Hello all! So, before packing all my stuff for the Amiga 30 event in Amsterdam, I thought I'd tell you that our Kickstarter campaign is launched. At the same time, our website is also updated.

Here's the address to our website:

Friend Software Labs

And the kickstarter:

FriendUP at Kickstarter

Hope to see any of you who are going to Amsterdam. We will also be in California at the Amiga 30 event there.

What is FriendUP?

To expand on what was posted in another thread, we call it a "meta" operating system (small difference from a cloud operating system), giving you all the power of the web combined with the power of the existing operating systems on the server side. FriendUP allows you to run a server application on your current OS, and share your resources across the net. You can share as a server, or through an interface - like our FriendUP desktop, mobile or TV environment. Then you can hook up other peoples' resources as they are made available.

FriendUP does many things - that's why we call it an OS. But it can be described as many things. It is a web server. It is an application server. It is a networked processing unit (NPU). It is a distributed computing platform. It is a desktop environment.

FriendUP is portable. One of our targets is to compile Friend Core for Amiga operating systems like Aros, MorphOS and AmigaOS (3/4.x). This will allow people to log into your system through a terminal. It will allow you to share your resources online. It will allow you to write Amiga applications that display their GUI in web browsers. It will even allow for lots of networked filesystems in your favourite OS variant.

FriendUP is open source. It is a market - even more than a product. That's why we're sharing the code. We're going for the Kickstarter campaign, as this is the modern way to fund new technologies - together with the users and developers.

Watch the movies on the Kickstarter page, and you'll see what we have in mind! The possibilities are endless. And friendly!

We will post new videos and updates at the Kickstarter page over the next few weeks. If you have questions, we will answer them both here, and in videos.

Last edited by hogne on 25-Jun-2015 at 11:27 AM.

@hogne

Good luck!

@pavlor

Thank you! It's an ambitious project. Let's hope we get some help from everybody "out there" :) Watch out for the update videos. Will also film some in Amsterdam.

@hogne
Dumb question.. but if you don't reach the target.. would you still like to work on it?
I am interested in colaboration with same minded People.

I will move my campaign from kickstarter to indiegogo because it would like to do it anyway.. so it is splitted in 3 phases. 1 Phase cloud-storage is basically done.
So the campaign will acct as "order page" for it. People get a Discount on existing Project and finance further development.

Good luck : )
I will Keep an eye on it.

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@phoenixkonsole

If we don't reach our target, we will have spread the word far and wide. Our beta feature set is going to be 1:1 on par with the prototype (insecure, hack and patched version) in two or three weeks - meaning, we will have implemented the features of our insecure version in our secure "this is how it's done" version. :)

This means, we will be able to start projects and sales in a month or two, for specific uses. And we will get more investments.

Separately, several of us developers involved in the project has made this into something like our life work. We're still on target for the open source release, which will pretty much make FriendUP a permanent presence on the internet.

But a successful kickstarter will enable us to deliver on our promise by december - and allow us to hire more amiga developers like stefkos :)

@hogne

How is this project fundametally different from, to name just one example, the open-source eyeOS, which was started all the way back in 2007 and - with all respect due to its developers - has failed to gain substantial market share?

Also, while I realize it is too late to change it for the campaign, I cannot help but note that the brand name is sadly... not great.

@hogne

This is a kickstarter so it pre-payment, what guaranty do we have that you finish it once you get money?
Who are your team, do they have any track-record do they have with AmigaOS?
What Games and program have they made for AmigaOS?

You say you wont to give Amiga users distributed file system support, how well is that going to work if the network connection is bad, will AmigaOS freeze ms / s, or will the system have some kind background process and cache system, and background process, that makes sure, AmigaOS does not freeze.

Will the project upgrade SSL encryption in AmigaOS, or will your distributed file system use no encryption over the internet?

Who are you can I trust you whit my personal data?
Will you profile and sell my habits to criminals or marketing people?

What applications other than FreeCiv do you have for it?
How fast is this in an Amiga web-browser?
Is the user account free or do we need pay a month fee?
Are there any user reviews anywhere?

