Not since the dieing days of Commadore has Amiga been in such dire straights and its future so uncertain. The recent calls for the resignation of the Amiga Inc board of directors and the removal of Amiga inc and Hyperion Entertainment from the creation process of Amiga OS means that the community is loosing hope of the next great Amiga Computer.

The Amiga community is Amiga OS' strongest asset and I think that Amiga inc should hand over the rights to Amiga OS to the community (or more specifically a proprietary community run development group). I think that the community will be able to do more with the OS then any company would have in the past because the community would not be concerned with profits and legal finger pointing, the community would not be concerned with product lines that don't advance the OS, the community would develop an OS and applications that work.

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@tbrminsanity
Or alternatively, the community would bicker endlessly about the direction the OS should take and fragment into tiny pieces.

Oh wait, that happened years ago...

Personally, I'd just like to see some sort of definite plan that actually lasts more than 3 months and actually has an end product.

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@yoodoo2

A community with a single elected leader usually stops endless bickering. That is how open source projects usually work, one lead developer (usually the creator of the project) runs the community like a dictator and is responsible for having the final say in the direction of the community. I would suggest an elected leader (with a fixed term of office) to get around the possibility of a unwanted leader.

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@tbrminsanity

The vast majority of open source projects die a horrible, stagnant death as people go their separate ways when their ideas are ignored or thrown out. Most successful open source projects (ie ones that have been around for 5+ years) have commercial companies funding them and leading development at some stage of the process.

Some creators do maintain long term dictatorial control over a project, but this could not be the case if AmigaOS were donated to the community. The main problem of course is that AmigaOS consists (and has consisted for many many years) of separate bits licensed from numerous developers so the donation scenario is highly improbable anyway. We might as well dream of a rich uncle coming along with £10 million to buy out A Inc and hand over development to the current OS team.

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@tbrminsanity

Quote:

Not since the dieing days of Commadore has Amiga been in such dire straights and its future so uncertain. The recent calls for the resignation of the Amiga Inc board of directors and the removal of Amiga inc and Hyperion Entertainment from the creation process of Amiga OS means that the community is loosing hope of the next great Amiga Computer

I disagree. The Amiga never really picked back up after the death of Commodore there were some flailings such as Escom making A4000T hardware. We've pretty much been on a continual downward spiral of users since the death of Commodore. As for calls of resignation it's not because people are losing hope in Amiga as a computing platform it's because people have lost hope that Amiga Inc can define or execute a vision to bring the Amiga computing platform back. I'd say it's because we want the Amiga back and Amiga Inc itself hasn't been able to deliver that many of us want them out.

@BrianK

Quote:

I disagree. The Amiga never really picked back up after the death of Commodore there were some flailings such as Escom making A4000T hardware. We've pretty much been on a continual downward spiral of users since the death of Commodore. As for calls of resignation it's not because people are losing hope in Amiga as a computing platform it's because people have lost hope that Amiga Inc can define or execute a vision to bring the Amiga computing platform back. I'd say it's because we want the Amiga back and Amiga Inc itself hasn't been able to deliver that many of us want them out.

QFT. There are about, what, 3000-5000 active amiga users these days? Don't talk about "dark times", the "times" have been dark since 1992 or so when C= started its slow, lazy death spiral. If you could push a button and stop all of what's going on now it still wouldn't avail anything. Picking up the pieces and giving the Amiga everything that it lacks in any reasonable amount of time would require every current Amiga user to become a developer and that isn't going to happen.

The userbase isn't there, the developer base isn't there.

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@jorkany

Good things are always just around the corner for the Amiga!

Since 1994 in fact...

Last edited by -Sam- on 01-Aug-2007 at 03:01 PM.

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Sam

@tbrminsanity

"It is also a tale of deceit, of treachery, and of betrayal. It is a tale that has largely remained untold."

And the pages of the story just keep on increasing....

Well, not only did the Amiga never get the true recognition it deserved(s), it was insulted more and led to the position we're in now.

It's as frustrating as society is these days, if you compare the two. And you can't do anything about any of it.

Just watch.

Become more frustrated.

It's easy to see why people just can't let go. Justice has never come =) We all know it's a gem of a platform...but that just isn't enough.

[ed]

It's like arguing your case to a brick wall - we all know that. From the day I used an Amiga, it changed me...and it also made me bitter, that something so great could fail and be ridiculed. I stayed to fight its cause.

