Amiga, Inc: Close That Open Hardware!

[Alkemyst]

There is NO POP board to buy for home use.

So it dont matter if its MOS or Aos4.

None will run on just any mobo with out drivers & new Hal.

There is no standard PPC platform yet.

This not PC land where a standard has been set.

HO  & why is it always Genesi/MOS aside with you.
Maybe cos you bought a Pegasos/MOS.
They can do what they want cos you bought from them.

But Aos4 has to go by your rules.

You dont ask for MOS to run on all PPC mobo's
You dont ask for MOSx86.

But you ask the other side Aos4 to take all the risk.

If Aos4 fails by talking all the risks at least you got MOS to fall back on.
You dont want MOS that you bought to take a risk.

& how many times have you been told this Mips_Proc.

[Seehund]

Woohey, back online after the holidays, and the same old same old is still being thrown around!

mikeymike wrote:
That article is serious flamebait.  It's like going into comp.sys.amiga.advocacy and asking "what makes the Amiga so special".

You mean "I disagree with that article", right?

It may be a sucky idea to some people that dongle'izing the A1 hardware so that OS4 won't run on non-official Amiga hardware, but at the end of the day, Apple made the same kind of decision (stopping the Mac clone market), which may have been for better or worse for it.  Yes, it would be more convenient for consumers to have a greater choice, but [generally, heh :-)] business produce products to make money.

Not the old "MacOS only runs on Macs" again, please!

The Apple situation is totally different from this. Apple is essentially a hardware company. They make a living on selling computers. However sucky it might be for consumers who are only interested in MacOS, it is quite understandable and makes sense business-wise for Apple to prohibit MacOS from running anywhere else than on Apple Macs.

For some strange reason somebody brought up MorphOS and the Pegasos. Even though Genesi/Thendic/whatever several times have stated that they want MorphOS on more hardware than the Pegasos, they're still similar to Apple in this respect. They make and sell their own hardware and OS.

Amiga, Inc. is not a hardware company. AmigaOS depends on availability of and compatibility with third party hardware. Restricting what hardware "their" product, AmigaOS, will run on and from whom AmigaOS customers are allowed to buy that hardware does NOT make sense business-wise. It's painfully counterproductive and it's limiting and marginalising the AmigaOS product.

[Alkemyst]

@Seehund
How many Business have you run .

[Wolfe]

MOS/Genesi aside... if AOS where released to run on any POP based boards... it'd run on Barbie and the Pegasos... and we'd have more choices 'US" the consumers would...

Yes.   I am all about choice.  I do not want to be forced to buy from 1 vendor.  POP for all PPC OS's is the smartest way to go IMO.  I buy 1 machine and run 3 or more OS's,  OS4, Linux, OS X, BeOS and maybe Morph.   I like variety, tinker with one, get a little board switch and tinker with another.

[Seehund]

jumpship wrote:
People keep on about the OS4 dongle, but when you think about it, even without the "dongle code" OS4 is still tied to certain hardware. How? Drivers.

Well, of course! That's pretty damn self-evident, no?

Where did you see people objecting to software not automagically running on any hardware you can throw at it?

The licensing/dongling/bundling requirement does however not have anything to do with TECHNICAL reasons. It's an additional restriction on top of the valid technical reasons, and it helps preventing the OS to be ported to more hardware in the first place.

When you think about it, the only reason Windows appears to be able to run on any X86 board is because Windows has basic drivers for most motherboard hardware, ether by themselfes or supplied by the H/W manufacture.

But who's arguing for AmigaOS to run on "any" PPC board?
I'm arguing against imposing additional restrictions that are technically irrelevant, but yet will stop technical issues from even being considered.

Unless someone makes a board that is identical in everyway to Eytech's AmigaONE, OS4 still wouldn't run on it. Unless either they make the drivers or Hyperion do.

Huh? It's not like Eyetech is or ever has been the only distributor of Teron boards.

Then again it doesn't matter if the driver/HAL writing would only take 5 minutes by one single guy. Unless the hardware is sold licensed, bundled and dongled by a licensed vendor, AmigaOS will never run on it. Not legally and payed for, anyway, only pirates would benefit from this.

To take the specific Teron/"AmigaOne" example, I can currently buy a Teron board from Eyetech, Terra Soft, Inguard or Mai themselves. Just where is the commercial benefit for AmigaOS, AI and Hyperion in only allowing AmigaOS to be sold bundled with Teron boards from Eyetech? It's bad for AmigaOS, it's bad for AI (unless they're making HUGE money on selling hardware licenses...), it's bad for Hyperion and it's bad for the consumers.

