exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

This one has bugged me for ages. Why do people think that Hyperion is stopping Amiga from being open source? Seems every forum and facebook group is filled with an angry idiot who thinks this is the case. They then shout at the AmigaOS 3.2 developers for doing the work for free and feeding lawyers etc. Lets set this out clearly.

1. Hyperion doesnt own the AmigaOS source code and cannot legally open source it.
2. Hyperion have a license to develop AmigaOS (lets not get into the argument of what versions which people think they are allowed to develop).
3. If Hyperion no longer existed that would not lead to open source AmigaOS. We'd just not have 3.2. See point 1.
4. It costs money to sell things to people. I know people think that £45 is a huge sum but break it down into all the things that people have to get paid for and its peanuts. (Web hosting, support + licenses for the new software included, VAT, built in losses).

Give it up guys. This is as good a deal as we're gonna get on AmigaOS. Unless the community can scrape together a couple of million quid for the rights. The reason we're in this position is because someone paid far too much for the Amiga rights and they want their money back.

+1

Although, I think you are kicking at an open door, or at least I hope so.
The trouble is that the few people opposed to this are so visible. :roll:

I personally think the Amiga community is extremely lucky that there is a dedicated team who expands and improves the OS. Of course they should get paid for it. Open source is of course *good* but not always desirable, being a paid team means they're more focussed and work quicker generally. I think the improvements in 3.2 are worth the money for sure.

Steve wrote: 10 Jun 2021 14:39 I personally think the Amiga community is extremely lucky that there is a dedicated team who expands and improves the OS. Of course they should get paid for it. Open source is of course *good* but not always desirable, being a paid team means they're more focussed and work quicker generally. I think the improvements in 3.2 are worth the money for sure.

If they were getting paid for it OS 3.2 would be £100 and people would be moaning about that.

terriblefire wrote: 10 Jun 2021 13:18 £45

Some people expect it to be free, and when they notice pricetag on it, they moan.

Realistically how many copies they can sell? Few thousand?

If tomorrow I magically owned all Amiga IP and sources I would not open source it because:

• 99/100 open source projects splinter and die, you either have to be lucky, have a corporate sponsor that effectively develops in the open or you have a clear central leader who can function as a benevolent dictator for life.
• AROS exists.
• Amiga community is famously fractured and fork'y already.

Indeed. Its one of the reasons i dislike opening up stuff. I prefer a canonical source of truth.

Having said that I would love to see a SVN/Git source history from 0.x betas through 3.x, would be so interesting to see how it's evolved.

It's amazing how people will moan over a small amount of money, effectively a night in the pub's worth vs potentially years of enjoyment out of a product.

I think there is a fundamental anger some people have at anyone making a profit... its utterly stupid