I should know better than to start a thread like this one given the current "Heated" discussions going on in one or more threads here on MorphZone.org, but I have made stupid mistakes before, and will no doubt make many more in the future.

My point is simply this; is MorphOS, it's users and developers, better off because Hyperion and AmigaOS4.x are still alive and attempting to sustain what remains of the original Amiga community, or would MorphOS, it's users and developers be in better shape, if for any reason AmigaOS4.x stopped development completely and faded into only a memory?

I'm not proposing that this would or could happen, just trying to get MorphOS users to consider what might happen, if there were no AmigaOS4.x any longer.

We all know that most AmigaOS4.x users would not switch to using MorphOS just because they no longer had the choice to use AmigaOS4.x, or get any new updates for their systems. Just as many AmigaOS3.x users have never switched to using AmigaOS4.x, or MorphOS, or AROS. We might gain a few new users, but not many more than we are already gaining from curious AmigaOS3.x and AmigaOS4.x users who want to find out more about MorphOS.

What I wonder is could it be possible that losing AmigaOS4.x might actually be harmful for MorphOS users. It is possible that if there were no AmigaOS4.x, perhaps there would be no A-Eon and no X5000 for MorphOS to be ported to. Some will say that this is no bad thing for MorphOS, and that it would just speed up the switch to X64 and leaving all PPC systems behind.

I don't know? The one thing I wish the MorphOS Dev. Team would do a better job of is directly competing with Hyperion to gain more of the NG users to the MorphOS side. As someone recently pointed out, most shows, meetings and events, are usually focused more on AmigaOS4.x than MorphOS, or AROS. There appear to be just as many, if not more, 3rd party programmers, who prefer to create games, applications, and utilities for AmigaOS4.x, than there are for MorphOS, or AROS. The Amiga name still carries lots of weight with the remaining user base, even if it has to be changed to AmigaOne on the hardware used.

For me, MorphOS is clearly the superior OS and supports better and more hardware choices, but those facts don't seem to convince hundreds of users who still prefer to follow and use AmigaOS4.x systems, as well as the thousands who are still using their original Commodore Amiga computers, or emulators (software, or FPGA hardware).

Why don't we enjoy a larger lead (if any) in users and 3rd party programmers, after producing a usable OS for many years longer than AmigaOS4.x has been available, having better performing hardware that is available in high quantities at low cost, and a fairly clear lead in performance of the OS, features, and 3D hardware acceleration?

Maybe the MorphOS Dev. Team made a mistake in not trying to bury the competition years ago, when we enjoyed an even larger edge than we do today. Easier written than done, and I understand that these guys are just coders that don't want to mess with such crap, or worrying about what the other side is doing, they just want to write the best code they can and add the features they want to see and use.

For those of you who like to waste time hypothesising their days and nights away, this is my "What If" question for you. What would happen to MorphOS if there were no AmigaOS4.x?

What would happen to MorphOS if there were no AmigaOS4.x? In 2015?

Nothing. No change.

The damage is already done by the people behind the OS4 a decade ago.

Anytime you lose a major contributor from your community of users this is a lose for you.
The fact that all these folks are working on and updating their systems can not be bad. The
more the merrier. I don't care what system they are supporting, we are all Amigans at
heart. However you want to love that system is good news for all of us. I support everyone
in their indevers. Long live Amiga! Gives me joy almost every single day, when I'm not
to frustrated with it.
Brad Hansen

Quote:

You miss the point of this thread, and my question. It is aimed ONLY at MorphOS and its users and programmers, not the greater "Amiga" community. Please don't misunderstand my creation of this thread as any kind of wish for any of this to happen. It is all hypothetical, a waste of time, and useless discussion for entertainment, or thoughtful reflection on the "What If" of the question posed.

What in the "MorphOS" world would change? Anything?

Comments from others, like "the damage is already done" aren't needed, or wanted, as they add nothing to the discussion, other than more hatred and conflict.