I am not saying the dongle is a good idea or a bad one (although I do think companies do have a right to protect their time and effort), but given the very few PPC mobos around at the moment (that average Joe can buy) it is hardly worth worrying about. And as someone said, Apple seem to be doing resonable well in a closed h/w market, why can't we too? Time will tell. ;-)

Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion are not "protecing their time and efforts" by this. They just made the sales and market penetration of "all future versions of AmigaOS" dependent on simultaneous sales of licensed hardware. The only thing that's protected is the marketshare of one third party hardware distributor, and that's probably only in the short run. When the few faithful have bought their dongled Teron boards via this distributor, then what?

And again, any comparison of AI/Hyperion with Apple in this respect is irrelevant.

There are no more Amigas, I don't want a new Amiga (unless it's cheaper and better than what everyone else on the consumer hardware market can come up with, although this won't/can't happen, but even then I'd like options). I want to buy AmigaOS. Who sells me what hardware is none of the software producers' concern.

[samface]

Seehund wrote:
The licensing/dongling/bundling requirement does however not have anything to do with TECHNICAL reasons. It's an additional restriction on top of the valid technical reasons, and it helps preventing the OS to be ported to more hardware in the first place.

Despite that I have disputed this argument of yours at several occasions, you keep repeating it like a mantra as if it would somehow make it happen. Once more, dispute this if you can:

1. Anyone can make any PPC hardware officially supported AmigaOS4 hardware by simply applying for a license and sharing a developer board and/or as extensive as possible hardware documentation. Hyperion will then create the neccessary hardware drivers, HAL and AmigaOS4 ROM. Compare that with Apple's approach if you like.

2. The ONLY thing preventing AmigaOS4 from running on basicly any PPC hardware is if Hyperion has for some reason no access to the hardware nor proper hardware documentation and therefore cannot make it happen even if they wanted to. An example of this is the Pegasos, they even applied for a developer board themselves but has still not as of today recieved one, AFAIK. You see, even though some of the chipsets are the same as the AmigaOne, the Pegasos obviously has a different design. For this reason Hyperion cannot and will not guarantee interoperability with their OS which is fully understandable, don't you think?

3. Hyperion are very much willing to support as much hardware as possible and is actually using this licensing scheme for preventing the OS to be restricted at a technical level. An example of this approach is the old PPC accelerator boards from Phase5; despite having no contact with the original manufacturers, very poor documentation, probable reduction of AmigaOne sales, very custom and different hardware design from the one of the AmigaOne, they will be supported by the AmigaOS4. How could this be if it was about restricting the AmigaOS4 to run on the AmigaOne from Eyetech only? Wouldn't this be impossible if the AmigaOS4 was made POP + ArticiaS chipset only?

4. The Microsoft approach of supporting the most common hardware standard and let the hardware manufacturers worry about the rest simply isn't feasible on the PPC market. There is no common PPC hardware standard. No, POP doesn't count as it will still require a common chipset standard. So, I'm sure MAI would be delighted if we made the AmigaOS4 dependant on their ArticiaS chipset but we would still have a very restricted OS. In fact, it would be even more restricted and give the us even less hardware options.

Now stop this blatant trolling of yours, Seehund. It's opposing your own cause regardless if you were to be right or not since this kind of trolling all over the web will only make users turn away from the platform rather than supporting you. I understand that it might be hard for you to admitt that you are wrong now since you've raised this witch hunt/poll against Amiga Inc. and all. But please, atleast tone down a bit rather than making such a fool out of yourself.

[Paul_Gadd]

Who really is going to pay high prices for a TeronCX board then pirate OS4? madness

OS4 will be pirated but i would say the PPC card version the most, give it a few days/week after it is released before a ISO is uploaded to warez sites.

[samface]

BTW, please not that this article at OSopinion.com is written by Emanuel Mair, A.K.A Seehund. There is similar articles on Slashdot and OSNews, all by the very same author.

This kind of publicity will surely boost the Amiga comeback, now won't it? Well, that was irony on my behalf, I really do think that if something will kill the Amiga, then it is this kind of FUD mongering by people that don't even know what's best for themselves.  :roll:

[gary_c]

It doesn't really matter what these companies think or do. Both OSs will be running on both motherboards fairly soon after they're released. If the companies don't provide the software or hardware "unbundled," then they'll miss out on some sales. But their cooperation is irrelevant to what people end up doing with these things.

