@ian-uk

The answer is simple, This is Amiga, and in Amiga always have to choose the incorrect path even if the rest of the world get better hardware at better price!.

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@Tomas

Quote:

know this was the case many years ago, but linux now seems to be running quite nice on Macs these days..

Yes but Linux does not have any commercial ambition and was (mainly) ported by fanatics that had free time to spare (waste?) reverse-engineering how things works.
This can be done by a serious company that aims at commercializing its products either because : 1) then it couldn't be able to take responsability about those reverse-engineered code, and also has no real control over it,
2) last but not the least (sorry for shouting) *LINUX SOURCE CODE IS GPL WHAT IS HIGHLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH SELLING THE RESULTING OS* !

EDIT: @_ThEcRoW

What a correct path for a company that aims at selling it's OS to engage new fees in the portage to a no more produced hardware for which documentation (i.e. specification by the manufacturer, *not* a simple reverse-engineered information by a nerd in its unsleepy nights based upon observation !!) is unavailable !

Last edited by abalaban on 02-Oct-2006 at 03:42 PM.

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Now dreaming AOS 4.2...
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@Cameraman

Quote:

For one thing, Apple does not allow other OS'es on its hardware

That is incorrect, they even allow booting into Windows on the new Intel Macs.

No you can't run OS4 on PPC Macs and be able to anytime soon (ever?), it's a dead end anyone now that Apple no longer sell PPC hardware.

@abalaban
Quote:

Yes but Linux does not have any commercial ambition

Better tell that to Red Hat, IBM, etc. - oh, and let Microsoft know that the coast is clear now!

Quote:

and was (mainly) ported by fanatics that had free time to spare (waste?) reverse-engineering how things works.

Any evidence to back up this claim?

Quote:

*LINUX SOURCE CODE IS GPL WHAT IS HIGHLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH SELLING THE RESULTING OS* !

Really? [ydl]=1]How do you explain this then?

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Here for the whimpering end

@jorkany

Quote:

Better tell that to Red Hat, IBM, etc.

did they cut linus and all the other programmers in on this?

Quote:

and let Microsoft know that the coast is clear now!

like they are worried, they should be but are not.

Quote:

Any evidence to back up this claim?

how many years before the big names started knocking?

Quote:

Yes but Linux does not have any commercial ambition

i agree with this statement. while linux is enjoying commercial success it was never intended to be a commercial os. the commercial market was an afterthought.

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@jorkany

Quote:

Really? [ydl]=1]How do you explain this then?

LOL thats what you call deliberately misunderstanding, and you know it. At the end of the day OS4 is a closed source OS ( as I mentioned previously) this means that the devs cannot "look at" the source to Linux which is GPL'd to develop OS4.x. 3rd parties can write drivers based on Linux drivers as long as they are GPL'd drivers but thats as far as it goes.

Mark

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@jkirk
Quote:

like they are worried, they should be but are not.

http://tinyurl.com/rg9j8

(OTOH, Touche! )

Quote:

while linux is enjoying commercial success it was never intended to be a commercial os. the commercial market was an afterthought.

True, but then the same is also true of the Internet and look where it is today.


@Mark
Quote:

At the end of the day OS4 is a closed source OS ( as I mentioned previously) this means that the devs cannot "look at" the source to Linux which is GPL'd to develop OS4.x.

Understood but that's not what I was referring to, which was the GPL does not prevent the sale of Linux distributions.

Last edited by jorkany on 02-Oct-2006 at 06:06 PM.

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Here for the whimpering end

@Mark

Quote:

At the end of the day OS4 is a closed source OS ( as I mentioned previously) this means that the devs cannot "look at" the source to Linux which is GPL'd to develop OS4.x. 3rd parties can write drivers based on Linux drivers as long as they are GPL'd drivers but thats as far as it goes.

this is not true since you can try to undestand how they initialize the chipset for example. you cannot use it's code but you can understand how the code works

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http://www.amigasoft.net

Quote:

Of course Apple not 'allowing' other OSes doesn't stop PPC Linux or PPC OpenBSD or NetBSD.

yeah the documentation stuff is only an excuse. Ask linux devs how they made it. Check open source drivers etc...

this is not an unknown territory.

Sonic, MOSnet dev on MOS almost made possible to boot OSX natively (without mol) on Pegasos, his project is called bootx. It's only a matter of talent and reverse engineering is still possible here.

Now i'm not saying it's worth it.

Last edited by SoundSquare on 02-Oct-2006 at 07:08 PM.

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@nine

I stand corrected

@SoundSquare

Quote:

yeah the documentation stuff is only an excuse. Ask linux devs how they made it. Check open source drivers etc...

You're right, it's not impossible. But apparently those who have access to the particular OS4 source codes involved are not interested in the particular amount of work involved with things as they are. They also are not interested in licensing issues if GPL sources are the only source of information. They also do not have an OS4 on Macintosh harware license from Amiga Inc. allowing this to be done at all.

These may only be lame excuses to some people, but it's enough that we should find a new plan. Inquiries about OS4 on Mac were made, in official business capacity, and have been turned down. That sucks, IMHO, but that's life.

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

Quote:

You're right, it's not impossible. But apparently those who have access to the particular OS4 source codes involved are not interested in the particular amount of work involved with things as they are. They also are not interested in licensing issues if GPL sources are the only source of information. They also do not have an OS4 on Macintosh harware license from Amiga Inc. allowing this to be done at all.

definately, and i can understand that. I am not saying that they suck not to make OS4 available for macs, or that they are not skilled enough to make it, and there may be many reasons for not doing it, we must respect that.
But i'd like to say that saying we can't do it for the lack of documentation isn't being honest. This isn't a real obstacle. Actually i can't see any real technical reason for it. It's only a matter of wasting efforts for something that isn't worth it, probably.

