@geen_naam

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have no indication that the captains suddenly come to their senses and start working together.

The idea is to get rid of all the captains, obviously. A lot of the stupid games that have been going on behind the scenes simply would not be possible with an open code base.

Engineers and/or big software projects do need to be managed, of course. But with an open code base, the engineers get much more of a say in what that management looks like. I can't hold them hostage, just because I own the code - I actually need to convince them to work for me: I need to have a convincing vision or amazing people skills, I need to be the most experienced developer or put the most hours in myself, or I need to give them the opportunity to work in an amazing team etc.

Right now, people who openly despise Ben Hermans when you talk to them in private or people who are publicly admitting he pirated Kickstart 1.3 are writing code for him. Because they love working on the AmigaOS code base and he's their only option.

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But since when is it unusual to pay for quality software in the first place? I remember having to pay for Cybergraphics, P96, MUI, DOpus and so on.

For starters, OS4 used to include (commercial) graphics drivers. Having to pay for drivers now is a sign that things are getting worse.

And while I have no problem paying for quality software, I don't appreciate forcing bundles on customers that try to push products down their throat they have no need for. I haven't checked Enhancer myself, obviously - but the fact that the os4welt guys want to write their own installer strongly implies you do not have the option to select what parts of Enhancer you want to install.

Forcibly replacing system components with 3rd party products is extremely bad design. Whoever decided to implement it that way - or worse, didn't realise that this is a bad idea - is basically holding up a massive sign saying: "please keep me away from any OS development as far as humanly possible".

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I have no indication that Enhancer coders are being abused. As a matter of facts, some of them are paid quite handsomely considering amiga standards. Part of it is possible due to Enhancer sales revenue.

Yeah, "abuse" was probably the wrong word here. I'm no native speaker, obviously - maybe "misused" would have been a better fit?

Here's what I was trying to say:

In a sane project, once the devs have identified graphics.library as a component that badly needs an overhaul, the project leader approaches one or two guys (Hans...) and asks them to do some research on that topic and come up with a plan - including a vague roadmap and a list of potential (compatibility) issues. Then you try to find a way (money, buttkissing, hardware donations, peer pressure...) to make Hans work on that.

In closed source AmigaOS land, this is what happened instead: Party A owns graphics.library. Party B licenses it and combines it with P96 code acquired from party C. Party D starts porting Gallium to AmigaOS, which is meant to become the base of a next generation graphics.library, but stops after half the work is done because they're no longer getting paid. Then party E comes around and pays Party F and G to write a custom 3D layer which operates completely independent of the existing graphics susbsystem and run a cut down version of OpenGL on top of that. So, fifteen years later, graphics.library is still a completely outdated mess - but we can build and run newer 3D Linux games now. If we pay for that option.

I was simply trying to say that the latter option is not making the best use of the Hans resource. Apologies to Matthew for accusing him of abusing people - he's evil, but not that evil.

Last edited by cgutjahr on 03-Jun-2021 at 03:44 PM.

@geen_naam

Quote:

I remember that Amithlon was gaining a lot of momentum. Not sure why they had to stop.

Bernie is an AW member and has retold the story here several times.

the oldest version of the story on AW

@OlafS25

I agree re:your comment on the back porting. The best thing to do would be to simply ask Camilla.

#6

Last edited by number6 on 03-Jun-2021 at 12:02 PM.

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