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

23.Mar.2003
AmigaWorld (ANF)

Weekly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - episode 2
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 2 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) BrianHoskins: I know it's a little soon to start drudging up time scales for a more commercialised OS, given that AOS4 isn't quite out yet, but when do you think the Amiga Platform is going to be in a position to release a new OS aimed at the wider audience? Im not talking about exact dates here, just approximately. A Year? 2? 3? More?

Fleecy: As I said in an answer to last week's questions, it is very important that we have a good market profile before we release a product into that market. By that I mean having a comprehensive list of the activities, requirements and roles within that market and, as important, a list of what our competitors offer and plan to offer.

This covers not just the operating system itself but also the hardware, the application base and the pre and post sales and support infrastructure.

You only tend to get one chance to launch into a market and so you have to make sure that you have all the bases covered otherwise it may fail, negative association may follow and this could affect not just any potential relaunch into that market but activities in other markets as well, both existing and planned.

By a wider audience, I assume you mean into the general desktop/home computer market. Based upon that, we need to attend to the following areas.

reliable supply of good quality and competitive hardware
a stable, localised, well documented and supported operating system
a supply of good third party applications, both available and in progress
an effective marketing campaign - reviews, advertisements, presence.

That said, to appeal to a wider audience, we need to provide a solution to their needs. The majority of people use a computer to

surf the net
email
Instant Message
compose letters
manage their music collection
play a few simple games
manage their digital photograph and video collections

We thus need to make sure that we have a solution that provides for these seven basic activities, to at least an industry standard level. This means applications, either in house or third party and an operating system which supports those applications.

This itself will be influenced by the move from Amiga Generation 1 (AG1) to Amiga Generation 2 (AG2) technology. For example there is little point in expending lots of effort on a brand new HTML rendering engine or a new printer system until the AG2 graphics service is completed, since both of these will make heavy use of it.

As you say, prediction is not an exact science but assuming full access to the necessary resources I would say that 18 months after AmigaOS4.0 ships, we should have all the elements necessary to offer a compelling alternative in the wider market.

2) seldom: Is there some kind of estimation, when there will be a Java VM for AOS ? Obviously this would open up a whole bunch of apps and developers for AOS. Maybe there is some way to do something special (tight integration into OS, boosting GUI implementation) about this implementation, so it gets especially attractive to develop/use java-apps. for/on AOS ?

Fleecy: Personal Java and MIDP will be available once the AmigaDE runs on the AmigaOS. Once that is the case, we will then look at expanding it into a full java implementation. Such a project would be a lot of work though and would most likely not be resourced until deep into the AG2 project, both because AG2 is more important and because Java itself would be a customer of AG2.

3) DaveyD: Have you considered porting an open source browser such as mozilla to AOS and if so, will it be included with AOS?

Fleecy: We have been looking on with interest at the path followed by Apple with Safari, their new browser and will most likely follow a similar path. We need to consider this though against the wider picture of what goes in an OS and what is/should be provided by third parties

4) SlimJim: Will there be an official list of supported hardware for the AOne + AOS4 combo released before the launch of the actual OS? I know this has been asked before, but it would be nice for people with Earlybird systems to be able to start putting together the hardware (with Linux) now, safely knowing that the addons they buy will also be supported by the upcoming AOS4.

Fleecy: This already exists, built and maintained by those who already have AmigaOnes, and supported by Amiga, Eyetech, Hyperion and Mai. You can find it at

http://web.amigarulez.com/ahs/

The new Amiga Power Platform website is currently under development and will be launched in the near future and will provide lists of hardware, software and links to reviews.

5) Rebel: Why has Amiga Inc not involved its community more? There are many talented graphics artists, webmasters, programmers that could be called upon to help. Also surveys on features etc that users want the most. AI's refusal to engage the users has helped to fragment that community further.

Fleecy: The issue with using the community comes down to the essential delineation between a business and its market. If a company takes work from external sources then there are legal questions of ownership and moral questions of remuneration. As an example, many games companies used to welcome idea submissions from the game playing community as a way of generating new product concepts but a few years ago, a few of them were sued by people who had made submissions and who claimed that their ideas had been used without reward. It is thus necessary to ensure that any flow into a company is legally secure.

Having said that, we do work with the community in several ways.

We often use Amiga artists for graphics work. The new OS4 advert is a good example.
We are working with several webmasters and artists for the new Amiga Power Platform website.
The development team of AmigaOS4.0 consists of many of the best community based developers.
We consult with a group of trusted community figures on issues, ideas and concepts.
The Club Amiga Monthly eMag and the soon to be released DEv DE developer eMag receive extensive contributions from the community.

Of course there is always room for more and as AmigaOS4.0 moves towards release, we will be extending our efforts in that regard. There is a lot of contact and communication with the community but a lot of it goes on behind the scenes.

6) alx: What tools will be available to develop for OS4?

Fleecy: The OS4 team and in particular Olaf Barthel have put in a lot of work to create a GCC compatible compiler which is free of iexmul and older compiler dependencies. We are looking at developing a proper IDE around this to give Amiga developers a world class development environment, and integrating this with a new documentation toolchain. A developer CD will be forthcoming. This is of course subject to change as we move forwards.

Now that we have an eMag pipeline, proven with CAM, we are soon to introduce the DEv eMag for AmigaDE developers and we want to produce a similar product for AmigaOS developers.

7) alx: Do you know when the new SciTech graphics drivers will be integrated into the OS (ie as a Boing Bag, or in OS4.2 or whatever)?

Fleecy: The plan is to release it as part of AmigaOS4.0. It most likely won't be part of the CSPPC version but then that hardware doesn't have the luxury of many graphics cards.

8) Unclecurio: There was much talk of the Zico spec in the early days. Is Amiga Inc continuing the development of these blueprints and, if so, when can we expect to hear more?

Fleecy: The Zico spec was an indication of the type of functionality that we intended to provide with AmigaOS4.0. Our future plans for the AmigaOS will introduce new types of hardware across a range of device classes but we won't be releasing details until individual projects are much more advanced.

9) Kay: Have you given any thought to communication between Amiga desktops and AmigaDE capable PDAs? If so, what devices can we expect to be using together with our AmigaOne systems in the near future?

Fleecy: This is something that we intend to provide once the AmigaDE is on the AmigaOS. However, there are also opportunities for other device synchronisation as well - PocketPC and Palm PDAs, MS and Symbian powered smartphones and of course the digital music devices.

10) The_Editor: "The Matrox are supposed to be an A.Inc Partner... Have / are negotiations taken place to port/create NLE Editing solutions for A1?"

Fleecy: Our partnership with Matrox is currently limited to providing drivers for their product path. There have been initial contacts about their video application offerings and we have agreed to talk in more detail once we can provide them with AmigaOS4.0 on an AmigaOne for them to assess.

We have been contacted in the last week by a company which has expressed an interest in bringing video capture, editing and presentation software to AmigaOS4.0 but I cannot give any more details at this early stage.

(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=2
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: 23. Mar. 2003, 19:23] [Comments: 0]
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