Hyperion: "Halloween special double-treat for the Classic AmigaOS"

[Pgovotsos]

The only reason this probably can't be done?
 Lack of programmer competency.

You do realize that when you insult the few people interested in doing anything in this space, the less likely they will retain their interest? We already have extremely competent people sacrificing what free time they have - you know after their real jobs that pay their bills, family, education and everything else. The only compensation they get is our thanks. When people stop appreciating what they are able to give us, what reason is there for them to continue? Would you work for free for some ungrateful person who does nothing but insult you, contributes nothing themselves, but continues to demand you do more and to do that more to their personal specifications regardless of the obstacles?

You ungrateful person. Assuming that you are a productive member of society and not the typical, modern, "gimme dat" American (judging from your attitudes and behavior probably not a good assumption), why don't you get off your lazy butt and actually contribute something yourself? Or are you one of "those who can't, criticize those who can"?

Why don't you try to find a few minutes in a busy day to find sources, decipher undocumented code, code that has multiple dependencies on other seemingly unrelated undocumented code, work with hardware that is insufficiently documented itself, try to figure out why someone 30 years ago chose to put THAT command THERE - a place it doesn't make sense for it to be but it is because of some quirk of the hardware or other modules of the software - someone who might be dead and can't explain the reason, and then rewrite it, still trying to maintain it within the extremely limited resources of the hardware. Do you have any concept of how MUCH needs to be in Kickstart and in only 512K? If you think this simplified description of what olsen, Thomas and others have to deal with is overstating the situation, read the experience of the people who rewrote the console.

These people are doing this out of love for the platform and the community. If the community, with people like you, stops appreciating them, goes out of their way to insult them, I would completely understand why they would stop spending their precious time and expertise and go elsewhere. Heck, with ungrateful, rude, crass, offensive jerks like you contributing nothing but bile, I'd go so far as to ENCOURAGE them to leave and let you to fester in your own crap.

Grow up. Act like an adult or go away. Nobody needs or wants your tantrums.

[Pgovotsos]

thomas, look, idont want to show off, but last week i have made the source of fryingpan compile for 68k target with gcc 6.1.0 with paranoia setting from within aros source tree. i have only received one hint from toni what concerns asm syntax. and while the work isnt finished, i need to debug some issues (luckily aros has gdb, so at least i get some hints as to where to look), i must insist that im a complete ignorant what concerns programming in whichever aspect. so, if a noob can do that kind of work, just because he wants to contribute, a professional with years of experience may well fix something more complicated.

You brag about what you did but by your own admission it is incomplete. Wow! I didn't know that people were supposed to brag until there was some to actually brag about - you know actually completing something.

[Pgovotsos]

And before anyone asks, I don't have the skills to contribute code. I'm a user, not a programmer unfortunately. My contribution is grateful appreciation and, when asked for, money.

[kolla]

And yet the two most popular NG OS' are closed source, while AROS is a distant third.

Do you have numbers to back up this claim?

I am pretty confident that the largest Amiga platforms are WinUAE, FS-UAE and uae4arm - all of which are open source. WinUAE and FS-UAE also come with AROS kickstart built in, who knows how many people out there use that kickstart without even knowing they are using AROS.

And Windows and OSX dominate the desktop market while Linux systems are a single digit percentage of the market (and that estimate is being kind).

You just "forget" to mention how open source fuel both those operating systems, and macOS in particular. If there had not been any BSD licensed software around, there would have been no OSX to talk of, and Windows wouldn't have had a TCP stack for many, many more years.

All Amiga TCP stacks are also based on open source.

Its simple economics, professional programmers need to earn a living, there is no profit in open software to generate an income to pay the programmers.

No profit in open source software, huh? You better tell all those companies that base their existence on open source software then, the companies that keep the Internet running, that provide us with platforms for all the apps people are using these days, that keeps this very site up and running, the made Facebook, Google, Amazon etc possible. No profit, huh?

Open software is free, but you get what you pay for.

Which explains why when I recently needed to uses a spreadsheet, even though I already had Open Office on my system, I paid for an Office365 license so I could have access to Excel. It's just a better program than its equivalent in OO.