Even at the height of Apple's undocumented-hardware days, people had not only Linux but also QNX (verified) and probably BeOS (in-house, unofficially) running on its g3s. It's just the nature of the market. So it's less a matter of "shall we let these OSs on our hardware?" as "shall we sanction these OSs on our hardware and get some sales from it?"

The OS company can either go the route of guaranteeing compatibility (Amiga/Hyperion's present course) or just sell shrinkwrapped boxes with a disclaimer about use on untested boards.

The trouble is, this approach would totally cut Eyetech out of the equation. Eyetech was instrumental at one point, but now has become redundant with Teron boards available from other sources. But to protect Eyetech's position, Amiga and Hyperion have gone along with the dongle scheme. This was probably a contractual condition of the initial agreement of the three companies to produce a PPC port and hardware to run it on.

Genesi also has things to protect; with an operating system of its own to promote, they're probably in no hurry to do anything that will assist Amiga. Maybe after the dust settles following the market introduction of both groups' products, it'll be more clear what the possibilities are, if any, for cooperation for mutual benefit. But for now, everybody's thinking their own path is the best one.

-- gary_c

[samface]

Even at the height of Apple's undocumented-hardware days, people had not only Linux but also QNX (verified) and probably BeOS (in-house, unofficially) running on its g3s.

Well, that's probably because they atleast had access to the hardware. When it comes to the AmigaOS4 on the Pegasos situation, Hyperion never recieved a developer board despite applying for one. So, in this case it's quite impossible for them to make anything run on it, don't you agree?

Also, I'm not sure wether I agree with the "for protecting Eyetech's position" thing, but the rest of your post was surely words of wisdom, gary_c. :-)

[amigahal]

don't forget Elbox's SharkPPC boards guys. They are liscenced by AI, and will run os4.0.

[AmigaHeretic]

mips_proc wrote:
... if AOS where released to run on any POP based boards... it'd run on Barbie and the Pegasos... and we'd have more choices 'US" the consumers would... wich would be better... I would buy a Barbie or a Pegasos and use that with AOS4..and be happy... quote]


I'm confused... If I buy MorphOS what choices of hardware do I have?  

I'm also really confused on this Genesi thing...is this now a combined company of Thendic and bPlan??  If so I wouldn't believe that they would want MorphOS to run on a bunch of other hardware after all the money they haved  dropped on the Pegasos.  Seems like they would be shooting themselves in the foot.

AmigaGuy

[samface]

@amigahal

You're right, I'm sorry. It's just so easy to forget about that option since there has been little progress shown on their behalf lately. But you're right, it should definitly be taken into consideration since this would also be impossible if we made the AmigaOS4 ArticiaS chipset based only.

[Paul_Gadd]

this approach would totally cut Eyetech out of the equation

and

But to protect Eyetech's position

I agree with that, why let Amiga users buy cheap hardware from any computer shops and buy the OS seperate when you can force them to go to certain amiga shops and pay top price,

Not a bad scam if you look at the whole picture.

[T_Bone]

Alkemyst wrote:
@ple3003
 
The Aone/Pegasos are not POP.

Excuse me? Mai themselves have confirmed these boards, along with the Terrasoft board, are all POP boards.

"In the mid-to-late '90s, Apple, IBM, and Motorola worked toward a PowerPC Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP). In 2000 IBM released complete board specs and a generic design for this platform, known as 'POP' (PowerPC Open Platform). Mai Logic's Teron series boards and logic are designed from the IBM specifications" (reprinted without permission)

[samface]

Not a bad scam if you look at the whole picture.

I didn't think I would have to go into this as well but since you couldn't restrain yourself from cooking up this lame conspiracy theory, I simply have to.

The only reason for a price difference (if any) is the OS. Yes, you won't get the AmigaOS4 for free, if that's what you expected. There are more issues involved such as preparing the hardware ROM, distribution to Amiga hardware dealers, product demand, providing Hyperion and other important AmigaOne software developers with developer boards, providing hardware support for AmigaOS4 and LinuxPPC users and developers, etc. All of these things costs and affect the price.

Also, you're scam theory doesn't even make sense. I mean, how much do you really think they will be making on the AmigaOne sales? You see, I don't even think this whole thing will be profitable for Eyetech even if they were adding to the price. It will cover their costs, tops. Besides, do you really think another distributor would give you the same hardware support for AmigaOS4 and/or LinuxPPC + UAE users?