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Amiga Sells AmigaOS

Posted by timothy on from the sco's-in-the-market dept.

rocketjam writes "Amiga, Inc. announced today that it has sold the Amiga Operating System to KMOS, Inc., a corporation which 'develops and distributes enabling technology.' The deal included 'all of Amiga's right, title, source code, and all versions, from the "Classic Amiga Operating System" through AmigaOS 4.0 and all subsequent versions.' A spokesman said the sale would have no adverse affect on the release of a consumer version of AmigaOS 4.0 later this year. Amiga said it made the move in order to focus on the growing mobile market. The long saga of AmigaOS 4.0 continues." Reader Da writes "there're always other options should the Amiga curse continue. Also mentioned on OSNews."

7 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Even with new owners... by superangrybrit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whom is gonna buy it? Which industry segment is going to use Amigas?

    1. Re:Even with new owners... by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 4, Interesting
      AmigaOS has features that I miss to this day
      Ok, I'll bite, name one feature that you miss today from AmigaOS. I was a long ime Amiga user right from the original soft kicked A1000 with the "signature lid" to an A3000 kitted to the hilt with coolness (and still soft kicked actually), and I can honestly say that I don't conciously miss anything now that I had then (admittedly, it's been quite a number of years now).

      --
      NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
  2. Most sold technology EVAR by ozric99 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Way back in the mid 90's, when I was accessing the net on my souped-up A1200, Amiga had already been sold a couple of times. Didn't Gateway have a hand in it for a while, then Escom and god knows how many others. I understand that this time it isn't a complete company sell-off, but seriously, how many companies has Amiga (or major assets of) been owned by in the last decade or so?

    I spent the 90's and early this century waiting for AOS4 but every time I go to their website I see "coming soon" banners. The last time http://os.amiga.com/os4/ was changed was Oct 15, 2003. I'll keep looking, but in the meantime the best way I'm able to use AmigaOS is via emulation.

  3. Incredible isn't it? by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even though everyone slags off Amiga, someone always buys it when it goes up for sale.

    --
    Summation 2
  4. No way to run a business by PorscheDriver · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I was an Amiga fan many moons ago, but Commode et. al. always seemed to have been to the business school for the hard of learning.

    There doesn't seem to be a business plan or strategy in place here - just knee jerk reactions to what is perceived as currently profitable, or upswinging markets.

    It's sad, but Amiga has been kicked to death by a bunch of inept owners...

    --
    "This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
  5. I've Not Understood The Amiga Strategy For Years by pandrijeczko · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Firstly, in answer to all the "Amiga dead" comments that have been posted so far, what's wrong with playing around with old software and hardware?

    I left the Amiga scene about ten years ago but it was the fact that it was a fun machine to "tweak" and play with that got me fully into UNIX/Linux & made me realise what a "boring" OS that Windows is from the point of view of customisation/optimisation.

    I even picked up a couple of Amigas on Ebay a couple of years ago and still have fun with Workbench and some of the classic games like Speedball.

    Sure, AmigaOS is never going to mainstream again and I'm never going to use it in preference to Linux but Amiga users were a fun community to be in, just like the Linux one is now - unlike the non-existent Windows community.

    Before people criticise the Amiga, they should be reminded of a couple of things:

    1. "Home computers" like the Amiga, Atari ST, etc were platforms that were costly to upgrade and, as a result, not upgraded by most users. This meant that software developers for those platforms had to push the limits of those machines as far as possible - in turn, this lead to some great feats of programming. These days, hardware is cheap so it's easier to upgrade but programming today can be done sloppily because of endless APIs and languages that weren't so available or widespread then.

    2. The Amiga was a superior hardware platform to the IBM PC for many years - it had better graphics, sound and multitasking. The fact it did not take off was due to inactivity on the part of Commodore to match Amiga development to the IBM PC as well as clever marketing on the part of Microsoft to get Windows onto every desktop. Please remember that while most IBM PCs were working in a single MS-DOS shell, Amiga users were working in multiple CLIs in a text or GUI environment.

    It seems to be very easy for certain readers on Slashdot to label anyone who is not part of the deemed mainstream as a "zealot" without realising that software is not just about Windows and what runs on it - it's actually about what's

    usable

    by a particularly person and, more importantly, what's fun to use .
    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  6. The good old days... still! by banzaikai · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yeah, my Amiga 4000 ('040/25) can still pop up web pages faster than most PCs, email, play mp3s, and the like. Let's see ANY 486/33 (or Mac 040s) make that claim. If you look at where we've been, you'll see everything we're doing now either started or was sharpened/perfected on the Amy. I've even heard that Dave Haynie had been developing a controller that would use a "serial scsi" protocol, allow daisy-chaining of, maybe, 256 devices, and be hot swappable. Sound familiar? Nowadays, we'd call it "USB". Dave was working on his version in 1993/94 - years before USB got rolling.

    What ticks me off is that all these companies that buy Amiga IP simply don't have a clue what to do with it. Yes, Gateway had it for a while (my guess is they wanted an easy "home multimedia center", but couldn't get their heads outta their as^H^H Windows), but dropped the boing ball.

    This was the same mentality that Sierra had. They were so used to doing things the DOS way, that the total concept of multi-tasking escaped them. Amigans stopped buying their games, and Sierra (instead of learning how to program) dropped Amiga titles. Many others followed suit. I found lots of brilliant UK and European programmers as a result, though.

    Believe it or not, I rarely play games (even Bill Gates refered to Amigas as "just a game machine"). I have still to find a program that does what Softlogik's PageStream does (for the money). Until I do, my A4K is still a fast and fun platform, 11 years old and aging well...

    A4000 040/25 24MBram 2.5GBhd OS3.9 iBrowse YAM

    A2000 030/25 9MBram 540MBhd OS3.1

    3-A500s, 2-A1000s, 1-A600, 1-CDTV

    (Don't get me started on the 8-bitters!)