| From: | Wil Haslup |
| Date: | 4 Apr 2001 at 00:40:23 |
| Subject: | [D5] Re: Back from St. Louis! |
Hi Dr
On 03-Apr-01, you wrote:
> On 28-Mar-01 05:05:21 Wil Haslup wrote:
>> I returned home from St. Louis yesterday.
>> I've listened and read patiently over the years as the various
>> incarnations of Amiga made announcements at such events. Like
>> everyone else, I've seen a lot of things never manifest.
>> Anyone that went to St. Louis heard some very comprehensive and
>> promising plans. These plans will benefit the small developers the
>> most but also seem to have the interests of Amiga Inc.'s survival
>> and growth in mind.
>> What I will say is that out of all the announcements the most
>> recent in St. Louis were simply the most stunning in terms of
>> marketing and leveraging what we all know we have in the Amiga.
>> Within two years I believe it is very probable that the Amiga
>> environment existing on other systems may be very common. That a
>> PPC machine and a PPC native version of the OS is coming before
>> that for us to develop on is just a tremendous fringe benefit.
> But it all has nothing to do with the "Amiga".
It sort of depends on how you read it. There will be no more
explicitly "Classic" Amigas at this point. BTW, the term "Classic"
was acknowledged as a poor choice since it is the only thing there is
now, hardware or software.
The business model Amiga Inc. is pursuiing doesn't have anything to do
with the current Amiga or OS unless you stretch the arguement into
some sort of philosophical universe and since nothing exists yet that
arguement would be hard to make.
What does have to do with the current Amiga is that they have realized
that the strength of the Amiga is in the user base and those that have
made Aminet what it is. With this in mind, combined with the fact
they've only sold about 4 DE machines and a smattering of SDKs for the
new environment Amiga Inc. realizes the Amiga user base likes the
Amiga OS and the Amiga machine. Duh!
Because of this the Amiga OS is being developed and eventually ported
to the PPC. This is a departure from the previous divergent plan of
only developing the OS for the "Classic" hardware and only working on
the DE environment on other platforms. Concurrently, the new PPC
board will be available this summer for towered 1200s. As I
mentioned, there is some question as to if the new PPC OS will run on
current systems with PPC boards. These steps are being taken to
facilitate Amiga developers who like the Amiga and want to continue
working within the Amiga OS. Since the Amiga environment must be part
of the new systems for someone to develop for it, I'm assuming it will
be able to run the Tao environment and Java.
I agree that they aren't pure Amigas with custome chips, etc. but
considering what is available today maintaining the OS onto
contemporary hardware seems a reasonable step. It maintains the OS
and makes available contemporary graphics and sound hardware or
anything else that is on a PCI card that they can get a driver for.
If the market analysis proves out there is the potential for a revenue
stream that may make other hardware production possible later (Amiga didn't say
that but the projections of the software market for Amiga environment
devices seemed to make this assumption reasonable). Even if Amiga
Inc. continues its commitment to be a "software only" company there is
the potential for other developers committed to the Amiga to build new boxes
with the revenue they get from selling their titles to owners of Amiga
environment devices.
>> The only comment in reference to the incompatability with DOpus was
>> that GP needs to make a patch so it works with the changes in the
>> libraries. Go figure....the developer points at those in charge of
>> the OS, those in charge of the OS point at the developer.
>> I will say that it seems the changes in the workbench are designed
>> to implement interface ideas that will eventually be part of the
>> PPC version of the Amiga OS at version 4.2. I imagine things will
>> be introduced along the way to make the eventual OS 5 what they
>> want it to be by then. I would note the the just release Boing Bag
>> for 3.9 includes asynchronous copy function as an example of how
>> things are becoming more functional.
>> Developers keeping up is probably just a necessity.
> No. No further Amiga development is planned unless outside funds
> come from somewhere. The source code is available for purchase by
> anyone who thinks they can make money out of it and has resources
> for future development. Funding requests to AI and H&P were laughed
> at.
Hmmm, I have to question an effort by the developer of an alternative
interface to solicit funding from the platform owners and developers.
I probably would have tried myself but I would have expected to fail.
It seems to me that a machine used by developers with a sophisticated
multitasking operating system running environments for users to
develop under for other devices would have a use for a configurable
directory management solution. I suppose if you leave that niche
unfilled as the "Workbench" develops the developers of the OS will
probably incorporate those features of DOpus that facilitate developers.
Regards
Wil