Consequences of the AmigaOS 3.1 source code "leak", one year after?

[Rotzloeffel]

Fun fact: There are indeed (68k) applications were developed at 3.5 or 3.9 times that run perfectly with my 4.1 setups (Petunia) but won't do so with a 3.1 setup. Of course.

There are a lot of them.....

[kolla]

I would love to invite ThoR to fix my mom's ASUS laptop. It got upgraded to Windows 10 and the built in web camera now insists to record upside-down, much to my mom's (and her friends') frustration when she is on Skype. I went through a large handful of drivers from both Microsoft, ASUS and camera vendor, but only the ancient Microsoft drivers from 2006 (!), that Windows 10 by default insisted on, were able to produce a picture at all. The controllers in the drivers that typically would allow you to set various properties, are mostly all "grayed out", with a few exceptions. Among the grayed out options are those for rotation. So... woop woop for compatible closed source drivers from Microsoft.

[kolla]

Read the settlement. That just states Amiga Group have the right to enforce copyright.

Whether they choose to do so, or are able to do, is a different question. And whether their claim to do is legitimate technically hasn't been tested in a court (yet). That would be the "bottom line", I guess.

So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download, and for which the ownership is unclear, and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?

[guest11527]

I would love to invite ThoR to fix my mom's ASUS laptop.

Got warranty on it? If so, return it and get it fixed, that's what warranty is good for. If not so, pay for a working software. Quite simple.

[kolla]

To setup the parameters, for example the SCSI ID by which the device is seen.

I see, well, it is a good thing that this software too is open source - is it not?

In fact the entire SCSI2SD is open source - what _are_ you doing?!

Yes. Amongst the other "dragon territories", as such as "which init system do I use today", "which X11 replacement system do you prefer" and "how do I configure my printer with cups".

I have used openrc for the last 15 years and have no plans on switching.
Bonus feature is that openrc is now also standard on TrueOS.

I do not replace X11, I use Xorg, how long as Xorg been around?

I don't configure cups, I don't even have it installed.
I just tell the software that wants to print, to use a network printer.

Anyhow, cups, though open source, is mainly maintained by Apple developers.

One comes with the other, and that is the problem you do not (yet?) understand.

Excuse me? It is perfectly possible to build entire open source operating systems without having to touch anything Linux. That you prefer Linux as your platform for development is _your_ choice. And it is funny that you are so unhappy about your own choices.

As a paid developer, my motivaton is my pay-check, and this comes from the customer. If the product doesn't work, I'm fired. Full stop.

Many people have been fired because of their crappy code in open source projects as well - just ask Intel.

Means, "bad code runs the industry", and AmigaOs is certainly that (to major parts): Bad code. However, it's bad code that works. If you leave this bad code to open source, you might get good code in the end, but no compatibility. BPTRs, BSTRs? Away with this nonsense. Legacy GlobVec initialization in dos.library? Away with this crap. graphics.library workarounds for bad programs? Sorry for them, away with the junk...

All nice and correct from a software engineering perspective, but still a bad decision from the user perspective.

If you search, you can probably find post by me on USENET from 20+ years ago where I argue for breaking compatibility in favour of progress of the OS. And I am a user. It's not like super-duper compatible 3.1 would disappear, it would always be around for those who need it. And it could be sandboxed it various ways, for example I have a clean 3.1 that I launch with WHDLoad to run certain software.

[kolla]

Got warranty on it? If so, return it and get it fixed, that's what warranty is good for. If not so, pay for a working software. Quite simple.

I am quite willing to pay. Who do I pay? Can I pay you to fix it?

[EugeneNine]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying exactly what I said above: "AmigaOs needs a maintainer, not a bunch of hackers". And that's exactly going to happen if you open source it.

Look at Linux: It's a nice operating system for developers. It's a poor operating system for end users. The average open source guy develops for his particular needs, and not for the need of the user - which means that anything that is of utter importance for creating a working software infrastructure is ignored: Stability of software interfaces.

Open source projects may start out as a simple hacker tool but as they become bigger/more popular they tend to fall into standard code practices (many of which were developed out of open source projects).  For example myself , as an end user of Linux and/or KDE have submitted requests and saw those implemented.  On the other hand myself as an end user of a certain closed source OS have paid $200 to open an incident to make a request only to have it denied.  So I've found that Open source and Linux works better for end users myself.

The GNU/Linux system - and I do not talk about the kernel interface in particular - changes on a daily basis. If you get a binary from yesterday, you do not know whether it will continue to run today because somebody surely played with the interface of some system library somewhere.

This is not acceptable for an end user product - breaking legacy software isn not an option, and even less so in the Amiga environment which only has legacy software.

Yes the code changes but if your an end user and not a developer your not pulling the daily code changes, your running the stable versions so these changes don't affect you unless you intentionally upgrade portions of the software your running and you should be reading the change logs to see what changes first.

Examples? Ok, here are two: Years ago, there was a nice XMMS plugin to play Amiga "chip" tunes through an UAE interface layer. XMMS changed the plugin interface when porting to Audacity for no apparent reason, and the player broke. I took great effort to port it to the "new and improved" Audacity interface then - for my own needs - just to find out that the open source "hackerz" changed the interface *right again*. Why? There was no reason to - it worked the way it was.