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@thread

About the GPL vs commercial closed OS (i.e. OS4), it would be possible to "look at" the Linux source without copying it line by line.
This would make possible to do an OS4 on MACppc but "looking at" and learning from the Linux source code must be a nightmare, IMHO

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@elwood

Quote:

About the GPL vs commercial closed OS (i.e. OS4), it would be possible to "look at" the Linux source without copying it line by line.

Yes, it's possible, but you still risk someone accusing you, and whatever hassles come with that. Even if such accusers are wrong, it's still a possible annoyance. And even without that conspiracy theory, it's still a lot of work to look at Linux sources and learn from them, and that amount of time and effort is what the people saying no to are primarily concerned with, they simply don't want to do it. The license adds to this "excuse", but even if you prove the legality of learning from Linux sources, still the people who need to actually do it don't want to because of the extent of the effort needed as well as having to deal with other potential hassles such as GPL police.

We've seen posts contradicting the lack of documentation, the GPL issues, etc. which have all been given as "excuses" not to port OS4 to Mac. But the people who need to be willing to do that work are not willing to do that work. Why bother to keep trying to prove the "excuses" wrong, when the true "problem" is the proven lack if interest by the only developers who _can_ do it, combined with the lack of an OS4 license from Amiga Inc. to allow such a Mac port to be legal to do?

At least one company inquired about obtaining an OS4 license to allow a Mac port, and was tuned down but encouraged to find a different harware solution. The only people who _can_ again and again keep saying no, giving these excuses, but the message is clear that they don't want to do this. And in the years that we've been asking over and over again, they've never changed their mind, not even a little bit.

Last edited by billt on 02-Oct-2006 at 09:21 PM.

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@Cameraman
Quote:

@nine I stand corrected

Maybe you just got it upside down. While they cannot prevent anybody from using Apple hardware for whatever purpose they want, be it as a doorstop or for running Linux PPC on, they do prohibit licensees of their OS from running it on any other hardware than that from Apple.

So things like MacOnLinux are on dubious legal ground (unless the Linux below the -- virtual -- Mac is itself running on a -- real -- Mac).

Best regards,

Niels

(Edit: Clarification)

Last edited by nbache on 02-Oct-2006 at 09:22 PM.

@SoundSquare

Quote:

But i'd like to say that saying we can't do it for the lack of documentation isn't being honest.

Point me to some complete documentation for all devices that make up an iBook, and I'll pressure some people. It probably won't do any good, but I'd give it another shot. I'd like the fastest G4 iBook otu there, and the best Radeon chip they used in such a thing. I'll provide the Radeon information to those who need it. :) (ie. Joshua and me and maybe a couple others who have worked on overlay) You provide anything for the north/south bridges present, wireless networking, any bluetooth chip that might be present, LCD panel preferred resolution and timing, keyboard interface, touchpad interface, sound chip, IDE, superdrive (CDRW and DVDRW, whatever their best drive can do), and anything else that's in there, everything with full DMA and everything. And any BIOS stuff that might be needed. I don't want _any_ hardware features to be unusable, or anything working below their full potential.

I don't want open-source source code, I want _documentation_, which might be "open-sourced" documentation or not. I want descriptions of register addresses and their contents, not some undefined values to put into undefined register addresses. I want explanations of what it is and why it is, not a simple "write 0xd00f to address 0xbeef but I don't know why" stuff.

I specify an iBook because that's what I want, a laptop and I don't want to pay more for a PowerBook. But I'd consider the same offer if the docs were for other Mac models.

Provide it, and I'll see nag and if anyone's interested in extra work. I don't expect to see anything from anyone though.

Last edited by billt on 02-Oct-2006 at 09:37 PM.

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@billt

Ill take a powerbook version thanks 1.667ghz with radeon 9700/128meg now OS4 would screem on this :)

@SoundSquare

Quote:

But i'd like to say that saying we can't do it for the lack of documentation isn't being honest.

Do you think any serious company will commercialize a products based upon some other people guess and endorsing responsability for this ?
What do you want a commercial OS thay you paid for and for any problem you'll get the answer : "we are not responsible, it's what is in the Linux source code, wait the goodwill of Mr. Nerd to have some time to eventually look at this issue and then will try to backport it's correction.." ?
If this the kind of answer you aim to get, then you should seriously consider exclusively use Linux, you would gain an OS license for the same result !

_________________
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Now dreaming AOS 4.2...
Thank you to all devs involved for this great job !

@billt

Quote:

billt wrote: @AV Quote: Examining the Linux source to produce a Mac version of OS4 has been deemed implausible, yet certain people ignore that those who produced the several Mac versions of Linux obtained the necessary documentation to create those sources, as did BSD, as did the makers of Parallels. The documentation does exist and is available to those who are interested in it. Is this documentation actually available, or did that all come from some resourceful reverse-engineering and a lot of free time? Even if it's now considered "documented" (cough, couch, hack) in the form of Linux/BSD/whatever source code, you stil need to find someone willing to ignore the implausibility argument and do it anyway. This person must have access to certain OS4 source code as well. Who among us has access to the necessary OS4 source codes and is also willing to ignore the implausibility argument and has the free time to reverse-engineer the Linux sources?

I keep hearing people say Macs are undocumented, yet it seems everything people writing OS's for the Macs comes up with, seems to work. Is there some specific thing people can't find documentation for?

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@poweramiga2002

Quote:

Ill take a powerbook version thanks 1.667ghz with radeon 9700/128meg now OS4 would screem on this :)

You need to submit the requested documentation with your request.

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