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AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release
David Doyle writes "Hyperion Entertainment and
the Amiga OS 4.0 development team announced on Amigaworld.net that after nearly 30 months of painstaking development the Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release has gone gold and will be sent to the duplication plant on Monday, April 19, 2004. The Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release consists of a current snapshot of AmigaOS 4.0 for the AmigaOne platform with a straightforward HTML installation guide in English, German, French and Italian as well as the Amiga OS 4.0 SDK. The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content. Full
announcement and Amiga OS4 SDK feature list."
I guess AmigaOS will still ignore MMU. With proper memory management Amiga would still rule. ;-)
This is throttled because of its dependency to a dated, broken and very expensive G4 clone. There are already better AmigaOS-like alternatives: emulation, MorphOS, AROS. Look elsewhere.
Can someone please explain why this is "stuff that matters"? There may be a more irrelevant and useless project in the world, or one more doomed financially, but I can't think of it.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license.
...
:) Yes, one hardware vendor would like to see Amiga Inc dead and they already have an OS of their own. Most hardware vendors don't give a $h1t about Amiga Inc (if anybody would know who they are), and AInc's licence "offer" would only be laughed at.
Which, if it were true, would serve as yet another excellent illustration of how retarded the compulsory licensing idea is. But it's not true. There's been one more (w00t!) interested distributor. Bigger, better, cheaper, more competent than Eyetech. They suddenly stopped getting replies from AInc. Ask "T_Bone" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
It's a support and anti-piracy measure
Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "support" excuses for a compulsory hardware licensing/bundling/dongling scheme are pure nonsense.
The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.
Yes, it's discontinued, as I said. Did you have an objection to something here?
"AmigaOne PX"
Sorry, that was a typo. Not a lie. Yes OF COURSE I meant "XE".
An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!
No. Perpetuating that ridiculous claim used to be the job of Eyetech, but not even they are trying to make people believe this any longer. I suggest you don't start doing it instead.
A Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" is 80% cheaper than a complete evaluation/developer's kit with participation in Mai's developer program, and that includes a Teron motherboard, which is what you linked to.
If you don't plan on designing hardware applications using Mai Logic chips, then a Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" ($800) is 60% more expensive than a Teron motherboard sold normally ($500).
4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public
Yes, the Teron Mini/"Micro A1" (which is not targeted exclusively at any embedded market more than any other mini-ITX motherboard) is not available to the public. Duh - It's not yet in production, and I haven't heard from Mai that the design is even finalised yet.
5. No need to confirm my arguments with more examples, it's already been done.
Thus, to get an increasing hardware base for AmigaOS, the compulsory nature of the licencing scheme must be taken out behind the barn and shot.
AmigaOS must be made for and SOLD for the hardware that people want or already own, regardless of whether the vendors of that hardware are interested in playing "Amiga". If someone would like to sell AmigaOS bundled with hardware, sure, sell licences for that, but don't make this the only way AmigaOS can be sold, and the only way there could be more hardware for AmigaOS.
As it is today, only a subset of the pathetic and decreasing current AmigaOS userbase would become AmigaOS4 users/customers. If this indeed is the plan, the whole project would be pointless.
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And I would tend to agree with you. But you really seem to think AInc or Hyperion are secretly gaining from forcing a dongle-ROM requirement on motherboards, in some way other than an anti-piracy attempt!! How on earth is the dongle-ROM thing anything BUT an anti-piracy measure?
I don't think that Hyperion has anything to gain from this, on the contrary they have gotten a smaller possible market.
AInc had some quick licence money to gain, but as it turned out the only licencee they have is Eyetech, who suggested the scheme and already was a "hardware partner" since before the original "AmigaOne" project failed. It's been obvious, and after e.g. the CEO's court deposition it's publicly known, that AInc has been extremely strapped for cash since before AmigaOS was announced to be revived (after they first declared it dead). While this scheme certainly looks like a deliberate attempt to kill AmigaOS once and for all, I think AInc allowed Eyetech to create it due to AInc's shortsightedness, a desperate need for quick funding, and blatant disinterest and disregard for the product (AmigaOS). After all, once a little funding for bare essentials like rent and taxes would be secured, the green pastures of mobile phone content and Microsoft OEM sales were supposed to be right around the corner anyway...
The dongled firmware is a hardware market control mechanism. It does not protect any better or worse against piracy than e.g. copy protection on a CD or a USB dongle in each sold shrinkwrapped AmigaOS box would do. But it does introduce severe disadvantages that the other methods and separately sold AmigaOS boxes don't have: a separated hardware market, total dependence on the interest in licences from hardware vendors, fewer available or even possible hardware options and fewer vendors of compatible hardware, lower volumes, higher hardware prices, and so on. All in all: AmigaOS is intentionally made a worse product with fewer possible users. The perhaps most disturbing logical leap is that AmigaOS is alleged to be protected from piracy (i.e. loss of sales) by not selling it! And at the same time AmigaOS4 will be available as separately sold copies, but only for old Amigas, without any mentioned "protection".
The boring old "piracy" card was played for emotional effect. I think it's totally irrelevant.
You think they have something to gain other than ant-piracy with the dongle-ROM, and you think whatever gain that is, is being made in bad faith.
No, I don't. The only one that could possibly gain from this, in the short run since this closed market is quickly saturated, would be Eyetech.
Who exactly is the one that would suddenly stop making the "big bucks" other than Eyetech, who has no say over the donglised AmigaOS issue, and is certainly not the only possible exclusive teron distributor for the OEM licensing program?!
Eyetech for some reason (my speculation judged from what I've seen is AInc's incompetence and disinterest) was allowed to have a say about hardware and sales thereof, even though the final attempt to build new Amigas had failed. They had become irrelevant, yet they were allowed to provide the "consultation" that lead to all this, as if they still were or as if there still was a need for "hardware partners".
Not the only possible licencee? No, not officially, but who else would want to pay AInc and comply to their terms for the privilege of competing with Eyetech on an artificially created hardware market of say 2000 potential customers, when Eyetech have already saturated it? When "the AmigaOne" (a trademark owned by Eyetech) has been marketed and promoted by "everyone", INCLUDING THE LICENSOR AInc, as "the new Amiga" for close to 3 years?
In the unlikely case that another licencee appeared, for whatever hardware, then so what? To AmigaOS and its users and potential customers it would still mean that the hardware would only be available when bought new (existing users of the hardware in question + second
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