| [News] Ralph Schmidt interview | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 27-Nov-2000 19:04 GMT by Christian Kemp | 57 comments
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christophe Decanini noticed there's
an interview (in French
and (English)
with Ralph Schmidt of MorphOs fame on on AmigaImpact.
He also provided a summary (read more below).
- Limited (68k) support of mediator if no use of MMU tricks.
- Support of G-REX hardware (G-REX software is done by MorphOS team).
- Eyetech products support will be decided once available.
- Elbox did not contact Morphos team and MorphOS team do not think a lot of PPC owner will adopt mediator.
- MorphOS team members are part of Bplan, MorphOS will run on Bplan hardware. There will be an announcement early december.
- Morphos need to be working stable on CyberstormPPC and Blizzard PPC to be sell as a commercial product then MorphOS will be hardware independent to run on new bplan hardware. Perhaps it will also run on Macintosh. No X86 port expected.
- Recompiling a warpup application is the only way to run it on MorphOS.
- Name of developers for MorphOS application will be anounced in december.
- Not decided yet on how MorphOS will be sell. OEM, from Vapor online web or from other distributors.
- MorphOS team could adopt the type of developpers structure Vapor is using today.
- A third beta version of MorphOS should be out in next weeks with PPC version of MUI, YAM, CED, MagicMenu, AmiTCP, ADE. All PPC users should try it and give feedbacks to enhance MorphOS.
I did not verify every point of this summary, please visit the original in case of any doubts.
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| Ralph Schmidt interview : Comment 52 of 57 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Kelli Halliburton on 29-Nov-2000 23:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 51 (Ralph Schmidt):
Ralph, how much would H&P (or possibly Amiga Inc.) have to pay you in order to license (or even buy outright) the MorphOS technology?
I am thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to coordinate advanced AmigaOS development somehow.
Right now, WarpUp can run PowerUp software, but PowerUp cannot run WarpUp software. And MorphOS adds a new wrinkle -- I know it cannot run WarpUp software, but can it run PowerUp software? You have said before that it is possible to write an emulation layer that would allow PowerUp to run WarpUp software, but that it's too much trouble, and you can't be bothered to do it. Is it also possible to write an emulation layer that would allow MorphOS to run WarpUp software?
Obviously, H&P are not going to write that emulation layer for you, because it would cut into the popularity of their own system. And, despite the fact that it would bring everything under one umbrella, allow MorphOS to run pretty much *EVERYTHING*, and give MorphOS a tremendous competitive advantage that could result in dramatically increased revenues, you say that it is too resource-intensive for you to write it yourself.
So the only option I can see is for one company to buy out the other. I don't think DCE is capable of buying out H&P, but perhaps H&P or their partner Amiga Inc. would be interested in buying or licensing MorphOS.
Of course, the bad blood between the two companies means that a deal would be very difficult to achieve. And so the entire community suffers. No one will concede. DCE and H&P are the Gore and Bush of the Amiga community. DCE is Gore, whose products are perhaps technically more sound, but does not have the official stamp of approval. H&P is Bush, lacking in many areas but having the better rapport with the public, and the official stamp of approval. The official stamp of approval itself is questionable, having been granted somewhat arbitrarily, and amid suspicions of political maneuverings.
There's no final result to be had from this, though; no eventual elected proper legal heir to the throne. This battle is fought in the far more nebulous environment of the marketplace where consumers vote with their money, and can split their votes. Both companies are able to continue with this morass of confusion as long as they can remain solvent doing so, but the damage they do to public perceptions of stability is severe. If anything, this bickering will be the final nail in the coffin of the Classic Amiga, as divisiveness and indecision combine to disastrous effect.
I say, let both companies seek financing to buy out the other.
In an alternate history, if Beta & VHS were still competing today, do you think that the video market would be as big as it is now? I doubt it. Why? Because of this: Sony and JVC would eventually adopt the idea of establishing exclusive licensing agreements with content producers: some companies would only release their videos on one format, and some companies would only release on the other. There would be incompatibilities, consumers would refuse to buy two VCRs just so that they could watch all movies. Electronics manufacturers would have to choose which format to support (in our history, JVC's VHS was the only one licensing its technology for a minimal fee; Sony's Beta fees were not competitive).
Consumers don't like incompatibilities, and often settle for the most common option. This is the reason for such the success of such things as VHS and Microsoft Windows. I'd like to think that the Amiga market is better than this, but I wouldn't bet my company on it.
Monopolies exist because consumers don't like incompatibilities. Think of telephones. All over the world, telephone systems are either socialized or controlled mostly by one corporation. There have been efforts to force these monopolies to stop unfair trade practices, but by and large, AT&T still controls the nationwide US telephony market, and its former subsidiaries still control local markets within their scope.
I am actively encouraging that advanced PPC-enhanced Classic Amiga OS development be monopolized. Barring that, software companies still developing for the PPC-enhanced Classic Amiga might choose to seek to dissolve any exclusive OS agreements and make every effort to support both OS platforms. |
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