Examples? Just got a new SCSI2SD hardware here, with some linux software to install it. System is a pretty stable ("rotten"?) Debian system. Does the software work out of the box? Of course not! It misses "libudev.0", except that Debian runs (since ages) libudev.1, the next version, with a different interface. Why was that breakage necessary? Was it really necessary to create "just another incompatible" interface for udev?

If open source coders had some discipline in keeping their software interfaces stable, linux could be a much better system - but that is not the development goal of open source. The customer is not the user. The customer is the coder.

Now, consider what that means for the Amiga "market"? It means - already - a lot of frustration due to a lot of incompatible software floating around, and a software infrastructure that consists entirely on legacy software.

This sounds like a plan for utter failure for me. If you want open source, nothing beats Linux. I'm using it myself, works for me. But that's a different market with different goals, and that should not be confused with the Amiga ecosystem, which is something entirely different. I *cannot go along* and change the interface of "layers" just for the fun of it, and break old code. It's a big no-no.

How many examples of the same issues happening to close source software do you want, I can provide just as many as this issue is not specific to Open Source, this issues happens with any software.

[kolla]

Would be cool to see ThoR switch to DragonFlyBSD, with its "Amiga connection" and all

[cgutjahr]

So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download

Stolen code.

and for which the ownership is unclear

Ownership of that code is clearly defined.

and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?

The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.

[guest11527]

I am quite willing to pay. Who do I pay? Can I pay you to fix it?

How should I know? Ask ASUS, it's their product, after all. If you installed an operating system the system was not designed for, then that's certainly not ASUS' problem and they will tell you. The product probably worked when it arrived at your Mum's home. Did the system come with Windows 10? Probably not. So if you install something on the machine ASUS doesn't give you a warranty for, that's then entirely your problem.

No, I'm not running a windows repair shop, I'm not interested in this work.

[kolla]

The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.

Really - but they have chosen to avoid the problem by not looking? As I (and others) have pointed out numerous times - the BoingBag3+4 contains binaries built from the "stolen code".

Take action, whoever you are!

[kolla]

No, I'm not running a windows repair shop, I'm not interested in this work.

So what _do_ you do for a living?

[guest11527]

I see, well, it is a good thing that this software too is open source - is it not?

For *me*, probably, but not for the average user. You cannot expect the average user to compile a program just to get something working.

In fact the entire SCSI2SD is open source - what _are_ you doing?!

Downloaded the binaries from the repository, tried to run them. As simple as that. Did not work. As usual, if you want to run binaries on Linux.

I do not replace X11, I use Xorg, how long as Xorg been around?

Yes, but a couple of distributions did, and more will continue to do.

I don't configure cups, I don't even have it installed.
I just tell the software that wants to print, to use a network printer.

But I have a printer, guess what? I probably want to print from time to time.

Anyhow, cups, though open source, is mainly maintained by Apple developers.

Which means... exactly what? I'm not in the position nor do I have the ability to hack it up. The entire product is way too complicated to the problem it should solve. Overenginered for the average user.

Excuse me? It is perfectly possible to build entire open source operating systems without having to touch anything Linux. That you prefer Linux as your platform for development is _your_ choice. And it is funny that you are so unhappy about your own choices.

I'm not unhappy about my choice. I'm just telling you what the drawbacks of open source are, and that you cannot expect the average user to handle such a system. Open source is for developers. You are a developer, I'm a developer, but my Mum is not. She cannot install a printer with cups - I can. She *probably* could install a printer on windows, but not on Linux.

That's a difference, and that's exactly the difference I want to point out. Amiga used to be a pretty user friendly system. By making it open source, you turn the system inside out. If you want a developer-friendly system, go for AROS, it's more for your needs. I personally do not see AmigaOs in *this* niche because I already have linux if I want to fiddle with open source code.

Many people have been fired because of their crappy code in open source projects as well - just ask Intel.

Well, if intel wants to hire open source developers, that's their choice of course. If they are unhappy about the code quality...

If you search, you can probably find post by me on USENET from 20+ years ago where I argue for breaking compatibility in favour of progress of the OS.

But look, then I do not get your problem. Go AROS, and be fine with it. It's a different system, with different goals, probably goals that are closer to your needs. Why do you wait then for something that is unlikely to happen, and complain about something *you* can change, and that is only your choice?

[cgutjahr]

Take action, whoever you are!

I don't get that attitude. Several Github repositories and regular downloads have been taken offline after the rights holders (both Cloanto and Hyperion) took action. They do take action, period.

Now you're trying to provoke them into taking down something they apparently haven't noticed yet, potentially hurting the maintainer of the BB3+BB4 projects, and definitely hurting the people interested in these projects. And even if your approach works (nobody takes action so you can shout "told you so, open source, Thomas Richter is a doofus" in a lot of future threads) - it doesn't actually achieve anything: because the code still can not be used legally and thus will only be tampered with by the likes of Cosmos.

Maybe it's just me - but that looks like a massive dick move, doesn't it?

[Fats]

If you just need a system to be productive in some other way, it's not good for you.

Good that the python using science community ignores this law.

[duga]

None.