[ Edited by amigadave 03.11.2015 - 19:56 ]

I guess the impact would be very small. The historical mistake was that OS4 was developed at all. AmigaOS was dead. MorphOS came to take its heritage and put it to a new level. Things looked promising. Then OS4 was announced with toatlly unrealistic promises. Users were distracted from MorphOS and the market was split into pieces. That was the mistake (and that's why I am still sour against some certain individuals, my memory is pretty well working). Back then there were still plenty users.
FUD distracted them fromMorphOS/AmigaOS and the user base became snaller and smaller. Without that there had been a realistic chance to establish a healthy niche with MorphOS as AmigaOS successor.
But that ship sailed long, long ago. No more tears to cry about that lost chance.
Today this doesn't matter anymoe. There are virtually no new users. Existing users have made their choices. Some prefer this, some that. Eventually OS4 catched up a bit (MUI4, Odyssey) and it's hard for either of the OSes to really be unique. And while a unification is more than unrealistic the only chance to bring some momentum into this is to broaden the differences. Suggested scenario: OS4 stays ppc and rather conservative/retro. MorphOS sails to new grounds on x64.
According to my observation OS4 seems to be more backward oriented, users pretty much keep the 80/90ies spirit (was a great time, but time moves on!). MorphOS users seem (all on average of course) seem more practical and progressive, using the system primarily for normal computing tasks - which MorphOS can fullfill to some extend, but it becomes harder every day (alone the browser situation gets worse with sites getting more and more demanding and even basic things like the google search page getting issues lately (at least at my setups)). If MorphOs wants to have a future the only solution is to move on. And for that it doesn't matter whether OS4 exists or not.

Short: Years ago MorphOS would have been better off without OS4. And for a few years the coexistence was even good as there was somethig like active competition. But as said this has sailed. MorphOS as "PPC Amiga" is EOL IMHO. And hence, OS4 has no more impact on MorphOS.

I think the reason that the AOS4 community is more active, besides pure love, is because it demands such a huge investment to get it that people get more attached to it. When you pay 1500€ for something, you want your moneys worth of it. When you pay 30€ for a Mac Mini to test a free version of MorphOS there is not much loss if you put it in the closet after 5 minutes.

As for the situation, heated discussions aside, I think it's good we have 3 NG OS's. It's proof that people work their ass off in their respective camps to keep the Amiga alive for the future. I don't have to like or respect everything that is done and decided, but I do respect the underlying passion that makes people do it. Even when the turnout is questionable.

> AmigaOS was dead. MorphOS came to take its heritage and put it to a new level.
> Things looked promising. Then OS4 was announced with toatlly unrealistic promises.
> Users were distracted from MorphOS and the market was split into pieces.

I think the distraction started even earlier. The public announcement of MorphOS was followed by the announcement of the Amiga sale from Gateway to Amino just one week later. With that came all this AMIE/AmigaDE nonsense (obviously bearing the official name), which was always overshadowing any serious "Amiga"-like OS projects of that time, including MorphOS, also with hardware-related and purposely misleading things like these:

"Further he introduced Dean Brown (DKB) as Director of Hardware once more. Mr. Brown would be responsible for creating referenz hardware for interessted third-party developers to look about. A game handheld device would allready be finished, which was in use by Amiga internally to impress interessted parties with the features of the new operating environment. [...] it was finished after one week of development! [...] And then Bill McEwen had a very special goody to offer: Once the single parts of the operating environment will be put together there will be the AmigaOne - a new multimedia desktop, developed and designed by Amiga, even if manufactured by thir-party manufacturers."
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2000-06-00088-EN.html

