amiga-news.de - Weekly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss

18.May.2003
AmigaWorld (ANF) Weekly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - episode 10
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 10 of the regular questions and answers session with Fleecy Moss, CTO at AMIGA, Inc. (Update 2012-03-17, cg: as the original document is no longer available, the following content was moved into our database):

1) trgse: Something the Amiga has lacked since its early days is POSIX compliance or a good full POSIX emulation layer. (ixemul not being very amiga like and lacking fork, how does Amiga see this.... Will it be resolved under OS 4.x, if so how? does/will OS 5.x/DE have any POSIX compliance

Fleecy: There is already a project under way within the AmigaOS4 development team to increase POSIX compliance within the platform. Elements of this. most notably a threading solution will hopefully be in place for AmigaOS4.0.

2) ikir: What do you think of the Coldfire Accelerator Project? Could we have a Coldfire version of OS4.x in the future? With a 200+ MHz coldfire, many people would probably want OS4 for these machines. What is your stance on this?

Fleecy: AmigaOS4 for the desktop is a PPC product and that is what we will be supporting.

3) alx: What is the reasoning behind A inc not releasing the old 1.x ROM images? They would be useful for many people, would provide an indication of goodwill and wouldn't run any recent s/w like the "current" 3.x series.

Fleecy: We are investigating this and are looking at both providing a distinct product with these pieces on it as well as having them all on the AmigaOS4.0 CD.

4) Tigger: Where you unaware of what Bill McEwen was going to say in the Bolten Peck case about not being the CEO, or were you intentionally misleading the Amiga Community with your post that Bill McEwen was still the CEO??

Fleecy: Bill McEwen is still CEO. He was CEO before I posted that statement, he was the CEO when I posted that statement and is the CEO today as I type this answer to you. I have no comments to make about any on going lawsuits.

5) Hondo_DK: Does Amiga have any upcoming plans for their website. I mean if Amiga is to launch OS4 to an unexpecting amazed world, then you're website would probably be facing a run over by zillions of surfers from everywhere in the computer business. When seeing the present Amiga site, many would perhaps turn away because of the lack of a design roadmap. Do you have any plan to prepare yourself before the launch of OS4.

Fleecy: We are very aware that the Amiga web presence needs updating. This is being done one site at a time with the new Amiga Power Platform website under construction as we speak and due to be opened to the public before AmigaOS4.0 goes on sale.

6) KingTutt: If a clear and steady level of growth is reached, and a sizable userbase pushes sales akin to the first year of these next-gen consoles. Would Amiga Inc consider bringing into the fold some past Amiga game developers in an effort to resurrect some past game legends ala the great Turrican series? And if so, how do you see Amiga Inc playing an instrumental role in bringing back past hits.

Fleecy: We do intend to do this but usually you only get one shot at trying to convince people to come back to a platform and so we don't want to do this until the platform supports a market large enough to provide a substantial financial element to the overall decision. If the userbase does get to that size, we'd be very happy. As an aside I should mention that we have had such developers spontaneously contacting us to enquire about coming back to the platform and discussions are ongoing.

7) KingTutt: Do you believe its important for Amiga as a possible future gaming platform, to stand by its own creations & merits, distinguishable from the rest or should it rely on ported titles from other systems?

Fleecy: Porting of product has a definite place, especially for a small market where the cost of developing a new product from scratch is substantial. However we would very much like to see unique content on the Amiga and will be working towards that end. It has to be said that if someone wrote an amazing game on the Amiga, the developer would most likely want to look at porting it to other platforms anyway so perhaps the best we can hope for in the short term is ports, the medium term is content on our platform first and then ported followed by unique content only on our platform as the market size increases.

In the end the only way to guarantee unique content is to have features and capabilities on the platform that do not exist and more, cannot be replicated on another platform but with hardware commoditisation, that is increasingly difficult.

8) Deniil715: I was wondering if the TCP/IP-stack of OS4 will support IPv6?? And if it will not, will it atleast support DHCP IP-timeout and refresh so that it can be used on a network with a DHCP-server which put a timeout on the IP-address and hence withdraw it after the timeout if the TCP/IP-stack doesn't refresh it.

Fleecy: DHCP is in (the whole package, not just the fringe features), IPv6 is not. Given our current resources and feature lists for AmigaOS4, IPv6 is down near the bottom of the list but as the project advances, features above it will be crossed off and we will of course continually review the situation.

9) ssolie: Have you given any thought to utilizing open source development, either as a source baseline or as a development model, to speed delivery of various AmigaOS services?

Fleecy: We have considered it and may dabble in it on the fringes but as a commercial company we have a need to develop IP and to provide a return on it to our investors. If we were developing another UNIX wannabe, same old same old product then it would have more appeal but we are into developing something unique and in making money out of it.

10) catohagen: If i dont remember wrong, there was something called PREXX, what is it and is it still planned ?

Fleecy: I have asked a few people, most of whom returned a blank expression. One person believes it may have been something that Haage and Partner were talking about but there is certainly nothing of that name in AmigaOS4.0

(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=11
You may freely redistribute this article, providing that a URL is provided to the original source,
and the copyright notices remain intact) (ps) (Translation: cb)

[News message: 18. May. 2003, 21:25] [Comments: 0]
[Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

< Next message

Prior message >