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that's rubbish. It's impossible for someone to help, eg porting nvidia drivers (nouveau) to MorphOS
I don't quite follow you here. In what way is anyone preventing anyone from writing drivers? Isn't MorphOS as modular as AmigaOS ever was, i.e. were you ever required to actually have access to Commodore's OS3.1 sources in order to write a driver for it?
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or adding eg. PS3/Cell support
That's a *different* matter, now you're talking about bringing the OS itself to another platform, and doing so yourself, which of course will require the blessing from its owners (since it's proprietary). But this isn't the same thing as making your own OS modules, or SW for mobile applications, STB software, or anything else that turns MorphOS into whatever you need.
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MorphOS is mostly a closed source proprietary OS (with the exception of the desktop and some AROS components perhaps), and I don't see anything bad in that. Rather the opposite, it could bring economical opportunities, incentives and a future. People look at Linux which has a massive support from a huge community, and for some reason they translate this straight off to the Amiga world; "if only it was open source, the development pace would explode".
And I somehow agree with them. It would. For one, it would mean that great developers might get interested and get involved in matters that for some reason are not in the MorphOS developers' agenda, like POSIX-compliance -which it isn't- or CPU/platform support, porting to another arch -even Intel/ARM- and who knows what else.
It would open up for endless forks which would drain all momentum from the "real" MorphOS (you suggested 6 forks yourself on top of the "original"; POSIX and None-POSIX times PPC, Intel and ARM).
If anyone wants to turn an Amiga OS into some POSIX clone, bring it to a different CPU architecture or whatever, feel free to do so with AROS.
AROS has been open source all along. And gee, what a success story that has been (BTW, I don't mean to insult the great efforts of the great developers that has contributed to it, but despite being Open Source and despite being x86, it hasn't made any impact to the world whatsoever.)
MorphOS was never a free and open source OS, and it has come miles further in much less time.
There you have the answer!
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But it doesn't work like that. It takes a momentum and size comparable to Linux, but few other open source OS's enjoys this. Look at AROS for instance.It has been i development for several years before MorphOS development started, but it's not even close when it comes to the MorphOS 2.1 standard (or OS4.1 standard for that matter), it's unusable in practice and it has about the same amount of users and developers (1-5 people or so), because those people are the same people. This despite being open source. And despite being x86 as well, for that matter. The closed source, proprietary alternatives got a lot longer, a lot quicker. Think about that for a minute.
Look at Haiku also. It is not as old as MorphOS but it has far more developers than MorphOS ever did. And it has a brighter future, people are just drooling to install it. MorphOS could -if the developers wanted- have a similar impact. But they don't.
Haiku is an open source reimplementation of BeOS, a proprietary, commercial and closed source OS that entered the scene after the Amiga in practice was "dead". BeOS generated a lot of Hype and momentum, of which Haiku inherited some after BeOS went belly up. Hype and momentum is required for an open source OS to even take off. Simply going open source will not accomplish that, as we have seen in the AROS example. Unlike BeOS/Haiku, the Amiga had been too dead for too long for anyone outside the Amiga community to become interested in the AROS project.
It will be interesting to see how the new Anubis will make it. AFAIK, they have two developers, and "Dammy" as a promotion guy.
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Again, the MorphOS/Amiga model doesn't prevent anyone from developing.
No they don't, but they don't really help either, do they?
Anyone can write software, anyone can write drivers, and by doing so anyone can make MorphOS more suitable for example mobile devices like the LimePC ones (if that is your vision of a commercial context for MorphOS) or Set Top Boxes, or netbooks, or whatever. But in order to bring the OS onto a new hardware platform, you will of course need to negotiate a deal, sign some kind of contract, and pay up some money. MorphOS is a commercial OS. A lot of money has been invested in it, the Intellectual Property is owned by someone, and that someone is interested to get a return somewhere down the road (which is within their full right). If you don't like this *fact*, go use AROS instead, the great Open Source alternative.
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If there are too few developers (I still think the Users/Developers ratio is better for the MorphOS platform than in many other OS's), I think it's because of lack of commercial opportunity. Which means that it's *in this area* (business development) that development should focus now.
I agree on the ratio, 50:1000 is better than 10k:1000M isn't it? and 10k is a rather pessimistic view of the number of total Linux developers...
Where did I argue that few users/developers would be better than many?
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"Every developer needs a desktop". Under any circumstances, 400MHz e300 based devices are no developer machines.
The Mac Mini however could turn out to be the blessing.
A "blessing" a 4y old machine that the only way to get is via ebay?
Try to follow the discussion before commenting. It was a reply to the fact that no developer will use a LimePC kind of device for serious SW development, not to praise the Mac Mini as some ultimate solution (although it's cheap, readily available, and offers a general performance about 2x the Pegasos 2 G4).
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MorphOS is a product that lacks a demand from the masses, no-one needs it in its current shape and form (and with that I also mean the applications available, the hardware available, etc). Other than the couple of hundreds enthusiasts like you and me, practically no-one will buy into MorphOS since it has no purpose to them.
Most couldn't even if they wanted to, as it would mean buying old hardware from ebay AND software.
This is would be sufficient for developers and the true enthusiasts/power users, which probably are the only ones who will use MorphOS in a traditional desktop context. The true business based upon MorphOS will need to come from elsewhere. Devices like the LimePC would have been ideal, and it (or other cheap and low power devices) would be a setting where MorphOS could shine through its leanness and high efficiency.
A commercial purpose is needed for MorphOS, someone needs to identify a customer demand where this product has a potential to fit, and then start adapting it towards that demand.
That's how there will be a future, that's how OS development pace could increase. Open Source is not the answer, as AROS has clearly shown us.