Now that is what a press release should sound like rather than the misguided bizarreness that Amiga Inc. produced for the Q&A.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - it is such a shame that Hyperion don't own the Amiga right now.

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Sam

@Samwel

Quote:

This have already happend once I think, with the powerpc.library. The coder has stopped updating it. I guess WarpUp/PowerUp support won't be included in OS4 final.

I disagree with the 1st portion of this.
It is quite apparent from reading on AW who comments on what, and what their
roles are, that the coder/maintainer of WOS changed.
I will not speculate on what that may or may not mean regarding final.

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

Quote:

Why does it have to be this way eveytime something Amiga related starts to go forward?

Well it's not really an 'Amiga Curse' but more of what happens when a business, any business, has more than one controlling party - you invariably end up with disagreements.

What is concerning is that whereas both Hyperion and AInc. seem very keen to get OS4 out of the door they both equally look locked in some sort of legal deadlock which seems in direct opposition to these desires.

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Sam

@Herewegoagain

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That sounds pretty dead end to me. At least it could be in that senario.

ExecSG is the last thing I'd worry about, the Friedens are just as determined to see OS4 into the future as Hyperion who are funding the development.

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BTW, I guess Amiga thought they had a contract too.

They do have a contract, but there are disagreements about certain details, which their lawyers are sorting out at the moment, as far as I understood from Hyperion's official statement. This is not at all unusual in the business world so I don't understand all the fuss some people are making about it, especially when it's been stated that this has no effect on development and release of OS4 and that Amiga Inc. are just as keen as Hyperion are to get OS4 out with new hardware ASAP (according to Bill McEwen).

@EntilZha
Quote:

also don't understand what's the big fuss about me and Hans-Jörg owning ExecSG. Hyperion has a license to include it in OS4, so it is in OS4. What's the deal ?

It makes you yet another legal and/or financial stumbling block to anyone who wants to get OS4 ported. This doesn't benefit OS4 in any way, just you and your brother. Your relationship with Hyperion could go South at any time in a variety of ways, effectively splitting OS4. Way to go, guys!

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Here for the whimpering end

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I don't understand all the fuss some people are making about it, especially when it's been stated that this has no effect on development and release of OS4 and that Amiga Inc. are just as keen as Hyperion are to get OS4 out with new hardware ASAP

Which, of course, is the problem. They are not likely to say 'we're in legal deadlock until someone gives way' which might well put some of us off somewhat.

The 2 weeks aren't over yet.

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Sam

What worries me is what happens after OS4. It sounds to me like there wont be much of chance of having a OS4.1, 4.5 and so on that is based upon OS4 which means we will get back into a nasty situation in the end where we again sit with a OS that will never ever get updated since hyperion apparantly will not be the one who develop the next version and the ones who do have no access to the OS4 source code. If OS5 actually sees the light one day, then it surely will not be binary compitable with OS4 which means that all the current software releases/ports will be a waste then.

I am a worried about the future and not the now.. Who wants to invest money in a platform that you know will never be updated again?

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It sounds to me like there wont be much of chance of having a OS4.1, 4.5

Where did you get that idea?

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If OS5 actually sees the light one day, then it surely will not be binary compitable with OS4

I suppose it 'could' be but no-one has explained how. Simply to mention OS5 and 6 as internal projects at AInc. was a silly thing to do at this stage as it brings out lots of other valid questions such as this which will probably remain unanswered and seed more doubt.

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I am a worried about the future and not the now.. Who wants to invest money in a platform that you know will never be updated again?

To be fair - even with a unified company running the show - to invest in the Amiga as a user would still be a risk as the platform is so fragile with next to no users and no mainstream support. It will remain a hobbyist/geek gadget machine for some time even if it does see the light of day so I don't see this as a major issue as it should be something that, as a user of niche platform, you would understand and accept anyway.

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Sam

@ one of the Friedens or both...

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You may recall the fact that Hyperion held back on the official release of Amiga OS 4.0 in 2005 in order to have it coincide with the availability of suitable target hardware.

so if there isnt any new hardware available will existing OS4 users still get the update?


...out of curiosity... why did you decide to code OS4 ? Was it overwhelming to write a OS from scratch? How did you start? by looking at old WB 3.x code ?

Last edited by TheMagicM on 20-Sep-2006 at 02:50 PM.

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I alreay have 2 AmigaOnes and will buy a third just to support Hyperion.

But that is *not' to support Hyperion in the current situation because if you have two A1s that means that Hyperion has one less customer!

In this hardware situation I believe it is better to not keep many A1s to yourselves but instead make sure that as many people (=possible developers) get their hands on an A1 instead!!

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- Don't get fooled by my avatar, I'm not like that (anymore, mostly... maybe only sometimes)
> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@Tomas

As said earlier, there is no reason to believe that future versions of the OS (whether developed by Hyperion, Amiga Inc or anyone else) will lose any binaries present in earlier versions. Bill Hawes apparently had a falling out with Commodore over ARexx, yet ARexx is still present in OS4. H&P did not allow Hyperion access to OS3.5/3.9 source code yet the binaries still found their way into the pre-releases, and the new features were reimplemented where the source code was not available. OS4 still manages to remain binary/source compatible with OS3.9.

