| From: | Gary Peake |
| Date: | 8 Aug 2000 at 15:56:42 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Windoze SDK |
On Tue, 8 Aug 2000 02:14:36 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:
>
>On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Rob Iacullo wrote:
>
>> > From: "Gary Peake" <gary@amiga.com>
>>
>> >> The decision to produce a Windows hosted SDK has been reached and
>> >> approved.
>> >>
>> >> Just wanted everyone to know.
>>
>> > Uh?? And the working one Bill showed at Amiwest what was? You mean
>> > you guys did it but weren't still sure if release it or not?
>>
>> Come to think about it, I think that one was done by an employee on
>> his own time.
>
>To my understanding, the whole VP package for windoze is already
>available via the Tao dev kit, which is what I expect was being shown
>at AmiWest. The existence of this might explain why Gary is insisting
>that a windoze SDK will be taking "no AI resources" to produce or go
>to answering some claims that the current Linux SDK is a fairly
>straight re-packaging of the existing Tao offerings.
Aaron,
Please don't take this personally, but your post provides an excellent
jump point for something that needs to be said here.
I am constantly amazed at the conclusions that get drawn from honest
statements we make from time to time.
I understand that most of us have had so much smoke blown up our
tushes that we have now learned to look for ulterior motivations and
innuendo, spin doctoring, and BS from almost every corner.
This isn't my intention nor is it the intention of Amiga Inc as a
company.
The statement I made about NOT expending any resources supporting
Windows is entirely accurate. It is also accurate where Linux is
concerned. We do NOT and will NOT support any host OS.
Without going into detail on our agreement with Red Hat, it should be
remembered that Red Hat makes NO MONEY giving away Red Hat Linux. They
make ALL of their money by providing support and printed documentation
as well as commercially boxed products.
The same holds true for M$ except they have no "free" downloads.
We do NOT support Red Hat linux, Corel linux, Suse, Mandrake, Windows,
or any other host we may decide to use as a jump point for the SDK.
Nor will we, by agreement, attempt to steal their support revenue
streams.
Supporting host OS's is left strictly to the original manufacturer. WE
support ONLY the SDK in a hosted or non-hosted environment.
Ever wonder why it is sometimes very hard to get trivial answers in
the Linux newsgroups when trying to get help or support? It is because
the majority there know that Red Hat makes its money providing support
and that is a way of encouraging new Red Hat users to PAY Red Hat for
that support. That is about their only revenue stream and they need
the support fees to continue their organized effort. The same holds
true for the others I mentioned (including Windows).
Now, having said this, we have no problems (nor does Red Hat) if as a
community, we wish to offer to help each other as Mr Robbins and
others here seem so willing to do. What our developer community does
is up to each and every one of you. I know I have learned a great deal
about Linux here and in private email. I hope many others have too.
Red Hat hopes many people try Linux. Red Hat WANTS you to call them
for support.
Fleecy, Bill, and I all support open source but do not believe it is
the end all, be all of a new OS. Mozilla is a great lesson in why big
projects sometimes do not work if they are totally open source. There
are other examples as to why open source does work on big projects
(Suse, Mandrake, Red Hat).
Therefor, we have decided to make "some" portions of the OE open
source and also to hold the core of the OE as our own IP and code it
using internal developers.
We believe strongly that many developers code open source projects
because they want to have an effect on where computing goes from here.
We will , in no way, attempt to hamper these efforts in our new OE. We
have, and will continue to have Open Calls for Alpha and Beta testing
of core components for the new OE. These calls will be open to both
open source and commercial developers and beta testers.
We also believe that to be a viable alternative as an OE company, we
MUST provide revenue opportunities for commercial developers. One only
has to look at the huge amount of commercial software available for
Windows and Macs to know that this helps a systems long term
viability.
So, please guys, don't make assumptions or jump to conclusions about
what I may have meant by any particular statement.
The statement was plain enough, we will NOT spend ANY resources
supporting Windows with the SDK, nor will we spend any resources
supporting Linux. We WILL expend resources supporting the SDK itself
whether it is hosted or non-hosted at any given time.
To the point of straight repackaging, I won't go into a detailed
listing of what we have changed or added or deleted from the original
Tao offerings except to say that what we are offering is NOT a
straight repackaging. Over time, (in a very short time actually) more
components will be added and available for free download from our
support site (which is being worked on and almost ready).
Thanks for the time!
Catch the Dream ... Amiga Dream Team