloanto is the right company to contact for licensing emulation
like projects (no way to know).When new more powerful 68k hardware
FPGAs start showing up then Aros68k will shine.And who say PPC is the
more future these days than FPGAs or RPis should check their facts.

For me PPC has no future anyway... today you have either Intel-based hardware (or AMD) or ARM. For Amiga fans certainly FPGA based hardware offers most chances. Netsurf68k with only 2-3 MB RAM or do you mean on HD? Modern software like new OWB need much more RAM.

[Blizz1220]

No , not Netsurf but it's pretty low demanding.I was thinking of maybe
some IRC Client stuff , Telnet , more advanced drawing program that
have more functionality then old stuff.NEW SHELL !

And it's irritating when thing that were adopted as standard such as MUI ,
AHI , P96 , CGX etc. are now somewhere in between of not being developed
but maybe if many people ask then original author who is now coding for
PPC will suffer to implement few things.

This kind of stuff happened all the time before.I see no problem if there is
CGX library (pathced by Cosmos) available somewhere and programs that
want use it can just put in readme that you need Cosmo's patched version
instead yet more patches upon patches upon patches.

Original library is still there and if it's hosted on Aminet nobody but the
author can change it.As market shrinks few companies that remain will
have to find every possible way to make money to survive to it's under-
standable that new player won't be welcomed with open arms but that
should not be the case when they are just offering free upgrade for
end users.

[OlafS3]

No , not Netsurf but it's pretty low demanding.I was thinking of maybe
some IRC Client stuff , Telnet , more advanced drawing program that
have more functionality then old stuff.NEW SHELL !

And it's irritating when thing that were adopted as standard such as MUI ,
AHI , P96 , CGX etc. are now somewhere in between of not being developed
but maybe if many people ask then original author who is now coding for
PPC will suffer to implement few things.

This kind of stuff happened all the time before.I see no problem if there is
CGX library (pathced by Cosmos) available somewhere and programs that
want use it can just put in readme that you need Cosmo's patched version
instead yet more patches upon patches upon patches.

Original library is still there and if it's hosted on Aminet nobody but the
author can change it.As market shrinks few companies that remain will
have to find every possible way to make money to survive to it's under-
standable that new player won't be welcomed with open arms but that
should not be the case when they are just offering free upgrade for
end users.

I see it this way... of course many authors left and let it back abandoned and without sources. From a legal point of view you cannot distribute it patched but only the patch.

Some stuff like CybergraphX and MUI is still in development but the authors changed to PPC and different OS platforms so the chance that they will offer updates or even bug fixes is pretty small. There is theoreticall the chance to improve Aros then you can use it directly with Aros 68k or backport it to AmigaOS 3.X. Or offer patches without original binaries but we all know that stability and compatibility not rises by this.

[guest11527]

Leaving a couple of possible legal aspects aside, there is more philosophical aspect to it. Certainly I would pick PC hardware as basis given that its cheaply and readily available. I believe we agree on this.

My concern is rather that AmigaOs - or rather its design principles - are not exactly fit for some recent developments. Take SMP for example. With Forbid()/Permit() locking in AmigaOs, SMP is extremely hard to implement (if possible at all). Actually, I'd rather believe it is not.

In the end, given that we had something like an AmigaOs port on PC, it would probably be a nice software to toy around with, but you'll have a hard time updating it for today's requirements. There's probably not much left what defined the Amiga.

Let's say that the "Amiga feeling" is the workbench: I could certainly write a desktop replacement for another kernel (say, Linux, for example) that mimics the look and feel of the Amiga workbench. This would still be a couple of years behind the look & feel of state-of-the art desktops. I could possibly write an API compatibility layer that, for example, offers intituition calls and addresses the corresponding X11 interfaces on the other side, but I would get user interfaces from past century.

Somehow, I have the feeling that such a project is ill-defined. I'm not really sure what it is about (in the same sense that I'm not sure what OS4 or Morphos is really about, even though I have there much stronger doubts).

