An open discussion on where we go from here

@Rigo

I am not trying to deliberetaly start a new flame thread or hijack the current. If you may have noticed I almost never participate in these discussions which are quite famous on aw.net. I am just trying to answer the title of the thread "An open discussion on where we go from here". And imho I see OS4.x tied on a hardware desktop platform which has no room for rapid development (ppc obsolete/amiga fans too few).

OS4.x must reach a wider audience. Forget about us for a moment. See what peaople are using more. PDAs? Then do a PDA version. Mobiles? Then so, be it. Consoles? etc. In this way, Hyperion might raise profit and then strafe again towards desktop version of OS4.x with more and better PR, Business Cooperations and Money in its pockets. Hyperion must not please its current user group (porting to another ppc device, or x86 which is utterly silly since OS4.x will get lost in the vast variety of OSes and will be in the shadow of MS, Linux and Mac) but try to make some money in more specific areas of interest.

OK, I told and stated as much clearly what I wanted to tell. If anybody thinks that my answer might raise any flame war please then either ignore it or a webmaster can erase my message. But anyway, I would really want to discuss in a clam and civil way which hardware/customer target group should OS4.x be targeted.

@Cool_amigaN
However, it is up to Hyperion what they do with AmigaOS4 - nothing we say is going to change that. But I am sure that Hyperion are not stupid - they surely know that AmigaOS must expand it's market beyond us, and I imagine that they are working on making that a realistic solution (within their financial constraints). In the end we have to have patience & trust, which are of course a lot easier if you have a nice OS4 system that you enjoy using...

OTOH, there is a lot that can be done outside of hardware, and the suggestions being made in this thread (minus yours) are certainly possible.

@DaveP
If you feel strongly that someone needs to organise a "Shared Amiga API", then I would suggest that someone should be you. Because I doubt there is anyone else who feels as strongly, or they would have started such a thread themselves already.

Blast from the past: OpenAmiga.

Cool_Amigan,

Yes indeed there are problems, and missing applications. What I am wondering if is possible is a strategic direction, with some low hanging fruit (such as identifying a Portable Amiga subset) to resolve some of the issues.

Such endeavours as the Open Amiga project look, to me, to be a worthy stab at this. If we can expand the choice for the users and developers alike to have a compatible platform (if not binary, source code compatible) to start with (68k might be the low hanging fruit here) and a platform to work towards with some kind of formal standard covering syntax and semantics the operating systems can co-exist without jealously guarding their own "advantages".

Heh, ideally AmigaOS would run on a virtual machine, be it an emulator or something like a JVM. I realise that sounds a bit "Intent" and "host OS" like and carries all the connotations of the search-and-replace job that Amiga Inc did with Tao's work, but if the hardware can bootstrap an emulator (yes, obviously JIT) and driver abstraction layer to boot the OS then that might open up a significant amount of freedom for the OS developers.

In order to have more developers, you need to attract them. There is a lot that is offputting and has been for a long while. The deliberately muddied waters about what is an "Amiga" or isn't. The expensive hardware. The lack of ... a critical mass of software. What I tried to point at in the first post was that some of this critical mass could be addressed in the browser. A lot of it has been addressed already. The remaining, more serious problem, is a target. You write for AmigaOS, who is going to see it? Who is going to use it? The much (since 1997) touted set top box market?

Number6

"At that point, you are thinking co-operatively, which is the only way any of what you mentioned in your post will succeed. Co-operation feeds on itself in a positive way, much like defense does..in the other direction."

Problem is people want to be seduced into thinking co-operatively. They ask themselves, what is in it for me? Will my work vanish? Will my contributions be nothing but dust? Will I become a small fish in a big pond? Whilst I would expect this immature attitude to exist, I would hope the critical and precarious nature of the Amiga "market" to soften egomania to the point where co-operating for some greater purpose would be attractive.

Xenic

Forgive me, I do not understand how your post relates to anything I have said?

TonyW

Yes, but to me you need to do two things, you need intermediate steps to keep momentum going and to build some kind of faith for the developer that it is going to happen. That what they are building is going to actually come to fruition. That they can release intermediate versions themselves. For a while people viewed MicroSoft's bundling exercises with the OS as a monopoly activity. Well yes, it was. But it also means that more and more gets bundled with the OS in the first place. The OS becomes more usable out of the box. In an ideal world, the ideas and products on OpenAmiga would get folded into later revisions of the OS, or at least used as a way of shaking out technical issues and challenges. We say, yes, include THAT browser, include THIS irc client, include THAT IDE. Then the developers are freed up, more or less, for newer horizons.

The same goes for drivers, perhaps more so. I see little point of having closed source drivers in the Amiga marketplace.

ChrisH

You need grassroots will as well as organisation. If neither exist, then its not going to work. But rather than get sucked down into a pointless plughole of talking about will and interest, I'm more intruigued to hear reasons why it couldn't or shouldn't be done.

Certainly, I'm not interested in organising any such thing(*). I can see the need for it, and its a feeling that I've had for nigh on six years about the whole API divergence.

