any thoughts on this? good? bad?

Open in what way..

AROS is as open AmigaOS as it can legaly be. As long as IP holders cling on 15 year's old technoloy it'll be it.

Open Hardware.. Similar problems there. Besides original chipset internals documentation is well hidden (or lost?) and would be essential on making open system compatible. I'm not saying HW-duplication would be impossible today's technology but quite frankly it'll need a considerable amount of Hardware tallented and experienced people. And what I see on net these days, there are allmost none.

Edit
If you mean that recently started attempt to make common definition for making software porting easier to new systems (Os4,MosrphOS,Aros). Well.. A nice idea and if they can produce one site for all necessary tools and documents it's really good to have. But frankly I don't expect too much co-operation from closed-Amiga team.

I like the Open Amiga Initiative, it could do us all a world of good.

Quote:
yep thats what im talking about

you are right there about the closed source people(nothing against them BTW..)

not everyone is going to follow this
and i would be supprised if amiga inc. genesi actually bother to look at it


the idea is there, there just needs to be some time taken to implement it

OpenAmigaStandard, my take:

First of all, a dose of reality has to be given to the topic. I don't have anything against open standards, but I've been around long enough to know that they can be interpreted differently. It may sound silly, but it was a problem for years (and probably still is to a degree) with things like harddrives and their controllers. IDE is pretty much an open standard, but Fuji, Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor, etc have all at one time or another more took a broad interpretation of those standards, which resulted in some incompatabilities.

Next, exclusitivity. Both camps (not including AROS for this one, since it is really a labor of love not profit) are going to want some api's exclusive to their system to give their platform some edge or another over the other platform. A good example of this is the console video game industry.

Specifically, SEGA makes a good case study. Due to contracts, some of their games are exclusive to GameCube and other XBox. Still, they do other games across the board. SEGA is big enough to make every game they produce available for every platform available. However, the consoles need some exclusive games to lure customers to their box instead of the other guys. Thus, they create lucrative deals with SEGA to get that exclusive publication of "Skies of Arcadia" or "JetSet Radio Future" on a particular platform.

So, what I am suggesting is that in reality, some level of OpenAmiga API is benefitial to all parties, and some level of closed API is also benefitial. It is in my opinion that any open API idea be designed loosly, so that there is room for both interpretation and exclusitivity. While this method will leave some applications stuck on one platform or another, there will be a baseline of software for all three platforms. Besides, even with open standards, there will be variances in their interpretation anyway. Might as well suck that one down now; even with an open standard, there will be incompatabilities, so everyone might as well just plan on it.

Rather you will walk on water wearing an $50 Amiga Inc. T-Shirt than this project achieving anything of significance.

>any thoughts on this? good? bad?

Neither nor. It may be well-meant, but it just looks like a complete waste of time to me.

> A good example of this is the console video game industry.

I don't think thats the best example.
Consider instead J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition):
There is a J2EE standard which everyone supports. There are several different vendors all of whom support the standard but also differentiate themselves by giving you add-ons.

I could write a program which runs on Weblogic or WebSphere but if I use any of the extensions it wouldn't work on the other. However if I write one to J2EE only it'll run on *both*. It is an advantage to everyone to support this, It allows developers to get an app across all the systems without having to write an app 3 times.

>But frankly I don't expect too much co-operation from closed-Amiga team.

I've been in contact with the guy who set this up and he said that there had been support from all sides. There is hope yet...