[News] Fleecy Moss clarifies on ANN | ANN.lu |
Posted on 20-May-2002 22:17 GMT by SlimJim | 186 comments View flat View list |
For those of you lacking the stamina to wade through the 300+ posts-thread
on ANN (named "the next ppc amiga" ), Fleecy Moss, CTO at Amiga Inc,
made a short surprise visit to dispell some rumours about the BPlan-AInc situation (apparently
after getting the thumbs up from AInc:s legal advisors).
Snippets from various posts:
[...] "For AmigaOS4, Amiga said that it will welcome ANY and ALL hardware companies
which develop hardware. We have spent many hours of email with
representatives of bPlan and in all of them, our line has been consistent.
1.We will be very happy to provide bPlan with an OS4 licence, and to have
OS4 running on the Pegasos
2.Amiga compatability within MorphOS comes from illegally obtained source
tapes and we will use all legal process to prevent it from entering the
market.
It is not Amiga Inc preventing AmigaOS4 from running on the Pegasos. As far
as Amiga Inc is concerned, we consider the two issues mentioned above as
being completely separate."
[...]
"Most of you (with an interest in the truth anyway) have already asked the
obvious question. What would Amiga Inc gain from NOT allowing OS4 to run on
the Pegasos. Answer - absolutely nothing.
The licence terms for OS4 are the same for bPlan as for Eyetech and anyone
else who wishes to sell an Amiga product that runs OS4. It is a typical OEM
licence, and presents a level playing field, for producers, for distributors
and for customers. You will find NO exclusive deals done for any product
that carries the Amiga seal of approval, and no favouritism played to any
company or individual.
Any company that says that they approached us and we rejected them is lying.
They may not have liked certain elements of the OEM deal, but it is the same
deal as everyone else is offered."
[...]
"Anything to do with MorphOS and its 'amiga compatability' will be decided,
so it seems, in the courts."
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Fleecy Moss clarifies on ANN : Comment 46 of 186 | ANN.lu |
Posted by gary_c on 20-May-2002 23:36 GMT | In reply to Comment 38 (smithy): >Actually, the BeOS userbase grew massively when BeOS was ported to the PC.
True, but the other side of this is that BeOS PPC was orphaned when the G3s came out. If new PPC computers continued to be produced for BeOS to run on, I don't think there's any question that it would have thrived there. Of course BeOS/x86 was great for a lot of users, too. The BeOS situation had so many unique quirks, though, that I don't know how useful it is as a model for anything Amiga, Inc. does.
>There is a massive market of computing enthusiasts that use x86 machines.... There is a massive potential here for AmigaOS.
Or for something. It remains to be seen what Amiga will deliver; I don't think just a PPC port of OS3.9 with some modernization is going to be that interesting to most people. Recall that when BeOS came out, it was sometimes call the "Buzzword-Enabled" OS because of its features and capabilities. Also at that time, MacOS was dead in the water and Windows was arguably much weaker, relatively speaking. The situation is now much tougher for another alternative OS, because MacOSX is a respectable operating system and because Windows (especially on consumer boxes) now runs a lot better than it did. What can Amiga bring to pull people away from these?
I think it's also a valid point that sometimes unique hardware is a plus as well as a minus. While porting to x86 would get AmigaOS in front of a whole lot of people, the vast majority of these people have no use for or interest in alternative operating systems. Amiga is going to be a geek's platform for the foreseeable future; running on unique hardware actually adds to the geek attraction in some ways. Of course this has to be *interesting* hardware. A non-Apple consumer PPC motherboard is by definition interesting, but beyond that the first generation of Amiga PPC boards have a long way to go before they can be a factor in driving the platform.
> The computing enthusiasts market is there for the taking.
So far it seems to me that Amiga, Inc. is too distracted by AmigaAnywhere to push AmigaOS and Amiga hardware enough to get that market. If they can ramp up the effort and get focussed, to the point that they can have a product as interesting in 2003 as BeOS was in 1996, then maybe there's a chance. I guess the key is what AmigaOS 5 turns out like. So far things aren't very encouraging.
To bend this back on to the topic, Fleecy's right, of course, to say they'll support any available hardware. Hopefully this will let the hardware guys get sales up to the point that they can see some profits, and hopefully it'll also enable some more-interesting hardware. The initial run (G3 600MHz) is more a proof of concept than a compelling end-user product. Time will tell what will come of the legal aspects of all of this, and what course bPlan will take regarding the software options.
-- gary_c
<aside to c0rpse: nobody needs your idiotic psuedo-cool junior high school bullsh*t. Post something worth reading or shut the f*ck up. Just IMHO :-) > |
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