Irrelevant anecdotal nonsense. To outweigh your experiences, I can tell you that I find MSOffice and OO both equally braindead and annoying to use. However, there are plenty of options that are much more convenient to use these days.

[eliyahu]

@thread

we've been able to keep this thread civil so far, and i want it to stay that way. refrain from insulting other members, and keep the AROS off-topic stuff out of this thread. i don't want to have to moderate this topic, so please knock it off now. thanks.

-- eliyahu

[kolla]

You brag about what you did but by your own admission it is incomplete. Wow! I didn't know that people were supposed to brag until there was some to actually brag about - you know actually completing something.

Wow, you should read to yourself what you wrote to Iggy just above, about insulting those who actually contribute. Wawrzon is doing plenty to contribute, give him your money.

[Iggy]

Wow, you should read to yourself what you wrote to Iggy just above, about insulting those who actually contribute. Wawrzon is doing plenty to contribute, give him your money.

 
 I'm not insulted, its just a difference of opinion.
 
 And since the market supports MY opinions, why should I care that another open source enthusiast doesn't understand basic economics?

 I needed Excel, no alternatives came close, I'm glad I bought it.
 I KNOW what my requirement were, so his opinions aren't relevant.
 
 Although, OSX is SO much better than Open BSD, and they regularly feed developments back to the OpenBSD community.
 Further, if NextStep hadn't been built on that, it could have easily been based on something else.
 
 Proprietary software IS better than open software.
 Its just a fact, one that he apparently can't deal with.
 
 But since the public has spoken with its funding, its irrefutable.

[Pgovotsos]

I'm not insulted, its just a difference of opinion.
 
 And since the market supports MY opinions, why should I care that another open source enthusiast doesn't understand basic economics?

 I needed Excel, no alternatives came close, I'm glad I bought it.
 I KNOW what my requirement were, so his opinions aren't relevant.
 
 Although, OSX is SO much better than Open BSD, and they regularly feed developments back to the OpenBSD community.
 Further, if NextStep hadn't been built on that, it could have easily been based on something else.
 
 Proprietary software IS better than open software.
 Its just a fact, one that he apparently can't deal with.
 
 But since the public has spoken with its funding, its irrefutable.

Um, I haven't said one word about open / closed source at all. I responded to you calling people in a difficult situation incompetent and kolla bragging about an incomplete project.

[guest11527]

thomas, look, idont want to show off, but last week i have made the source of fryingpan compile for 68k target with gcc 6.1.0 with paranoia setting from within aros source tree.

Look, at this point, let's simply say that you haven't seen it. The make architecture is intertwined enough, but at least it works with the *supplied* tools. I'm not entirely sure how well the Makefiles port over from Olaf's version of GNUmake to the up-to-date version of GNUmake, given the differing path conventions, differing wild-card conventions and many other subtle but important changes.

Sources do not follow the usual convention of .h files, rather depend on a delicate toolchain to generate these from the sources, together with some assembler stubs that depend on implementation details of the compilers, plus several compiler-specific extensions - as for example to put the library base pointer into a specific register - which, even worse, are completely undocumented. I fiddled about a week understanding one particular compiler switch for the Lattice compiler that was nowhere in a manual and that was specifically added for CBMs needs and then left alone....

Now, as always, with sufficient time available, and sufficient people to test it, and a long test plan, all of this can be tackled. But let's face reality: The chance is pretty good that while working on this rather delicate and fragile construction, something is somewhere to break in an unforeseen way, and given the amount of manpower and competence available, it seems unlikely that any workable solution can be obtained in a realistic timespan.

You may complain about the closed source nature of the sources, but you won't change it. It is the way it is, and the only way to handle the problem at this point in a realistic timespan with a realistic amount of testing necessary is to *deal* with the situation and accept the complete toolchain as it is.

In short: Too much to do, too many chances to get break something, with too little people to clean it up => just stick with what you have and of what you know that it does its job.  

As said, it compiles under Linux, so it's not that bad anymore, actually.

