... but, is Ambient really that good? I'd pay for an upgrade of my DOpus Magellan license to MorphOS, maybe rather than Ambient....

Anyway, I think that following the same strategy as Apple, HW+OS, was never a good idea. It's either u sell the OS (like M$), or u sell the machines. Some Mac users are not very happy about having to pay for new releases of Mac OS, when they own a Mac. That's different in the Wintel world, cos the OS is not tied to a HW brand.

IMHO, Peg2 and Gentoo are a better match

Quote:

IMHO it is. From the readme:

Ambient is:

- around 100000 lines of code
- 3 years of work, almost 2 of them fulltime
- 68 MUI classes
- 243 methods
- 172 attributes
- various support libraries
- an own advanced threading system
- a philosophy of never locking up whatever happens with I/O, like an unaccessible network device
- a huge number of sleepless nights

All this has done for MorphOS is prevent any chance of a 1.5 release any time soon. Ambient cant be part of it out of the box now because of the GPL as said below. Its a real mess I think.

That's good...

Quote:

@Acill

And you think there was a 1.5 release soon before Zapek did this? You had already sold your Peg because you saw it as hopeless!

This is a big change, let's see how it plays out in the next few days...

Quote:

A Mess?
No kidding...

I think it's pretty obvious obvious that a release of 1.5 is not going to happen soon anyway - if it is ever released.


It not clear who owns what in MorphOS but unless contracts were signed saying otherwise the code belongs to whoever developed it (irrespective of whatever copyright they wrote on it).

If the developers were to GPL their parts and BBRV were to allow the same with whatever they do/did own I would imagine the majority of MorphOS would become available.

The rest (I don't imagine everyone wuld do this) could potentially be made up from bits from AROS or rewritten.

Using an AROS kernel gives the possibility of running hosted - that is providing a MOS "envrionment" on an other OS (Amithlon anyone?). That could massively increase the user base.

If an X client was added you could even have the possibility of apps like OpenOffice or Mozilla in MOS, they wouldn't really be running in MOS of course (they'd run on the host OS) but it would look like they were running in MOS. Note: before you write this off as mad I should point out OpenOffice does something remarkably similar in OS X.

GPLing the rest of MOS is in my the only option which really makes sense at this point in time. Otherwise I can't see a release as being possible in the forseeable future, the days of developers being paid to work on it are over...

I should point out though that GPL does not mean something cannot be sold, it only means source must be provided and there are imitations on what is linked with it.

@ Minator

Quote:



Well, Morphos has already A-BOX and Q-Box, AND nothing prevent a new L-Box running Linux to be developed... and to host Linux programs NATIVELY in same environment which Morphos uses today.


At least I think it could be possible...


[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte on 2005/1/23 13:24 ]

we will see what´s upcoming ..anyway Morphos can be a nice opnsource project in the future,...hope other Developers will do the same step as David........

if it´s for free it´s for me )

Quote:

@Raf_MegaByte

Ah, wouldn't that be great if it were possible? It seems to me that MorphOS core team has the skill set to do this "L-Box" creation, because the whole MOS project was built around A-Box.

However I am not a technical expert and I do not know if it is possible to for example make L-Box to launch Linux program in an Ambient window.

Velcro_SP:

# You might want to have a further developed ext2/ext3 filesystem ?

# Dont know if its possible to extend ixemul.library further ?

Gunne

Don't know if this news is good or bad..

I don´t know either, but i have a PEG to run MOS, the others OSs is for fun, MOS is the main OS for most of us for sure, so closed or opened i will keep with MOS, the donation will be made Zapek , thanks.

Quote:
Why?

You can make a distribution combining proprietary and GPL software.

What you can't do is link non-free software to GPL software. In the case of Ambient, the only place where this would be an issue, I suspect, would be workbench.library (I'm not familiar with the architecture of Ambient, but I guess it provides a clone of workbench.library).

So, if this is the case, then Mr Gerber is surely not only stopping Genesi using Ambient, but he is also stopping users legally running any non-GPL compatible software that uses workbench.library.

I could be wrong, of course.

Cheers,
Rich

Please don't be stupid, Ambient != Morphos.
Ambient is an independant binary that replace workbench, just as Magellan, you don't have to link anything to it, only things MosTeam will have to do, is to release modifications they will do to Ambient.
You can use good old workbench instead of ambient if you want.

And if MosTeam don't want to release modifications they will do on Ambient, they always can find an agreement with David...

So understand that Ambient under GPL licence is really a great thing. Cause now anyone can try to improve it now and later.
I even think it should have been GPL far much earlier.

SixK

Quote:
Not quite true. Any program which uses workbench.library or icon.library would be linked against Ambient's versions of these when run.