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jun-2015 at 06:37 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jun-2015 at 06:33 PM.

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@ASiegel

Quote:

ASiegel wrote: @hogne How is this project fundametally different from, to name just one example, the open-source eyeOS, which was started all the way back in 2007 and - with all respect due to its developers - has failed to gain substantial market share?

First of all - eyeOS doesn't do what FriendUP does - it doesn't try to change how lower level subsystems communicate with each other. It doesn't try to implement something like AREXX - which we do with our Dormant technology. Basically, you can have applications running on different servers, talking together with something like AREXX, only using DOS commands (so you can implement this in C, scripting, using a GUI, using the shell etc).

Secondly, the focus is in my opinion a bit narrow. Cloud OS. Sync files. Run Windows or Linux applications. We want to change how you develop applications. So that's an ambition that is implied in the technology. We're not putting a lid on the fact that we're very philosophical about this project.

Thirdly - search for the word "developers" when you're at the website. If you plan to work on an OS - developers should be mentioned on the front page.

As for the brand name. I don't agree. But then again, a brand name is what you put into it. It will never please everyone - but it should not turn people off. What about Friend Uniplatform turns you off?

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @hogne This is a kickstarter so it pre-payment, what guaranty do we have that you finish it once you get money?

Well, we're already about 60% towards our goals, and we've done this since january / february last year. With the proper funding, as referred to with the kickstarter, we should meet the december target without problems. We're used to work on deadlines - I've been managing a company now since 2011 - and we've had to deliver on every project - or no money. I can only give a guarantee as a professional, and as a programmer. Another guarantee is that FriendUP will be released as open source software as soon as we get a clean build, with the proper documentation. This will happen before december. This will make sure the software is available to you, even if we blow up :)

Quote:

Who are your team, do they have any track-record do they have with AmigaOS? What Games and program have they made for AmigaOS?

If you look at http://friendos.com - you'll see the team, right there. We also have some people working on documentation and other stuff. Stefkos should be known to you. I go under the nick m0ns00n - I've worked on open source for AROS before. Actually, FriendUP is the way we bring our hobby and favourite past time of old into our professional line of work.

Quote:

You say you wont to give Amiga users distributed file system support, how well is that going to work if the network connection is bad, will AmigaOS freeze ms / s, or will the system have some kind background process and cache system, and background process, that makes sure, AmigaOS does not freeze. Will the project upgrade SSL encryption in AmigaOS, or will your distributed file system use no encryption over the internet?

We haven't mapped out exactly how the Friend Core version for AmigaOS will look. AmigaOS classic? AROS? MorphOS? Which one first? Many questions. If enough people would want this, we'd add it as a stretch target for sure. Me and stefkos have been talking about this many times. Once we get the first build up and running, we'll tell you all about it.

Quote:

Who are you can I trust you whit my personal data? Will you profile and sell my habits to criminals or marketing people?

One of the main points of picking the name FriendUP was to imply friendliness. We believe that many governments (I can refer to Cameron's idea to prohibit encryption) contradict democratic rights. We're strong believers in western democracy, and privacy. That's also why we want you to be able to pick where you put your data, and furthermore, know which encryption algorithms are used.

Quote:

What applications other than FreeCiv do you have for it? How fast is this in an Amiga web-browser? Is the user account free or do we need pay a month fee? Are there any user reviews anywhere?

There's a free version (that will be available on friendos.com), but if you want to be totally free, download the open source version when it's available.

As for apps and so on - almost all web applications can be launched in FriendUP. As for "real" native apps - you'd have to wait for the Linux distribution to be completed. That will allow for developing FriendUP applications in C / ASM whatever you want. :)

User reviews before the product is done? I hope we don't have that. :)

@hogne

Quote:

What about Friend Uniplatform turns you off?

For example, it very much sounds like the name for a social networking platform and related technologies.

Last edited by ASiegel on 25-Jun-2015 at 07:31 PM.