Time for a beer I think

"the age-old battle between mediocrity and excellence, the struggle between merely existing and trying to go beyond expectations. "

Steve

Last edited by stevieu on 01-Aug-2007 at 03:36 PM.
Last edited by stevieu on 01-Aug-2007 at 03:34 PM.
Last edited by stevieu on 01-Aug-2007 at 03:31 PM.

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OS4.x - Flying the AMIGA flag

@TheDungeonDelver

How many of the 3K-5K active users could be developers? IF a large majority (say 30%-50%) of those users were willing to be developers and willing to stick it out, there could be anywhere between 900-2500 developers which is more then enough to further development on a PPC Amiga OS. I would want to be a part of the team and I would buy what ever hardware was needed to run said Amiga OS (and for the record I would not want to lead the team, I think there are better people for that job).

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@tbrminsanity

Quote:

How many of the 3K-5K active users could be developers?

I personally think there are far fewer than 3000 active users left. More like 3 or 4 hundred.

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Sam

@tbrminsanity

I was thinking the same as yoodoo2.

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@-Sam-

I would be interested in knowing just how many Amiga 'users' there are out there.

Historically I bought spreadsheets, wordprocessors, DTP, sequencer/MIDI, and video game software for my assorted Amigas. I used it as a general purpose computer for everyday activities. I spent a great deal of time and money on these materials.

My use now consists of running winUAE on whatever XPbased laptop I am lugging around (I have six) and playing mostly legacy games and running Voyager (the ancient astronomy software).

For vitually all other computer activities I use windows based software on x86 hardware.

I wonder how many 'users' there are like me? I read Amigaworld.net and amiga.org diligently and post (very) occasionally but I think most users have simply left to use the tools available on other platforms.

glamalama

@yoodoo2

95+% of computers run on closed source OSs.

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@jorkany

Quote:

jorkany wrote: Good times are coming just around the corner this Summer!

The problem that everything is too round. Like being told that there's money in the corner of sphere-shaped room

Jack

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@Stephen_Robinson

Eh? Relevance?

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@yoodoo2

I was agreeing with you. Open sourceing is not the easy solution to the problem of AOS,

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Rage quited 29th May 2011

@Stephen_Robinson
Ah, righty-ho.

One of the saddest aspects of all this is that there are still enough active users to support a small development team, providing they're willing to accept a "lifestyle" type wage rather than top dollar.

Eg 5,000 users paying £50 per year would generate £250,000. Take out £50,000 for management, publicity etc and there would be enough to run a team of 4 or 5 developers at a moderate rate. A "proper" Amiga business would of course make a reasonable profit with mini-mig type hardware, OS3 on GP2X, OS4 on Zaurus handhelds etc as well as nostalgia based merchandise.

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Happiness is mandatory.
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@glamalama

There are many...that, if things were done right, would come back on the bandwagon, I'm sure...even just out of nostalgic interest.

How many times do you see comments like (actual quotes):

"I miss my amiga, wish i had never sold it, i miss it almost everyday...a great machine, you will be missed commodore amiga"

"I grew up with an Amiga 2000, I miss it sooo much. I think I'll burn this song to a cd so I can play it in my car hehehe"

"Yes amiga's architecture was far more advanced than any x86, its a shame that this kind of computers, dont exist anymore.."

Bla bla bla. If marketed right (never going to happen with the current 'owners') something good could come of it, I'm sure... "Computing made fun again" "Excellence through simplicity"...everything against what is making the computing world stagnant, but you need initial momentum to keep that wagon rolling.

It's definitely true that the Amiga name has extreme power to penetrate a market, but when you have clowns doing nothing with it (apart from making a mockery), nothing is going to happen, is it?

It will stay as a 'hobby'...

Steve

Last edited by stevieu on 01-Aug-2007 at 10:56 PM.
Last edited by stevieu on 01-Aug-2007 at 10:54 PM.

_________________
A1200T - OS4.0,OS3.9: 603e PPC 200mhz,060 50mhz, 256mb ram, FastATA MK-III, BVision, 160gb,20gb HDDs

A1200 - OS3.1: Blizzard IV 030, 64mb ram, 400mb HDD

OS4.x - Flying the AMIGA flag

yoodoo2:
There are not 5000 people who would be interested
in donating 50 GBP for the Amiga.

50 GBP is unrealistic for many of the few remaining
Amiga users.

I guess you could expect something around 5 GBP
per year, if you equal it to about 500 users - 1% of
your calculations.