[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.
|
|
List of all comments to this article |
Petition: AmigaOS distribution policies and PPC hardware : Comment 61 of 187 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Seehund on 26-May-2002 10:35 GMT | In reply to Comment 37 (Ben Hermans/Hyperion): Ben Hermans wrote:
> First of all, it does NOT apply to the Cyberstorm and BlizzardPPC.
So? Noone has claimed otherwise. The petition is about the current and future POP/PPC market, why would it bring up some ancient kludges already installed in old proprietary hardware. It's irrelevant to the petition, that's why the CS/BPPC aren't mentioned.
> Secondly, other schemes to distinguish approved hardware from unapproved
> hardware are possible.
> A USB token for instance.
> With the AmigaOne, the route chosen was to have ROM extensions.
> This need not be the case for other hardware.
But that isn't mentioned in any official document from Amiga Inc., and the April exec. update says the opposite. In fact I haven't seen anyone from Amiga Inc. say this anywhere.
If something like a USB dongle or something else that doesn't require anything from hardware distributors/designers is allowed, great. That's one little step in the right direction. That'd show that Amiga Inc. at least have listened to *some* complaints so far - since, once again, there is no way of interpreting what's currently spelled out in black and white in the exec. update, "In the case of newly available hardware, including the Eyetech, Elbox and Matay products above, the licence requires that OS4-specific extensions are included in the hardware's boot ROM", in any other way.
The basic plan of compulsory licensing and compulsory OS/hardware bundling is still there though.
> Bottomline: the petition's very foundation is wrong.
That's ridiculous. You claim that Amiga Inc. have changed *one detail*, and there's no official mention of this change of details anywhere either. This single detail isn't even very important unless the rest of the distribution plans are changed as well. There's nothing that comes close to shaking any foundations here.
Even so, I'm sure we'd all appreciate if you could hint at Amiga Inc. to update their public info to reflect this change and whatever else that might have been changed. When we want to read Amiga Inc.'s official statements, should we read what they say on their own web site or should we read what other companies write in online forums? |
|
List of all comments to this article (continued) |
|
- User Menu
-
- About ANN archives
- The ANN archives is powered by #AmigaZeux. It was updated daily (news last: 22-Oct-2004; comments last: 18-May-2005).
ANN.lu was created, previously owned and maintained by Christian Kemp, www.ckemp.com.
- Contribute
- Not possible at this time!
- Search ANN archives
- Advanced search
- Hosting
- ANN.lu was hosted by Dreamhost. Sign up through this link, mention "ckemp" as referrer and he will get a 10% commission on any account you purchase.
Please show your appreciation for any past, present and future work on ANN.lu by making a contribution via PayPal.
|