[News] Petition: AmigaOS distribution policies and PPC hardware | ANN.lu |
Posted on 25-May-2002 20:50 GMT by Seehund | 187 comments View flat View list |
There's a petition aimed at Amiga Inc. set up at http://www.petitiononline.com/amigaos/ for all those who disagree with Amiga Inc's presented plans regarding compulsory OS/hardware bundling and licensing.
An excerpt from the petition:
On April 12th, 2002, you, Amiga Inc., published your plans regarding distribution policies for the forthcoming AmigaOS4 in an "Executive Update" on your web site.
In short, what you say and what we the undersigned object against is this:
* Any hardware capable of running AmigaOS must first be modified with "AmigaOS specific extensions" to its "boot ROM" in order to be allowed to run AmigaOS.
* Such hardware and its distributors must be approved and licensed by Amiga Inc. and the hardware distributors must also sell and support AmigaOS4.
* AmigaOS will only be available bundled with such hardware.
We think that the above will seriously hurt AmigaOS users, the POP/PPC hardware market and thus ultimately you, Amiga Inc., yourselves.
To read the entire petition and sign it, please click here.
Before those imagining sides, factions, camps and personal enemies everywhere start commenting, it must be emphasised that this poll is not intended to "promote" anything else than the success of AmigaOS, the POP/PPC hardware market, free choice and ethical business practices.
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Petition: AmigaOS distribution policies and PPC hardware : Comment 163 of 187 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Graham on 27-May-2002 22:10 GMT | In reply to Comment 161 (gz): > By using the term "unethical" marketing I mean't my personal opinion about
> Ainc's current licensing policy. It doesen't seem ethical in my opinion to try
> and force HW manufacturers under certain licencing certification if they want
> to sell HW on a market. Also it seems dubious to me that they are required to
> bundle a copy of AmigaOS with the HW.
Well, as has been pointed out, if I wanted to sell my Xyzzy PPC motherboard into the Amiga market, I go to Amiga and get it certified, and then I can sell it into the Amiga market, with the OS at the same time. Certainly no worse than has ever happened in the Amiga ever before, better because you can choose your AmigaOS enabled hardware now, before you were stuck with Commodore! Of course, things do change, and people like building their own computers now. But I fail to see what the difference is between "buy (motherboard with OS4)" and "buy (motherboard) and buy (OS4) separately".
This does not mean that I suddenly cannot sell my Xyzzy PPC motherboard into other markets anymore either.
AmigaOS4 comes with the Amiga compliant version of the board simply because the board possibly comes with AmigaOS4 components on it already - the dongle rom is one example.
However, I would like to see AmigaOS4 available as a separate product eventually, as it matures and other PPC hardware starts to appear on the market. I also would like to know about what happens if you want to move your AmigaOS license from one PPC machine to another new one, and then use Linux on the old hardware - there doesn't seem to be a way of doing this at all under the current scheme. It looks like you must buy another copy of AmigaOS4, even if you don't want it.
But for now, the current system is more than acceptable, especially when trying to revive the market again initially. There is only one PPC motherboard for AmigaOS4 anyway (AmigaOneG3-SE), and people buying it will want OS4 for obvious reasons (they are buying an AmigaOne!), so there are no problems.
Graham |
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