Sorry for that thread after few beers ;)

I'm just thinking in a simple way:

AmigaOS has Acube - they are not investing in AmigaOS (i suppose) but they work each oter.

Aeon - that company was made to built new Amiga, probably will happen at some stage.

Genesi - used to support MorphOS with hardware, not any more when concetrated on ARM.

ATM we have support for Mac Mini, probably for PowerMac and meaby PowerBook. That's all unsupported HW.

Do we need an investor? Should I play lotto ;)

[ Edited by pampers on 2010/5/23 1:28 ]

[ Edited by pampers on 2010/5/23 1:35 ]

No, MorphOS doesn't need an investor. According to one or more AmigaOS4.x fanboys and disgruntled old time MorphOS users that are upset about the pricing and hardware dependent license key of MorphOS, all the MorphOS developers are getting rich selling MorphOS and driving new BMWs or Porches. So, if you win the Lottery, invest it in my bank account instead.

I wish I had seen your post before you had a chance to edit it twice. It was probably a lot funnier the first draft if you were writing after having too much beer.

I think it would be great if MorphOS could find an investor or two or three. Even if MorphOS only had equal support that AmigaOS4.x has, it would be a big boost over the limited resources that are currently available to work on and promote MorphOS.

I really like MorphOS2.4 on my 1.5GHz G4 MacMini, but I have to admit that all the noise that is being made about AmigaOS4.x right now has gotten my attention and I am looking forward to seeing what happens over the next 6 months, both hardware wise and what improvements might be made in AmigaOS4.x itself. Also, I am now more interested in seeing what software is being developed for AmigaOS4.x, as it appears to have more third party software developers working on projects exclusively for AmigaOS4.x than are working on applications or games for MorphOS.

I hate to write stuff like the above paragraph, because I truly believe that MorphOS2.4 is currently a better OS than AmigaOS4.1.1 and without a doubt the 1.5GHz G4 MacMini is faster than any hardware that currently runs AmigaOS4.1.1, AND I would much rather write posts that praise and promote MorphOS instead. But there is no denying that all the people working on AmigaOS4.x and the proposed new hardware and software that work with it, are doing all they can to become the best alternative to users of the Classic Amiga OS and hardware. I would much rather be the MorphOS rah-rah fanboy, but I am too much of a realist, so Pampers, win the lotto or find MorphOS a few investors.

@amigadave

There is quite a differnce in between making alot of noise about something and getting it actually delivered.

And when it comes to delievering MorphOS ist way way ahead.

Do you mean investors or sponsors? I dont see Genesi or Acube (or Aeon) more than sponsors in this scheme. And IMO it is better if MorphOS stays independent from little HW vendors but sponsors fund new SW development instead.

However I dont mind if someone wants to sponsor MorphOS development and transfer 1 Meur to my bank account, thank you

I think what lacks the most is a hardware partner.
Porting the OS to current hardware that can be baught quite cheap second hand is good value for money for the users right now. But it will hardly get any attention from the outside IT press as long as the news is related to 5 year old hardware.
But AmigaOS got ported to Pegasos hardware, so it should work the other way to, by porting MorphOS to the same hardware that AOS4 runs on. The price for this hardware is higher than old Mac ppc's, but it is available to buy new.
Although the SAM series is lower spec hardware, it will give existing AOS4 users a chance to test out MorphOS on their hardware. Then they can compare the two OS'es on the same hw and see what they prefer.
The X1000 should be a step up when it gets available, even for Mac Mini owners.

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I disagree.
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For Sam HW it is very very high for the bang given. So high that it isn't worth the trouble considering how good 2nd hand Mac HW is available. It is relatively easy for us to add support for new Mac models, much easier than to add support some obscure AMCC 4x0EP motherboard.

For X1000 we don't know the price yet, other than that it will insanyly high. Well over 2000 eur probably. Given that it will be only small performance improvement over the existing high end Macs (which are less than 1/5 the price), why bother?
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I think most AmigaOS4 users are unlikely to bother with MorphOS to be honest. Even if they were, if they really want to try MorphOS they can get a cheap Mac HW to try it on, or visit a friend with such a HW and boot the MorphOS from the CD.
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It has already been done on Pegasos 2. I think everyone already knows that MorphOS runs circles around AmigaOS 4.

Finally, I think it is unwise to build custom HW these days. If the production run will be in the thousands it will be highly unlikely you will be able to get repairs or parts for the HW after couple of years. With Macs we will be safe in this regard for years to come.


[ Edited by Piru on 2010/5/23 16:12 ]

Piru wrote:
Quote:
And what new Mac models do you have in mind? Arent they mostly Intel based these days (exept for the Ipad if you count that one in).