"if there’s going to be an Amiga computer again, there must be hardware specs-rules about what it will be and what it will contain. Therefore, someone must define those specs. Ideally (at least in the Amiga realm), it’s someone with the knowledge, experience and vision to carry it off while keeping true to the philosophy that made the original experience so wonderful. [...] “First and foremost, my job is to create the test platforms that will be used by the internal software teams,” Brown explains. This will result (initially) in systems that look very similar to existing computers. “These same platforms, or modifications of them, will be made available to our hardware partners as reference designs. In the medium term, I expect to develop a new architecture that addresses many of the issues that plague current computer systems. Issues that in inflexible operating systems cannot be fixed,” says Brown. [...] “Shortly after we release our first real hardware that’s natively running the new operating system, there will be another machine that is hardware incompatible with it running the same OS.”"
http://web.archive.org/web/20050218095140/http://www.amiga.com/press/zine/8-1-00/Dean_Brown/

Back then (this was even months before the Zico "spec"), most active Amiga users still longed for custom "Amiga" hardware, and it was only later that Amino/AIW touted themselves as a pure software company who would leave hardware development to 3rd parties. Even in mid-2000 when the first public MorphOS beta was released, McEwen and Fleecy's pipe dreams were still taken at face value by most active users. When the users became increasingly discontent with AIW's vision, eventually starting to realize that the future Amiga was to be mostly a handheld device running full-fledged Linux with Tao's Intent multimedia layer as an application on top, and the OS4 project (then to be led by AIW) was thus announced in early 2001, the distraction was already in full effect.

Bottom line: MorphOS didn't bear the "Amiga" name and thus wasn't considered by most Amiga users even before OS4 was announced. Sad but true.

MorphOS would be for sure "worse" than without AmigaOS4.

This is not because of some Software ported from it (the rivers goes down the other direction), but because of the competition.

The first thing i though when hyperion was handled bankrupt beginning this year was simply "shit".

MorphOS is - not entirely of course - driven by competition. Best example is OWB. OS4 got it first and within a few days Fab did his own basic MUI based browser, which became the full MUI-OWB we all know later.

There was even an attempt to create this linux desktop driven project (fail to remember the name), which runs Gimp and Abi-Word on OS4, but in that case it was considered a waste of time. The desktop itself was already working.

These are not the only examples. There are more.

So, we need OS4 and also AROS. Not to grab stuff and use them, but to get our developers motivated and also inspired. Also the developer meetings are a great source of generating motivation and have generally a great impact on the work flow.

Without OS4 MorphOS wouldn´t probably be at the current stage. It probably would be years behind our current state.

This is of course only my oppinion and we will never know for sure unless someone plugs a flux capacitor into a delorien and changes history.

About messuring the user activity.

I guess the MorphOS Team has simply a solid update strategie, which pays off. Only one CD to install. Also the MorphOS drawer is a big benefit as it automatically avoids a messup with custom files installed.

Here and there a radeon driver to replace or some other comment aboud a minor bug and how to avoid it.

Thats why the noise in general on the net is quite low for MorphOS.

In most cases you push in the disc and install it. It does not matter if it is a first install or an update, so there is simply no need for "you need to install update xyz first." "check your installed .so files." Also we have tons of platforms. Earlier there was the "we want laptops", "i have a g5", "i have an ibook" stuff on the net, but now we mostly support all hardware available. So these noises are also gone.

Take away all these supports/problem based notes from the net and you get the real noise of activity level. Mostly screaming for new software, talking about new software and discussing the future.


[ Edited by geit 04.11.2015 - 12:56 ]

What if AmigaOS 4 is no more? Little to gain, nothing to loose. Then who cares, but my thumb is down.

If OS4 core had disappeared, I think there could be a cleaner community there around Amiga.

I'm realtively new to these things (had no Amiga from 1995 until MOS 3.0), but it is enough what I've seen from these guys. The top was the stealing MUI4 and changing something to make it incompatible. I think, such steps are wery arrogant and unblusing... Every such action makes the things worse, because increase the hate between the two community.

> the stealing MUI4

Did it ever happen? AFAIK, there are two possible scenarios, neither of which would classify as "stealing".

Quote:

Think, what you want... I also do the same! ;)

Why aren't there such problems with AROS guys? Because everybody knows what correctness is... I bet... Thinking like normal people and not like a lawyer. That's it.