IOW, does it really make sense to "update the Amiga" anymore? The hardware is as obsolote as it could be. The Os has too many constructional weaknesses to allow porting it to modern hardware.

So what's left? It's probably "electronic archaeology", to keep the memory of a historically interesting system alive. But for that, I don't need OS4 or Morphos or ... AROS. (Sorry!) The system I have is "as good as it goes", and any attempt to modernize it would give me a system that can neither compete with the PC and modern Os'es, nor could it compete with the Amiga because it deviates from it.

Don't shoot. Just thinking...

[OlafS3]

Leaving a couple of possible legal aspects aside, there is more philosophical aspect to it. Certainly I would pick PC hardware as basis given that its cheaply and readily available. I believe we agree on this.

My concern is rather that AmigaOs - or rather its design principles - are not exactly fit for some recent developments. Take SMP for example. With Forbid()/Permit() locking in AmigaOs, SMP is extremely hard to implement (if possible at all). Actually, I'd rather believe it is not.

In the end, given that we had something like an AmigaOs port on PC, it would probably be a nice software to toy around with, but you'll have a hard time updating it for today's requirements. There's probably not much left what defined the Amiga.

Let's say that the "Amiga feeling" is the workbench: I could certainly write a desktop replacement for another kernel (say, Linux, for example) that mimics the look and feel of the Amiga workbench. This would still be a couple of years behind the look & feel of state-of-the art desktops. I could possibly write an API compatibility layer that, for example, offers intituition calls and addresses the corresponding X11 interfaces on the other side, but I would get user interfaces from past century.

Somehow, I have the feeling that such a project is ill-defined. I'm not really sure what it is about (in the same sense that I'm not sure what OS4 or Morphos is really about, even though I have there much stronger doubts).

IOW, does it really make sense to "update the Amiga" anymore? The hardware is as obsolote as it could be. The Os has too many constructional weaknesses to allow porting it to modern hardware.

So what's left? It's probably "electronic archaeology", to keep the memory of a historically interesting system alive. But for that, I don't need OS4 or Morphos or ... AROS. (Sorry!) The system I have is "as good as it goes", and any attempt to modernize it would give me a system that can neither compete with the PC and modern Os'es, nor could it compete with the Amiga because it deviates from it.

Don't shoot. Just thinking...

Boom... :-)

As I understand it all tries regarding SMP (at the moment done on Aros port to Raspberry) is to use different cores efficiently and automatically to get as much speed for the primary core. You cannot write software that uses more than one core. It is certainly difficult to write a updated OS that does not break with everything. The MorphOS devs seem to go in that direction, they might get a nice modernized platform but finally without software. Aros is source compatible between platforms so a radical break is not best solution.

For me it is fun... in normal life I have to work and develop on Windows, on one side lots of better software on the other side a really complicated OS. So using something amiga related is relaxation against that (except when you want to develop). I do not expect a updated AmigaOS or AROS or whatever to compete with Windows or Macs so I am personal quiet happy how it is. But if people want updates and developments investing in something that is in development anyway and where sources are available makes more sense to me than patching old binaries.

[kamelito]

The CybergraphX thread was closed so I could not answer there and decided to make a new one.

The issues with patching or not distributing abandoned binaries with or without permission of author pops up regularly here. I do not want to start a bashing thread about authors but we all know that many old projects are either completely abandoned (author not accessible anymore) or authors still active (on one of the NG platforms) and reluctant to support 68k anymore.

My conclusion and question is... we do not need the old binaries anymore because there is a replacement for it: Aros 68k together with Rom Replacements from Toni Wilen. It is opensource and sources are legally accessible and it is possible to change and improve them. The Aros project lacks developers so if people want to improve the situation why do they not help there.

In this case CybergraphX 3 is implemented in Aros, why not helping to improve it? The situation regarding the old sources will not change anymore so why not accepting it and start somewhere new. Additionally Aros 68k benefits from the Aros developments so it is very sophisiticated and gets new software. Forget the old stuff... where Aros needs improvements when running on old hardware is mainly improvements in speed. And on API level some are very good implemented, in others stuff is missing. But it offers future... What do people here think?