Is it ego? Is it business? Is it jealousy? Is it technical? Lethargy can only be reversed through motivation, be it inspiration, hope or visible action and not wanting to be left on the platform as the train pulls out the station.

* - I don't think I'd be any good at organising it, and I'm not a diplomat.

(Note, I'm referring to openamiga.org)

@DaveP

OpenAmiga started out to set out standards for API compatibility across multiple Amiga platforms.

To program Amiga code and be instantly portable without conversion.

Now it is for AmigaOS 4

There is nothing about API compatibility / standards etc

We dont even have an agreed GUI/compatibility template.
EG XML schema for SWIXML :
http://swixml.org/forum/index.php?PHP ... 4459022841546&topic=140.0

POSIX mapping ?
http://crossplatformbook.com/?page_id=11

@angelheart

The reason I mention openamiga.org is that it is an attempt to extend AmigaOS 4.x from the outside developer perspective and offer up changes to fold into the base if they prove useful enough.

It is well organised, albeit small.

Something to build on? For example there is a project in there to extend AmigaOS for security. That to me is an ideal project to discuss community wide.

@DaveP

We all understand that VM, stb, PDA, laptop ideas all had the added plus of having the OS (either OS4 or the common API) become more instantly visible in a larger world than this community.
After all, people take their laptops and devices everywhere they go these days, compared to the days of the desktop confined inside one's home.
People are curious by nature, so you'll be asked "what IS that?". Ergo, you've done some rather costless marketing just by carrying any of the portables around, no?

I think it is also understood that the current incarnation of the OS is not quite ready to make its first impression in such a bold way.

If you accept my premise, then you have to define the elements necessary to make this a reality.

More manpower would be welcome, but one of the key ways to draw more manpower is through the exposure I just listed above. Do you see the "catch 22" here?

You could even consider this a strong argument for keeping things within a smaller, more understanding community until there is more confidence in the product.

If you accept THAT premise, then your avenue of improvement gets reduced to managing your current resources in a better way. It has been stated in this very thread that Hyperion does not need to be tied down in day-to-day operations. And let's be honest, they have a lot on their plate to deal with.

In short, I think organization was, is, and always shall be key in any solutions here. If you're still following me, then I have to ask whether it's even possible for Hyperion to involve others outside of the inner circle, given their current situation and the necessary secrecy that seems to entail?

I realize this may be disturbing question. But if we face the facts that resources (mostly human) are dwindling, I think it's imperative to understand whether the option is even present to draw more people in to assist.

#6

@number6

But the real point is, that virtualisation really does lower the barriers to entry for trying out OS4.1 (particularily if said virtualisation was running on x86), With OS4 running under such a technology you can pick up some of the winUAE crowtd, plus bring the price down enough for people to "try" it. At that point you get the extra bodies needed.

Mark

@Mark

Quote:

No argument. That's the point of the 4 examples I cited above. btw, both the stb and pda were a reality, so I feel they are valid examples.

I gather, though, I did a poor job explaining this in terms of "catch22".
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, I hope this simplification is easier to understand:

You may need new talent to create these products, but you may need these products to acquire -that- new talent. Better?

#6

@number6

Quote:

So, until this situation changes, it's up to the old talent, and they must be getting pretty fed with hearing the same old record played over and over again.

It does wonders for the motivation...

Simon

@Rigo

There's absolutely no motivation for professionals (those that would have to implement any new designs) to use or contribute to Open Source.
People seem to forget or ignore that.

@tonyw

I will just have to point out that OSX use and contribute to open source stuff, but of course retain ownership trough either LGPL or BSD license on certain stuff ( I believe )



This rock can be flipped both ways, no open source projects would ever base their interface around proprietorial software.

The discussion about going VM is really interesting, but then you might as well add ppc emulation to uae and be done with it. I doubt OS4 would much appreciate running in a VM on a small hand-held for instance, on a totally different platform, assuming it keeps binary compatibility with ppc/68k somehow it would/could be slow.

@Rigo

And yet its not the developers fault that the hardware is expensive pound per megahertz. I think number6 and many are paying a compliment to the AmigaOS4 work by saying that it is worth getting out there onto other (incompatible) platforms if there is but a chance.

The alternative, which hasn't been talked about much, is that the alternative OS providers (AROS really, as MorphOS is suffering from a dearth of hardware) prove the argument right or wrong. If AROS was anywhere near as good as AmigaOS4.x, and had fully copied its API*, its slick development tools and provided reaction by now, would it finally get the critical mass of users that it has lacked so far?

Why is AROS interesting? Because it is reasonably cross platform, and it kind of answers the argument about x86. The answer it gives is that x86 compatibility on its own is not enough.

I think we all want to kick down any remaining barriers, real or perceived, to make a viable AmigaOS platform for those that would use it as a desktop, as well as bring it to a wider audience who may or may not know that it is AmigaOS under the hood.

But in the short or medium term given we are constrained, does anyone know of any hardware projects out there that could help plug the "ppc" need? Add on cards? Boards?

Dave.

* Yes, I know they won't for their own political reasons.

In 3 iPhone generations, there is 50,000+ apps -- that to me is incredible!
That I think was in 3-year or so time-frame...in market where there were already pda+phone capable products.