Even if you probably have a big and relatively cheap marked for decent spec'ed seconds hand PPC Mac's for some years, I still feel that the total lack of an option to buy new hardware with MorphOS is not the best situation.

@amyren
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That's your opinion and you're entitled to have it. I don't agree with it.

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Now, when I say that it is easy to add support for new Mac models and not some obscure and totally dufferent board, that would imply that it is easy because we already support one such Mac model. It would therefore seem obvious that I meant new (as in not supported before) PowerPC Macintosh, and not x86 stuff.

Apparently I wasn't clear enough there. The mistake is mine.

@Piru,

+1 to your first post, well really to all your posts in this thread.

Supporting "New" hardware that is actually new and comes with a warranty only makes sense if the new hardware is better AND cheaper than the proposed plan of extending support to more PPC Mac models and there is no other PPC hardware that could be easily ported to that fits that description at this time. I am sure the team will make themselves aware of any future hardware that comes out and might fit that description and totally agree with their current direction and focus.

Porting to the SAM would be a stupid waste of time. The A1-X1000, like Piru said is going to be another AOS4.x capable machine that is incredibly over priced and under powered when compared to other "Real World" options, even if it is interesting to watch what is happening and see if what it will do when/if it comes out.

Edit: Anyone in EU that wants help purchasing a G4 MacMini from eBay in the USA can contact me. Last night I checked and saw about 10 1.5GHz minis and another 10+ 1.42GHz models for auction and/or sale on eBay. Most of them are a little over priced, but they are available here. I have read some posts that the 1.5GHz models can't be found in certain other countries, so if you are willing to pay a little extra, you can get one now on eBay USA.



[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/5/23 11:52 ]

@thread

If pampers meant investor (I think he did), so the guy that signs 1 M$ cheque for MOS devs and gives them 2 years to spend it on MOS, I say YES MOS needs it.

To deploy faster.

To deliver more HW.

To run circles around OS4 twice as faster.

@Piru

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Tsk tsk... If this was aw.net they'd have you up on a crucifix by now.

I'm glad there's at least one computer that can run OS4 and MorphOS but the fact that there is no intention to port MorphOS to OS4 hardware would only bother me if there was an OS4 laptop. And somehow I think we'll have been using MorphOS on Powerbooks for quite a while before that happens.

I think you don't understand what investor means.

"Investor" means someone who will pay money to the MorphOS team and expect to get something back. For example, give the team 200,000 EUR and receive 50% ownership of MorphOS. But an investor would only give 200,000 EUR because they expect their investment to be worth 250,000 after one year.

Then you have to ask "Who owns MorphOS ?". My guess is that no one is really sure; I've never heard anyone define it clearly. Would you invest a large sum of money if you are not sure what you are getting ? And is anyone prepared to sell ?

If you mean "sponsor" then they expect something too. For example, give the MorphOS team 30,000 EUR so that the product is now called "Coca cola MorphOS" using the "Sprite Window Manager" for the next 5 years. Or port MorphOS to my favourite hardware.

In terms of sponsorship; just suppose the MorphOS team accepts sponsorship to produce a port for the Palm 5 PDA. That doesn't help anyone using a Mac Mini or Pegasos. If you're really lucky the team notice some general bugs, fix them and feed them back into the PPC build but that is not high priority, they won't get paid for that. While they are doing that, dev work on other features for the likes of you and me would have to stop or slow down.

If you buy a copy of MorphOS you are not investing in it but you are becoming a customer and expect to be supported.

Investment (and sponsorship probably) would require MorphOS to change from being the hobby project that is now to becoming a full-time business. Do you think the MorphOS team are ready to give up their day jobs ?

As I said above, supporting new hardware takes dev time away from improving the code and adding more features. Therefore, I personally would not like to see MorphOS ported to more hardware unless it was an architecture more powerful than what we have available now, affordable and had a future - that means not SAM.

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The A1-X1000 doesn't exist. It is vapour until publically demoed AND available to buy. The Amiga Walker was demoed in hardware but never became a product. The BoXeR was shown many times in prototype form but never became a product.

They can't even say what processor it is because of some super secret deal or market fluctuations or whatever (sorry, I can't be bothered to check, I found the "teaser" website to be tedious). It doesn't give the impression of an established device or that it would have a certain future.

We can only judge it when it is available, with a price and a spec.

@ amigadave

As Kronos already said. Noise is one thing, delivery another.

The x1000 is announced since a few months now, some are waiting for it, others just use MorphOS on the Mac mini since last autumn.... Telling, isn't it?

