[Warning: this topic has been left open for whoever likes to add contributions to it]
It’s my intention to start DIGG the english section, maybe will help to spread my opinions and make something more happen…Last Saturday I found a link in linux.com pointing at this article on pingdom about the ten most interesting alternative Operating systems in the future: as you can see, at the first, sixth and seventh place we have three Amiga OS-like systems: AOS4.1, MorphOS and AROS;
Beside that, something make me feel perplexed; i already mentioned it in this blog, but guess the time is come to talk about it again.
It is interesting see as still many modern Amiga and Morphos Users consider AROS a kind of resource waste, even despite aprts of AROS code got used for a variable amount of time both in MorphOS and in the new Amiga OS 4, not to mention AfAOS.
And instead is interesting to look as other alternative systems, as Haiku and ReactOS, beside their own problems are getting more aknowledged outside their original niche: it is quite understandable why: both are a valid and open alternative to their closed source counterpart and both are much more user-friendly than even a nowadays linux: beside the old rust between ReactOS and the Wine team for an unfounded topic, the environments are much more peaceful than the “holy wars-ridden” Amiga OSes territories.
And full rivers of words have been written, even in amiga forums, in how AROS allegedly denaturated the original Amiga OS philosophy and look and feel taking ideas from some linux and windows user interface guidelines: then, looking a bit closer in os 4.1, some similar things happened even there but nobody still noticed it, just add a ReAction wrapper and everything is accepted…
But today i dont want to rant about the usual Amigaland mess.
I guess is pretty clear that all the hype around free software has become more than a philosophy: Since money started to run around Linux in the server market the free software transformed itself in a political matter, with internal fights and different — sometimes opposite — ways to look at the open source: form the Stallmanian obsession for the purism to the Novell conduct, all surrounded by ego trips and currents: just think at how Kernel programmers are criticizing Canonical for not contributing enough to the Kernel (despite the fact that Canonical is working to improve the final experience for the user and in the desktop development); by the way the programmer criticizing Canonical is working for Novell, and Novell is considered as a Betrayer for their agreements with Microsoft on some patents that MS might decide to enforce against Linux.
By the way, speaking of zealotry, is not known to everybody that last January 23rd 2008 Stallm,an itself has “excommunicated” [EDIT: ok, that is a big word, just removed aros from the link list] AROS because of its requirement of using proprietary roms in UAE and about the recommendation to find them through the purchase of the Amiga Forever package: here is the original mail from AAron Digulla as appeared in the Developer Mailing list:
Richard Stallman just let me know that they deleted the link to AROS ontheir link page (http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html) after I had alonger discussion with him.
The reason is that they only want “free operating systems that have a*policy* not to include, or *recommend*, non-free software.”
In our case, we recommend the use of “Amiga Forever” which is non-freesoftware (it contains the Amiga Kickstart ROMs) onhttp://aros.sourceforge.net/documentation/users/applications/euae.phpwhich means we are in violation of the GNU philosophy.
I had a longer discussion trying to figure out what is going on and thenet result is that we’re in a similar situation as Linux which can runMAME but Linux doesn’t advertise MAME but we do. I’m not sure if itwould be worth the effort to delete this page or to move it into theE-UAE package. It feels hypocritical to me to behave as if we didn’trecommend UAE while we do recommend it for stuff that doesn’t run onAROS itself.
Richard, of course, has a very strong opinion about this and I guess youcan’t change the world unless you are ready not to make concessions.
So if that topic comes up on AROS-exec or anywhere else, keep a coolhead, don’t flame Richard or the GNU guys, handle this professionally.I’m not very happy with the decision but OTOH, I doubt that we have manyvisitors coming from gnu.org (especially since only two other OSs arelisted there) and no one will probably even notice the change.
Furthermore, Michael Battilana from Cloanto is actively supporting theAmiga community and us, so I think recommending his product is the leastwe should do.
And, if we see it with a cold mind, is just a taste of the aforementioned politics.[EDIT: Thank God, the community does not consider follow GNU guidelines strictly a priority nor is important for AROS cause so far things have been handled professionally and business went on as usual].
Sometimes i also have the sensation that several people in the Linux community thinks that developing alternative open source operating systems might be considered a theft of resoueces from what looks like is been decided to be a full focus on linux and other linux-like ooperating systems and distros. The comments in the Pingdom thread gives quite a good overview on the general opinion, defining alternative systems as “Windows 9x bad copies” (even the Amiga Oses:P).
Many of those that wrote the comments by the way, comes from new generation computer users, grown up with windows or linux and of course ignoring or considering obsolete other operating systems before; it is clear as they don’t see any need or reason for something different: i might say they don’t know there might be something different.
And so they not even understand as the simple existence of other operating systems in the open source universe is important: so as AROS and other alternative systems are using and re-implementing code from linux so the opposite – linux using code from Aros and other alternative systems – might happen and sometimes is happening; in example ReactOS adn Wine exchange code between themselves for a better Windows compatibility and even Amiga OSes got benefits from Linux code: the old ixemul the newer CigWin, most recently even Netsurf, a browser born in RiscOS and ported even on linux under GTK; linux can also benefit using in its code – when the license allows it – code from ports under AROs and other alternate systems. The existence itself of other options “non-linux” beside linux and its distros is a basic part of that “freedom of choice” professed by advocates and one of the essential characteristics of the Open Source philosophy: every one choose its “weapon”, the one that fits best with its own modus operandi and how to deal with computing.
Also, the know-how of different people turn out to be good for the operating systems technical exchange.
I already mentioned in past the Kickstart Replacement Bounty phase I and wrote about the assignment to Bheron.
That is all that is shown in the bounty description under the power2people web site: i admit that surely does not look exhaustive. This because, according to one of the developers, the feature showing the bounty assigned coder bio has not yet been implemented.
So, through the comments to the assignment in aros-exec at last it has been possible to know the identity of Bheron. Its real name is Gregory John Casamento and this is the bio from the aros-exec comments:
So looks like he is got a great resumee and reliable competences; i put in the links its personal blog in order to follow its progresses on the bounty, if he decides to talk about it.
I will keep this article open in order to add any further precisation and comments to come.
binarydoodles 