With the completely GPL Ambient release, this means that strictly you cannot legally run non-free software which uses workbench.library or icon.library (since you cannot link non-free software to a GPL library).

Somebody should talk to David about re-licensing those libs as LGPL.

Cheers,
Rich

Quote:

It depends. If I provide a piece of software which links against a library *when run* it does not break the GPL.

GPL *only* applies to distribution. If you are not supplying that library yoursef the GPL is irrelevant.

I'm waiting for someone to cut n' paste the GPL licensing here

[ Edited by Darth_X on 2005/1/23 17:52 ]

Quote:
Interesting points. Mulling this over, I don't think that you're quite right there, but I think you are right in the sense that the GPL on Ambient's workbench.lib and icon.lib won't affect end-users.

Linking against a shared library is making a derived work - no matter how much of the linking is done at compile time and how much at run time.

For example, in the preamble to the LGPL:

"When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination fits its criteria of freedom."

Thus a work derived from a GPL library must be distributed under GPL. From this I understand that it is the creation of a combined work _legally_ that is the issue - distributing parts of that combination separately won't get around it.

However, in this case, since the libraries are completely interchangeable with non-free versions as far as applications are concerned, a work that is derived from a GPL'd workbench.lib is identical to a work derived from the proprietary workbench.lib. You couldn't prove that it was a derivative of the GPL'd workbench.lib.

Yeah. I'm thinking out loud again. I should probably shut up.

Cheers,
Rich

Quote:

" ..anyway, Zapek promised to add a special clause for those libraries in the license, so they will be safe to use..."

Comment at MorphOS-News.de.

Why can't i just wake up and browse to morphzone and see it all was a bad dream, and mos 1.5 is available for download :)

Yeah, guys, i think it's really good news!
GPL is not a problem. Genesi could include the source code with each Ambient release and it's not a problem. In fact Genesi already does this with GeekGadgets environment included in MorphOS SDK (unfortunately they're not completely honest here and don't provide source code).

Quote:

As long as it is clear that the software is GPL, and that you will make source code available upon request it is ok to only distribute binaries.
They will only be in violation of the GPL if someone asks for the sources and is refused.

Hi,

Having Ambient under the GPL is good.
The linking will be no problem for most cases.

If your program does not make use of any Ambient functions which came with the GPL release, then you can link it with the pre GPL includes and you are safe.

So all current software which is unaware of any possibily new functions can use the old includes and is save. Whether the user actually uses the new or old library does not matter.


Exampe:
Last year MySQL changed its license from LGPL to GPL.
So linking against the new MySQL binaries will require
that your app becomes GPL too.
But as the new MySQL version are backwards compatible you
can just link your apps against the old LGPL version and your programm does not need to become GPL. Only apps which make use of the new function need to be linked against the new library.
For the record: MySQL is offered under multible licences,
so commercial apps can use a commercial license and be save,
GPL apps can always use the GPL licensed version of course,
and for all noncommercial users there is another non GPL license - so PHP and BSD apps are free to use MySQL as well.


So for all our MorphOS apps its safe to use the AMbient libs as long as you only use the functions which were available before the GPL release. As soon as David offers the libs under LGPL you can use all new functions too.


Cheers
Gunnar

You forgot to mention one thing.

Ambient is now GPL

BUT

Ambient is tied strictly to the underneath MorphOS Operative System.

So first:

1) MorphOS has to be UN-TIED from Ambient Legacy...

(or it must continues to use only Ambient environment PREVIOUS to GPL)

2) Provide another standard GUI

3) It mus be created a compatibility library for ALL the GUIs which must be of free distribution, in order to bypass GPL legal restrictions.

In this new enviroment supported by a generic GUI library, Ambient MUST BE ONLY A FREE CHOICE *AMONG* OTHER GUI's environments.

So the user could choose to use (or not) a GPL GUI such as Ambient, or a standard MorphOS one (or even an old one such as DOPUS) ***without*** harrasing the whole OS or even the Software Houses with any danger or any legal need to declare their software programs GPLed.

However, be happy.

Ambient is about to become only an external GUI that you are free to choice for (and to use or not) into your MorphOS.



[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte on 2005/1/24 15:55 ]

Nonsense. That's not how the GPL works. There are special provisions
for non-GPL Operating Systems. Any code that is NOT part of the OS
must be opened if linked with Ambient. Ambient can link with MorphOS
as much as it likes, it makes no difference at all. If it did, there
wouldn't be any GPL programs available for any non-free OS... Now,
what that MorphOS team must do is to bundle and distribute Ambient as
a contributed application, not as part of the OS.