[Iggy]

Um, I haven't said one word about open / closed source at all. I responded to you calling people in a difficult situation incompetent and kolla bragging about an incomplete project.

Then you misinterpreted my comment.
When I was referring to competent programmers, I meant competent in coding using assembly, which is no longer a common skill, and certainly the few that still bother ARE no where near as competent as the programmers I worked with decades ago.

I other words, they couldn't do the work.

Further I AM insulted by your latest posts like this:

"You ungrateful person. Assuming that you are a productive member of society and not the typical, modern, "gimme dat" American (judging from your attitudes and behavior probably not a good assumption), why don't you get off your lazy butt and actually contribute something yourself? Or are you one of "those who can't, criticize those who can"?

First, at 55 I contributed MY work years ago.
Second, as a American, and in reference to 'lazy Americans'....
We produced the platform in the first place, per capita we are still some of the most productive people on the planet, and we still design the majority of the computer hardware that is used Worldwide.
 
Further as far as those "that can", I can and still do code in 68K machine language.
 I don't have to justify MY accomplishments to the likes of you, I was part of the management of a company designing and selling 68K based computers decades ago.

I'd rather exchange messages with people like Thomas that I have an honest difference of opinion with than you.

So, don't presume to know what you're talking about when you baselessly attack others.

[kolla]

For sh1ts and giggles I uploaded the boot screen of my A1200
http://www.amiga.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=204&pictureid=1382

[kolla]

 I needed Excel, no alternatives came close, I'm glad I bought it.
 I KNOW what my requirement were, so his opinions aren't relevant.

Good for you, I am just happy I do not share your needs, I have my own needs and they are in general much better covered by open source based software.

Although, OSX is SO much better than Open BSD, and they regularly feed developments back to the OpenBSD community.

You probably mean FreeBSD, but whatever - it is the BSD community, of which Apple is a part with their DarwinBSD which is the foundation of OSX, now macOS.

Further, if NextStep hadn't been built on that, it could have easily been based on something else.

No, it could not "easily" have been built on something else, Steve Jobs was very clear about this.

Proprietary software IS better than open software. Its just a fact, one that he apparently can't deal with.

It is not at all a fact, it is at best an illusion.

Quality of code has nothing to with whether it is open source or not, but open source allows _education_ and _participation_, from which great stuff and new opportunities can arise.

[kolla]

Um, I haven't said one word about open / closed source at all. I responded to you calling people in a difficult situation incompetent and kolla bragging about an incomplete project.

It wasn't me, it was wawrzon, and he wasn't bragging, he was just providing an anecdotal example from the real world.

[kolla]

As said, it compiles under Linux, so it's not that bad anymore, actually.

You should get Iggy to buy you SCO UNIX, the old one, before they started relying on FreeBSD, maybe Xenix! Then it would be so much better! :laughing:

[Iggy]

For sh1ts and giggles I uploaded the boot screen of my A1200
http://www.amiga.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=204&pictureid=1382

Neat!
 I may have to get one of those for my A2000 if only for the new copyright and the difference in the splash screen.
 Thanks.

[Iggy]

Good for you, I am just happy I do not share your needs, I have my own needs and they are in general much better covered by open source based software.



You probably mean FreeBSD, but whatever - it is the BSD community, of which Apple is a part with their DarwinBSD which is the foundation of OSX, now macOS.



No, it could not "easily" have been built on something else, Steve Jobs was very clear about this.



It is not at all a fact, it is at best an illusion.

Quality of code has nothing to with whether it is open source or not, but open source allows _education_ and _participation_, from which great stuff and new opportunities can arise.

Bah! Free BSD, OpenBSD, both OS' with less market than Linux, and Linux is pretty dreadful.
 OSX/DarwinBSD - Which is the better of the two? Oh yeah, the COMMERCIAL version.
 So, what you think of as an illusion is a fact in the marketplace.
 Serious users don't rely on open source software (well, anywhere outside Germany).
 AND, Excel is significantly better than the spreadsheets offered in open software.
 
 Again, you get what you pay for.