Vaguely related: approximately 20 years ago I hosted "The Amiga Alternative Audio Page". Every time I migrate my blog to a new platform -- which is often because I like to tinker with it -- I figure this is the time I'll finally kill that page forever. And then my web logs fill with 404s and I bring it back from the dead because I don't have the heart to kill old Amiga software.
That's a semi-serious question; the "Amiga Documents" site linked in the post you're replying to seems to cast Hyperion as the (relative?) villains and Cloanto as the (relative?) good guys, but it seems if you want a version of AmigaOS released this century, that means Hyperion.
tl;dr: The Amiga was created by a company Commodore bought, then Commodore ran itself into the ground, ESCOM bought up the corpse, then ran themselves into the ground, Gateway bought up ESCOM and sold/spun off the Amiga assets into Amiga Inc, Amiga Inc licensed their OS to Hyperion. Meanwhile Cloanto has been working on AmigaOS since 1993 and Amiga Inc also licensed their OS to Cloanto. Hyperion spends more of it's time shipping litigation rather than software.
The financial value of the AmigaOS is nil. Zero. Nothing. At best you could maybe sell copies to enthusiasts, but even tens of thousands of sales wouldn't be enough to hire even a single full-time developer unless you priced it way too high. This would be a poster child for relicensing as Free Software if it weren't for the fact that the OS was tied up in litigation and license double-dealing.
TBH, is the way pretty much all proprietary software dies. Companies holding onto their software through bankruptcy are legally obligated to sell it to whoever will recoup the most money for creditors; but usually their software is already outdated or unusable. So it will almost always get sold to sketchy companies or wind up sitting in some bank's junk assets portfolio for the end of time. Even if that wasn't the case, most proprietary software is actually very much not legally Freeable, because it has other non-Free dependencies. Occasionally, you get an outright miracle like Blender, where the whole app is owned by one bankrupt company and you can crowdsource enough capital to pay off creditors.
(Examples of other abandoned software whose owners' hands are tied would include things like Adobe Flash Player or IBM OS/2.)
> Hyperion spends more of it's time shipping litigation rather than software.
That's a weird comment to make on the day Hyperion ships a second significant update to AmigaOS in 3 years, while Cloanto has been sitting on its IP to sell a glorified, Windows-only UAE bundle with no improvements whatsoever.
I don't have an opinion on the legal fight, but as user I can see who's actually moving things forward, and that's where I'm putting my money.
I learnt C programming and a lot of stuff about UN*X systems from my Amiga 500 and later on a heavily expanded 1200, thanks to a wonderful "Geek Gadgets Version 2" project. I even ran GCC on my Amiga back then. After that, in 2001, I switched entirely to GNU/Linux (RH7) and I knew quite a lot about how to use it since day one, thanks to my wondeful Amiga computer and Geek Gadgets.
OMG, I've waited for this! I was SO worried litigation from Clonato would make all the work by Thomas Richter & Co. go to waste on the finishing line. It's remarkable how litigations are still a thing with the Amiga brand. I don't understand how the profits for the winning party is expected to be greater than the lawyer costs.
I'd be surprised if it's profitable. Maybe a labor of love. I've been an Amiga fan since the late 80's. It was my favorite machine. Nothing quite has had the magic of booting up games like Shadow of the Beast or Blood Money. The Amiga was truly a quantum leap.
The most extraordinary thing here is not only it’s being done, but it’s being done in a proprietary way.
The surface of the AmigaOS is tiny in comparison with any modern system. It’s surprising nobody took a free RTOS and built an Amiga API on top of it, enough to fool Amiga software into being compiled for modern hardware and run directly on real Amigas.
You might have an unduly notion of the amount of "being done". The most "modern" up to date AmigaOS will take several seconds every time you open a drawer (directory) loading icons one by one, even on the fastest possible Amiga (Vampire or emulated one) using modern SSD. Its all dressing a pig for the hardcore fanbase using their Amigas to run SysInfo once a year after buying another $xxx accelerator card and reminiscing about the good old times when they were 14y old kid.
ApolloOS is optimized to run on "680x0" hardware, including the FPGA based Vampire accelerators (and presumably the standalone Amiga replacement). So while it will run on original Amiga hardware, it also has optimisations that are Vampire specific (extra instructions etc.)
Kickstart 1.0 - 3.1: By Commodore. Actually 3.0 was "officially" last but 3.1 was ongoing work that got wrapped up well enough. I don't really remember if Commodore officially released 3.1 or if it was picked up from their corpse by someone.
HAAGE & PARTNER BRANCH:
AmigaOS 3.5-3.9: First post-3.1 versions from 1999-2000 (for Motorola 68020 and up rather than 68000 and up) by Haage & Partner. Main features a TCP/IP stack and a new GUI, a new GUI toolkit called ReAction, MPEG movie player, MP3 player, >4 GB disk partitioning support.
HYPERION POWER PC BRANCH:
AmigaOS 4.0-4.1: First PowerPC-only version. Main features memory virtualization, new GUI, integrated third-party graphics driver support, etc.