Firefox is announced since about a year. A few screenshots were provided. Some are waiting for it, others just use OWB with HTML5 support *now*.... Telling, isn't it?

Radeon Drivers for recent versions are announced since ages. Some are waiting for it. Others are just using highly optimized 3D drivers for older cards that are working pretty fine.... Telling, isn't it?

highspeed mode of usb2.0 is announced. It is in beta testing since a long, long time according to some ppl. Some are waiting for it. Others use this festure with poseidon since years... Telling, isn't it?

Amiga workbench is outdated. A successor is draftly announced. Some are waiting for it. Others just use Ambient sinc years... Telling, isn't it?

And so on...

While it can't hurt to keep an eye on the OS4 world I guess it will lead to nowhere. Maybe they sell a few hundred or thousand units of the X1000. But that will not generate a sustainable market big enough that more talented ppl are actually working on the OS itself. And how long took it the Friedens to support the Sam to a really useable level (some claim ths level is not reached yet, but I guess since the last update it is fairly okay). The usb fiasko not even mentioned.

Conclusion: While in butterfly country of course not everything is easy-peasy rosy-golden glittery, the situation seems not bad. There is cheap hardware, the OS supports that hardware well (except WLAN, BT and most Firewire functions). The updates are free, the community is not full of jingoism (well, probably a bit too full of cynism) and there are a few very talented codersaround that supply better software than you can expect for a system from a niche as tiny as this. OS4 was always big in making noise and announcing things. And it took always way longer until delivery, if delivery came at all. That's my experience of watching the OS4 thing from its first announcement back in 2001. And I don't see indicators that this has significantly changed recently...
Okay, Acube seemed more or less releiable in delivery. unfortunately their products are too high priced and a bit unfortunate in design IMHO. But their track record seems more or less okay. And actually *they* were kind of screwed by the early announcement of the X1000...

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IMO, what lacks the most is a clear and pronounced path that goes beyond PowerPC.

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It's the best thing to do right now. Short term. Frankly, it's the only realistic thing to do, there is no alternatives really.

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And how much *real* coverage has OS4 received in the general IT-press since it was released on a Sam? Not a lot, huh? Here is why: IT-press (and no, AmigaFormat and Amitopia doesn't count! ) will hardly make a serious article about some obscure (by todays standards in the IT industry) OS that lacks a clear area of use, that's "strange" and unusable for most people, running on an even more obscure HW platform, built in batches of 30-50 units 1-4 times a year tops, using a dead (for desktop) architecture nobody cares about, sporting price tags ? la modern, good performing *real* worstations and servers, but delivering performance comparable to half a decade old desktops (the X1000) or PDA's, phones, etc (Sam).

If they would have been able to write something like: "Do you remember the Amiga from the 1990's? Guess what, it's back, reloaded, with a new shape and form. You can use it for all your everyday Internet needs. Download a free evaluation copy with 30 minutes full featured try-it-out functionality, and run it on the very Wintel machine you have at your desktop!"

Then there would be a chance of some coverage in IT-press, because then it can at least have *some relevance to the audience*, who might read the article and be able to try it out. OS4 on Sam has no relevance whatsoever to general people. It couldn't be more out of reach.

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Porting OS4 made sense, but there is absolutely no point in "doing it the other way"!

The Mac HW is mainstream. It's available everywhere. It has really good performance (measured by the yesteryear standards we always have to use in Amigaland). It's dead cheap. Good bang for the buck ratio. It has a proven track record. It's *safe*, it's backed by a rock solid IT giant, you can easily get it repaired, and there is a working second hand market for it, so you won't risk loosing much of the little money you had to put in.

The alternative you are speaking of, is everything Mac HW isn't, it's *the very opposite around* from everything in the paragraph I wrote above. And very few OS4 users owning these things will give MorphOS a try anyway, so...

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The price/performance ratio is outright embarrassing. From day one it was clear to everyone, except a few fanboys at another site, that the Sam would never become anything noticeable.

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They can do that right now on the Pegasos2.

But anyone paying that kind of money for that kind of HW (Sam obviously) clearly already has their mind up on what OS they want, don't you think? And their decisions isn't typically based on *rational* factors anyway, like performance comparisons, feature comparisons, the level of Amiga compatibility, price/performance ratio of available HW, etc. What matter most in their decision is trade marks and someone pronounce it "official". Quality and features comes secondary.

And experience from previous performance benchmark comparisons shows that the general OS4 user isn't at all interested in any comparison that will show how much faster MorphOS is compared to OS4, and they often react with hostility and/or putting their head in the sand.

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Who knows? Otherwise it would be a shame, at that price. I still doubt however, that they will have a better price/performance ratio.