See AFA:
http://amidevcpp.amiga-world.de/afaupload.php
Kamelito

[Minuous]

I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but I don't want to work on OS3.1 any more than I would want to work on, for example, OS2.1. Not even the official version let alone some clone of it.

We have OS3.9, it is pointless to work on something that even when perfected will not implement OS3.9 features. I would not want to throw out all 3.5/3.9/BB1-4 enhancements.

[guest11527]

For me it is fun... in normal life I have to work and develop on Windows, on one side lots of better software on the other side a really complicated OS. So using something amiga related is relaxation against that (except when you want to develop). I do not expect a updated AmigaOS or AROS or whatever to compete with Windows or Macs so I am personal quiet happy how it is. But if people want updates and developments investing in something that is in development anyway and where sources are available makes more sense to me than patching old binaries.

Well, but that doesn't quite answer my question, right? I mean, where does the fun stop? Is Morphos or Os4 less fun than AmigaOs? If so, why? Would be Linux more fun than Morphos? If so, why?

I can only speak for myself. For me, Amiga is a hobby pet project I run because the hardware was (back then) a breakthrough and I have a software basis to work with. That also includes compilers, assemblers and my legacy code. You cannot recreate a breakthrough by including the same design errors in a modern re-creation, let it be Morphos, OS4 or ARos. The classics are - classic old computes in a classic old environment.

Rather, if I want to have some fun with modern machines, I'd rather go for a modern Os and play with that. Works, too.  

Anyhow, it's a personal decision. I'm just trying to get a picture on what other people think.

[OlafS3]

Well, but that doesn't quite answer my question, right? I mean, where does the fun stop? Is Morphos or Os4 less fun than AmigaOs? If so, why? Would be Linux more fun than Morphos? If so, why?

I can only speak for myself. For me, Amiga is a hobby pet project I run because the hardware was (back then) a breakthrough and I have a software basis to work with. That also includes compilers, assemblers and my legacy code. You cannot recreate a breakthrough by including the same design errors in a modern re-creation, let it be Morphos, OS4 or ARos. The classics are - classic old computes in a classic old environment.

Rather, if I want to have some fun with modern machines, I'd rather go for a modern Os and play with that. Works, too.  

Anyhow, it's a personal decision. I'm just trying to get a picture on what other people think.

When I started with my distribution it was the pure interest how far I can get it. More or less I am happy how it is, it more or less satisfies my nostalgic needs already and I want to do a little with Hollywood and Free Pascal on it. I do not expect it (any of the NG platforms) realistic to take over the world, the maximum would be to have a niche market that is bigger than now. But if you invest time in improving something than it makes more sense to invest time in a open platform with free access to sources than in a closed platform, expecially if you have to sign strict NDAs and are no longer able to do what you want.

the fun is nostalgy and reach goals with limited means (easier to do the same on Windows or Mac of course but that can do everyone then ). A little weird I must admit.

[SpeedGeek]

The problem with AROS is that it's (unfortunately) not a practical replacement for 68K AmigaOS. Unless AROS can run at a "Usable" speed on a 68020 Amiga with 512KB ROM and 4 MB Fast RAM with a high degree of compatibility to 68K AmigaOS it never will be practical.

That's why I still code (and patch) for my classic 68K Amiga's from time to time. But I'm not sure if will release any more patches for AmigaOS or any third party stuff either. It's just not worth the hassle of defending your patches against people acting as "Self-appointed" lawyers of the copyright owners (who have long since abandoned the Amiga scene or just really don't care what happens).

Sorry folks, my A3000 scsi.device patch (now supporting RDBF_SYNC and some other improvements) and

My A2091/A590 scsi.device patch (14MHz scsi timings, obsolete xt.device removed and now supporting RDBF_SYNC) and

My 7/14MHz jumper select GURU ROM* patch may NEVER be released!

*The author has the patched ROM binary and could release it any time he wants.

[cunnpole]

patch may NEVER be released!

Is a standalone binary patcher not possible?