HYPERION "CLASSIC" BRANCH:
Now they returned to 3.1 BUT with 3.9 source code still on their hands. Trying to advance Kickstart from a new angle that allows support for all Amigas, even the 68000 (Amiga 500). This is NOT for PowerPC. AmigaOS 4 is for those systems but since that's basically a dead end in 2021, this is a more pragmatic move. I also find less "careless" and more conservative than 3.5+, focusing on kernel improvements rather than bolting on big third party tools and libraries. Basically more how I'd expect actual Commodore releases would look like.
AmigaOS 3.1.4: Backporting numerous features and lessons learnt from 3.9 and now available for all Amigas, that is including the MC68000. An important update for classic Amigas since it brings in particular support that makes interacting with modern hardware easier with larger hard drives, and I think it added MC68060 support too for accelerators and whatnot.
AmigaOS 3.2: A continuation of the 3.1.4 branch and now probably surpassing 3.9 in many areas.
I have my old Spectrum and Atari ST and from time to time I run them. My friends had Amigas and Apples(or their parents had them) that were super expensive at the time. I bought one Amiga from a friend when it got old. I also got old consoles cartridges and emulate them using FPGA devices as the original consoles died and I have not analog TVs anymore, so I need to use converters.
What I get from using those machines is feeling rich. I can look at my phone or a raspberry pi and say: Wow!!, that has millions of times more memory!
You also get the essence. With such a limited power they made programs that were useful and games that were funny. Now you have Unity or Unreal Engines powering games that are not fun or electron apps consuming gigabytes of memory that are not useful because the basics are wrong.
I use old Autocad for DOS with Autolisp support and you realize after all this time, the thing is useful.
My job is creating software so reminding what the basics are is always important.
Quite a few. The retro computing scene is extremely popular at the moment with Amigas being much in demand. Amiga use in the US was pretty low except for certain sectors such as TV production. I know more people with Amigas now then I did when they were originally sold.
Add my anecdata to yours, I also see a lot more interest (including from myself) now than when it was sold in regular shops. And not just from demosceners.
It gets even weirder when you realise that apparently it's some ones job to maintain an 35 year old operating system... for a platform that's no longer manufactured.
How do you even hire for that position? What tools do the AmigaOS team use?
I love that this is still worked on, and I'd love to know more about what that job is like.
If you want to make sure it boots up next time though, consider having it recapped : on A600/A1200/CD32 it's a matter of when, not if, low quality capacitors will leak and damage the board.
It's a pretty special machine. It can display a lot of colors and has PCM (sampled) sound, but is still simple enough that you can understand everything that's going on. The SNES is comparable but hard to program. The DOS PC is comparable but less standardized.
(I am not an Amiga user, but I'd love to get one in the future when I have more space, time, and money.)
Most ended up with ram expansions including RTC with battery, not to mention leaked capacitor juice dissolved chip pins and pcb vias.
They were build just a tad better than contemporary Atari ST from the point of signal integrity, but Commodore manufacturing plant was a shit show. Multiple models shipped with capacitors mounted in reverse polarity (1200, 4000, CD32).
Caps and batteries on Amiga motherboards go bad and need replacement and cleaning up. There are replacement Amiga motherboard projects to keep Amigas alive just transplant chips from a dead Amiga motherboard to the replacement motherboard. Also replacement Amiga case designs.
Not to mention the emulators out there. It seems everyone wants at least Amiga via emulation, just won't emulate PowerPC Amigas.
I am perpetually surprised at this. I remember 24 years ago a colleague of mine had the butchered remains of an A1200 with all sorts of daughter boards literally taped inside a PC case. Just before covid hit i by chance bumped into him and yep he was still using it apparently.
I have test equipment that’s 50 years old in active service so I suppose the mantra of “if it works and makes you happy, use it” is still valid.
Still have my Amiga 1200 (expanded with 68040+MMU, RAM, VGA adaptor card which I can use to plug into one of my LCD monitors, plus some stuff I've probably forgotten) and I'm sure if I powered it up again it'd still work.
There were about 10k hard-core users left a few years ago, and many have multiple Amigas. There's probably at least as many (probably many more) enthusiasts with working hardware, and a ton of people running UAE and the like.
I fire up UAE every now and then for the fun of it.
Edit: I just realized that what I really want is an easy way to launch a single Amiga app in a window on my Mac. Double-click an icon and have The Bard's Tale up and running? Yes please.
Given that kstrauser specified "an easy way to launch a single Amiga app in a window on my Mac," an Amiga emulator that only runs on Windows -- however good it may otherwise be -- is probably not in fact what they're looking for. :)
(Edit: I see that Cloanto does have a somewhat cryptic page for macOS, but the way I read it, Macs can only run the open source UAE that I gather Amiga Forever is built on top of. So https://fs-uae.net might be a better place to investigate.)
That’s exactly the one I use, with the ROMs and ADFs from Amiga Forever. Still wish I could double-click a Defender of the Crown icon and be playing it a moment later.
I had an Amiga 1000 in a staircase closet in my parent's basement. It just needed a new floppy drive and keyboard. My brothers cleaned up and found it broken and threw it away.
Are you kidding me? The Amiga scene is the most dedicated retro scene there is. Plenty of people with real hardware -- like myself -- are gonna be real excited over this.
So, https://honeypot.net/post/the-amiga-alternative-audio-page/ is still a thing, but please don't ask me to update any of that software. I wouldn't know how to anymore if I wanted to.