Bill McEwen said that there will be a migration path from OS4 to OS5, and given that AI have approached the Friedens to write the kernel it certainly looks like a continuation of the OS we all know and love. The original plan said that OS5 would run OS4 in a sandbox, it is entirely possible that OS5 will be very similar to OS4, but 64-bit (for example), with all new system libraries, but capable of calling OS4 and earlier libraries, maybe through emulation or an emulated protected environment. If this is the case, then AI don't even need the OS4 sources, as it will be more-or-less written from scratch.

Anyway, OS5 is too far into the future and so little is known about it that it is difficult to comment on. Remember that there have been several attempts at OS4, one of which was some form of x86-based developer environment for AmigaOE - and would have beared no resemblence to OS3.9 or even run on anything vaguely Amiga-like - yet we still managed to end up with a complete, compatible and valuable upgrade to the existing OS line at the end of it.

Chris

Last edited by Chris_Y on 20-Sep-2006 at 03:23 PM.

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"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

Quote:

I am a worried about the future and not the now.. Who wants to invest money in a platform that you know will never be updated again?

the point is you don't know it will not be updated. the situation now is no different than is has been. aos is a hobby os with hyperion targeting embedded systems. there was never a guarantee that there would be anything other than os4. it was assumed that 4.1, 4.2 etc would follow and may happen anyway. you just don't know now just as you didn't know then.


don't let what ifs cloud your decision on an os you want. be thankful for what you have and if it is updated this is icing on the cake. as i read in another forum "don't buy based on what might be buy based on what it is."

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Win•dows: n. A thirty-two bit extension and graphical shell to a sixteen-bit patch to an eight-bit operating system originally coded for a four-bit microprocessor which was written by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.

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H&P did not allow Hyperion access to OS3.5/3.9 source code yet the binaries still found their way into the pre-releases, and the new features were reimplemented where the source code was not available.

Rogue said that they did have the 3.5 and 3.9 sources.

@Herewegoagain

All of them? I believe they had most, but some things (like printer.device and the Reaction-based Printer prefs) were written in-house by H&P and had to be reimplemented.

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"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

Quote:

Rogue said that they did have the 3.5 and 3.9 sources.

erm, ok if you say so.

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See my blog and collection website! . https://www.blog.amigaguru.com

@Herewegoagain (and others):

There seems to be the misconception that single developers owning the components they're working on is some sort of evil concept to build a trap for Amiga Inc. - it's not, it's common practice.

In a market as tiny as the Amiga, you simply can't afford to buy all the rights to the various components of the OS - you'd never be able to recoup the costs. And even if you think you could, the initial risks would be way to high.

So what you do instead, is license the components from the developers. This is way cheaper and the developer gets some money plus the chance to make more money in the future (e.g. by selling the component to you later on, or by licensing an updated version of the component for a later version of the OS). Again, this is common practice: OS 3.5, OS 3.9 and MorphOS all have been compiled this way, not just OS4.

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Rogue said that they did have the 3.5 and 3.9 sources.

For OS4, there's one big source repository containing the sources to all OS components and this repository is controlled (not owned) by Hyperion. The same was true for 3.5/3.9, but the repository was of course controlled by Haage&Partner.

Haage&Partner refused to hand over said repository to Hyperion. So Hyperion simply contacted all the 3.9 developers (who are now OS4 developers) and licensed their components (which they still owned, see above) for OS4. This way Hyperion got access to the sources of pretty much all OS 3.9 components, except the parts that were done by Haage&Partner themselves (basically the installer and IconEdit, IIRC).

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Simple: The source code was not included in the deal... Surprised at this rather logical explanation ? I also don't understand what's the big fuss about me and Hans-Jörg owning ExecSG. Hyperion has a license to include it in OS4, so it is in OS4. What's the deal ?

Its a big deal because the source code is specifically mentioned in the contract between Hyperion and Amiga Inc.
-Tig

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We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Toaks

Quote:

erm, ok if you say so.

erm, I didn't say so, Rogue did. He said they had access to them all except a very small part that H&P did themself. Here, read it yourself:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=20491&forum=2&start=100&viewmode=flat&order=0#325018


@Tigger

Well that's what I was wondering. Why would you have a buyback clause to continue development in house, if you were not getting the source. This is all making less and less sense, so I'm just going to stay out of it.

Last edited by Herewegoagain on 20-Sep-2006 at 06:21 PM.
Last edited by Herewegoagain on 20-Sep-2006 at 06:19 PM.

Just my tuppence worth here, and I apologise if this has been mentioned before...

My concern is that if Amiga go ahead with OS5 and Hyperion continue OS4 with no natural migration between the two, we are gonna end up with the MorphOS vs AmigaOS4 wars but this time it will be split 3 ways.

Can anyone here re-assure me that this isn't gonna happen?

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