[ Edited by deka 04.11.2015 - 14:36 ]

Quote:

You ask a question and get mad from the answer?

Quote:

At least many of the autodocs and includes were stolen... and showing even worse attitude, the copyrights/credits were changed from the original author's name to something imaginary like "Albert Einstein". That shows that it wasn't quite just a honest mistake...

>>> the stealing MUI4

>> Did it ever happen? AFAIK, there are two possible scenarios,
>> neither of which would classify as "stealing".

> Think, what you want... I also do the same! ;)

Would you mind expanding on your thinking, please?

> Why aren't there such problems with AROS guys?

It's also not all roses between AROS and MorphOS all the time. Apparently, there's less fuss about similar incidents then :-)

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7824&start=170
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=11342&start=43

> many of the autodocs and includes were stolen...

In MUI4 case just Autodocs as I remember. Includes was btree.library incident. Deka talked about "changing something to make it incompatible" so I assumed he was not talking about the Autodocs but about MUI4 proper.

@Andreas_Wolf

> Even in mid-2000 when the first public MorphOS beta was released

The first official beta was released August 1 year 2000 (version 0.1)

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MorphOS

Quote:

Hmm... maybe I misread what it said here:

[08, 21:42:21] tokai|noir Probably they merged our MUI 4 autodocs too (not respecting multiple authorship in some cases)
[08, 21:42:53] tokai|noir dunno, if they have some free pass by Stuntzi or what their legal situation is, but it definitely does not include my work.
[08, 21:43:33] tokai|noir the includes are vanilla copy'n'paste, too. My original credits removed, of course.

Or how that "the includes" should be read..


I think that incompatibility issue with the 68k/OS4 branch of MUI4 is that they've also made up some new extensions to it, not just cloning the original. And programs using those new functions/modifications won't compile directly under MorphOS anymore then.


[ Edited by jPV 04.11.2015 - 16:17 ]

> Would you mind expanding on your thinking, please?

They touched MUI4... it is proven.
The qurstion is: Did they have right to do that or not? Usually they have because their leader is lawywer and immediatelly comes the reason why they could, and it isn't against the law.
But, if anybody closing their source, they start to attack... Or before anybody want to touch it (just see the case of TimberWolf).

But, there were more serious stealings also in the OS4's history, as I heard.

> maybe I misread what it said here: [...]

...or I misremembered it. I stand corrected then. Thanks for the reminder :-)

>> Even in mid-2000 when the first public MorphOS beta was released

> The first official beta was released August 1 year 2000 (version 0.1) :-)

I know. This is what qualifies as "mid-2000" in my book. It's just one month past the exact middle of that year after all.

@Andreas_Wolf

Ah. I would say "early 2000" or "around 2000". Mid-2000 sounds like around 2005 to me.

[edit] Added three words.

[ Edited by Yasu 04.11.2015 - 15:35 ]

> I would say "early 2000"

"Early 2000" is between January and March/April that year. August is clearly shortly after exact middle (June/July).

> or "around 2000"

This would mean some years before or after year 2000, not middle of the year 2000 (aka "mid-2000").

> Mid-2000 sounds like around 2005 to me.

2005 would be "mid-2000s". Note the trailing 's'.

@Geit

Quote:

I think Geit nailed it.

>>>>> the stealing MUI4

>>>> Did it ever happen? AFAIK, there are two possible scenarios,
>>>> neither of which would classify as "stealing".

>>> Think, what you want... I also do the same! ;)

>> Would you mind expanding on your thinking, please?

> They touched MUI4... it is proven. The qurstion is: Did they have right to do that or not?

MUI4 is closed source, so the real question is the one I already linked to: Did they get 2006 MUI4 source code from Stuntz (or whoever) or did they completely reverse-engineer it? None of these two possibilities would be illegal per se.

> if anybody closing their source, they start to attack...

As said, MUI4 has been closed source all along.

> there were more serious stealings also in the OS4's history

Please enlighten me :-)