Anyway, I don't get this "new with warranty" argument.

Often you hear people say "but you get a warranty", like the thing would be a safe buy. Sure, you get a warranty, but that's not necessarily worth more than the piece of paper it was printed on, when coming from a small upstart company who bought only 200 CPU's, and probably sees it at a success if they can really offload them all and get their money back. Look at Eyetech. They took the money and ran, when it was clear they couldn't handle the mess they created. How much is warranty worth then?

The feeling of safety is kind of bogus there. So much uncertainty, so many things that can go wrong over time. In 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, years when the HW breaks down, will the company even still be around? We know nothing about their financial strength, but we do know that they will try to push a product that will be practically unsellable to anyone else but some indoctrinated trade mark followers that would take out a second mortgage on their house if they have to, in order to buy the thing, and they would do it just for the sake of it.

The feeling of safety is solid with Mac Mini. Apple is big and rock solid. If something goes wrong, I can easily have it repaired. Or I buy a new one. Not a lot of money involved anyway.


[ Edited by takemehomegrandma on 2010/5/24 10:16 ]

Quote:

No way.

Investor expects massive ROI, not the ownership. So investor giving 1M$ to MOS devs expects return of 1.3 - 1.5$ in some say five years. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the ownership.

Well maybe this topic is discussed sometimes, but the donated party can always make conditions so that development management must not be changed. Investors do not like this but can accept sometimes.

But these are two distinct things; ROI and actual ownership/management. Please to not confuse them.

@DiskDoctor

That depends!

There are often different investment needs satisfied by different kinds of investors, during different stages of the corporations life cycle. Demanding ownership (often big part, even a majority of the votes) in new risky ventures is actually *very common* when a venture capitalist are looking to invest into something.

@ DiskDoktor

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Sometimes? "Rarely" is more like it. koan's description was quite realistic.


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Actually, ownership and management are not to be confused. You can own parts of a company, yet have zero influence on how it is managed. Key word: Silent partnership.

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...and here is an example of what this can mean in practice:

Link

@diskdoctor

Maybe during the dotcom bubble you could find an investor to give you money and then say nothing for a few years. That was a long time ago.

These days no sane investor would give you money without some kind of security, i.e. ownership of assets such as source code, rights to sell licenses, coffee machine, etc. What happens if the company goes bust, you lose all your money ?

Yes you can find someone to be a silent partner, but those investors will want ownership. They will also want to see a business plan: If I give MorphOS team $1m how are they going to turn that into $2m ? Do I believe they can do it ?

No one would invest in MorphOS without receiving ownership, not in the real world.

Well, I think MorphOS needs some support to gain a bigger piece of the cake...
In my opinion a stratetic partnership would be a good thing, for example with a company producing MorphOS powered STBs or Mediaboxes, kiosk systems or else.
MorphOS could be spread, become more known and benefit from licence fees which again can help in further development.
Such a mutual scheme would be more likely than investment or sponsoring.

But I don?t know if such partnership is desired and looked for by the Morphos Group. On the other hand I think that MorphOS is something quite fuzzy for the "outside world". Who is behond MorphOS, what?s the mission?

Well, we as "insiders" know who is behind, but do we know about about their visions and goals?

In the fora we have single opinions of some MorphDevs on diverse topics, but we don?t have the whole picture or some kind of corporate identity.
Who speaks for MorphOS?

If even we have our doubts, how would somebody from outside with comercial interests think?

> Firefox is announced since about a year.

"Created at: 20090929"
http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewproject&projectid=44

That's almost 8 months.

@ Andreas

Well, then it is a bit less announced than I felt/remembered. The "about" in that post indicated a guess based ona rule of thumb anyway. But I wouldn't be surprised if my post still stands in 4 months time. Speed of delivery is not the strongst point by a certain Belgian software company (or programmers of that software company acting privately)

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Good example. But the guys with the millios would have to see, first, an almost finished product. That would mean also hardware...

Where to start? Pick a very, very good competing product, study it through, and make a better one, cheaper. Money will come after. Go figure...

I can only think in a way to make this possible: Government funding, through some kind of "technology entepreneurs program", that almost any government has. Have connections with some minister? Then that's a start.

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But no one else in the world would notice that MorphOS lies behind the hood. If done right, of course. If the underlying bits of a machine are to be exposed, then there's something wrong. At least for regular people (read: customers).

MorphOS is a traditional, all round desktop operating system, with no specific use, other than bringing joy to a very special kind of customer, the technologically involved rebel. A breed that is already disappearing, in this world of "tech for everyone" (and all of its problems).