A new generic API can be nice for more developers to be involved but if the product does what everything else out there does (by being able to port x-number of apps from Linux or other open-source), then there is little difference. This would be more like frosting on the cake after the platform is established by having more apps....

So way beyond some new API, I think what the Amiga platform needs is to find a focus. The thing that Amiga has lost was its special capablities --graphics/genlock that made it unique to any computer at the time. What makes the Amiga special now that can pave the way to solve a need? What is already there that could be 10-fold improved and done on the Amiga 4.X in the best way possible?

How about a DVR for all the "free" TV content on the internet
and over the air antenna (non-service contract). There is probably some products like this but I haven't seen a solution where I can just plug it in and be able to work on my TV *easily*. Sony had a sort of DVR that was non-service contract that downloaded the program guide from the antenna -- and that was used for the DVR)..extend this to hulu / other sites for on-demand content...in an interface that is easy to find the content you want to watch/record for later...

Maybe not the best idea...but there is surely something...

@DaveP

to be honest the terrasoft powerstation would be ideal if a bit expensive, I doubt that anyone is porting OS4 to it though (that would be too sensible)

(note terrasoft now appears to be fixstars http://us.fixstars.com/store/purchase.php)

Mark

Or how about something really adventurous:

Run on one of these:
http://scalableinformatics.com/pegasus?quicktabs_1=2#quicktabs-1

Mark

@number6

That's not quite what I was saying, (I did understand the catch22 reference), I am just disagreeing slightly with your interpretation.

My stance is that the reason we have a lot fewer developers than previously is because for a large number of people the barriers of entry into the OS4 scene are too large. i.e. the hardware and software is too expensive, not necessarily due to exposure, we actually get a lot of exposure (or have historically) on various news sites. The reason we don't get the developers we need is two fold:

1) not enough users to get donations/funds from for released products

2) costs are too high for both users AND developers to dabble if there is no return.

To reduce that you need to be able to run on a machine they already have (ie remove the hardware costs), this given the stated non-option of migrating to x86 means a virtual machine including a PPC emulator.

If this was a virtualbox type scenario (ie the virtual machine is free or included as part of the package) means that users/developers can get involved for the cost of the OS. Meaning that all those OS3 developers that are left with Amithlon/A1200's/etc could more easily move across, the exposure that we do get could more easily be leveraged to entice people to try the system.

My point really that opposes yours, isn't about exposure really, its more about lowering those entry barriers to get people able to join in.

Mark

@my_pc_is_amiga

Quote:

Yes, my thoughts exactly. No matter how hard the current OS4.x Devs and Programmers work the Amiga OS4.x will always be in the shadows because the desktop-ppc and the amiga fans do not really sustain a fruitful and profitable market for any company, including Hyperion. Building a new shared API will eventually help the current devs and users of all Amiga Flavors and OS4.x team but won't bring any new potential user-customers.

OS4.x has to re-establish itself on the market. Hyperion must choose carefully an area where OS4.x might have a chance and try to invest there, apparently the ppc dektop and the dektop market in general is very a very difficult and demanding market to infiltrate. OS4.x is over 6 years old now (?) and the result of the sales sure are somewhat pessimistic, specially when placed in contrary with OS3.5 10 years ago.

@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

I have to disagree here, this falls into the same category as the shouts for "open source". Despite various projects being released into the open source arena, how many people pick them up and help out to improve it? Let me tell you... virtually none.
YAM is a typical example of this, although it has been open source for ages, it is still the same devs working on it.
Creating a common API is not going to help improve the developer base on AmigaOS 4.x, simply because it will not allow the full potential of the OS, and also because if you want to code on AmigaOS, what's wrong with sticking to the APIs already in place? (It's a hypothetical question, it doesn't require a drawn out reply which says nothing).

The fact that compiling between AROS and MorphOS as well as AmigaOS is possible, is enough for those that already want to support those platform in one fell swoop.

My applications are targetted at OS4 simply because I know I can use all the features without worry, plus I'm in the lucky position to be able to implement features in the OS should I require them. If I were coding for MorphOS, I would certainly make sure I pushed MUI4 to the limit, simply because I can. Oh hang on, that means it won't work on the other platforms because they have those features missing, ho hum!

Quote:

Some on the forums have touted the idea of running OS4.x on the powerstation. While in essence a rather horny idea, and it would satisfy the high-end hardware drought, it will still offer excuses for those that simply want to moan, to complain about it. It doesn't matter what you do, in any walk of life, those that are not happy will never be satisfied.
I really don't know what the solution is, and luckily it's not up to me to make any decision on the future of AmigaOS 4, just like the rest of us here.

So perhaps the idea is to leave the decision making to those that have to make it. I wonder if the MacOS crowd spent countless hours on forums arguing about where the new Mac OS version should go, or what hardware they should port it to? I'm inclined to think that the decision was made behind closed doors, and the "community" only knew about it once it was well under way.

It's a real shame that these countless hours of pointless discussions and regurgitations of the same old same old are not put to better use. Just think what could be achieved if time was put to better use....

Simon