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What happened to original MorphOS goals?

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ssolie

What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Cocoon

Joined: 2007/10/11
Posts: 55
From: Calgary, Alberta

With the renewed interest in AmigaOS thanks to the new Pegasos2 version there has been some comparisons of AmigaOS and MorphOS on the same hardware starting to appear. Better late than never I suppose. 8-)

This got me thinking, whatever happened to the original MorphOS goals?

I remember being excited about the future of MorphOS as a new platform with new ideas that could leapfrog AmigaOS entirely. This was back before www.morphos.net started pointing to pissed off developers.

Here is a sample from web.archive.org of what I'm talking about:
Quote:

MorphOS/Quark has the following basic design goals

o High Super/Usermode switch speed
o Low interrupt latency
o IntThreads and Int PCode abstraction
o Memory protection
o Symmetrical multi processing (SMP)
o Task/Thread and Clan/Chief model
o Resource tracking
o Asynchronous message system
o Virtual memory (optional)
o Recursive Memory Management
o Distributed computing
o No access to Kernel structures
o Clean design with an elegant API
o Micro/pico kernel mixture

Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20020626180435/http://www.morphos.net/kernelinfo.php3

The Q-Box looked exciting and fresh as well:
Quote:

Because we believe that the original OS design has strong limits for newer technology through its design structure, we also plan a completly fresh and clean OS layer on top of the Quark kernel (called Q-Box now).

The A-Box API was nice in its time, but today it has serious limitations because it doesn't hide OS structures and has no concept of memory ownership. This doesn't even cover all kinds of problems in many of the other system modules like layers, graphics, intuition or DOS which we at least try to resolve as far as possible with our A-Box extensions. As a consequence, we will not replicate the A-Box API in the Q-Box but we will try to do a new API without any compromises to the past but based on past experience.

Link: http://web.archive.org/web/20020626181353/http://www.morphos.net/overview.php3

So what happened to MorphOS that caused it to become little more than an enhanced A-Box?

There are a lot of exciting features in that list that are not possible on the A-Box.

--
Sam440ep-flex (667) + AmigaOne XE (7455) + A3000D (68030)
Amiga Users of Calgary (AMUC)

»2009/2/17 20:27

Piru

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

MorphOS Developer

Joined: 2003/2/24
Posts: 213
From: finland, the land of pony trekking and camping

Here is how I see it personally:

To be any good ABox had to be finished first, and be of high quality. That took a very long time.

QBox, (or rather several different OSes running at the same time which was the bigger plan, something like highly efficient vmware) would have required major overhaul for drivers and such (you wouldn't have been able to run them inside ABox obviously). Basically it would have required way more resources than were available. The commercial (as in making a living just coding this stuff) side of things pretty much dying didn't help either.

So, rather than taking the very very hard route we instead chose to expand the ABox side. Yes, it doesn't allow some of the wildest dreams of the QBox thing, but it still is very good.

Am I in any way disappointed in all this? Not really. Even with "just" ABox, MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

[ Edited by Piru on 2009/2/18 3:56 ]

»2009/2/17 21:04

takemehomegrandma

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Paladin of the Pegasos

Joined: 2003/2/24
Posts: 1448
From: Sweden

Quote:

MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

--
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)

»2009/2/17 22:12

ZB	Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Butterfly

Joined: 2008/9/29
Posts: 67
From:

Quote:

Piru wrote:

So, rather than taking the very very hard route we instead chose to expand the ABox side. Yes, it doesn't allow some of the wildest dreams of the QBox thing, but it still is very good.

Am I in any way disappointed in all this? Not really. Even with "just" ABox, MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

Well... thanks for this (nice) refreshed MorphOS "manifest".

It is good to know, every bit of time, your motivation and what someone from the Core Dev Team thinks for the present and the future of MorphOS.

It would be better a regular, say quarterly or so ;-)

, progress update but, in any case, we will forgive you, as long as you "kick serious behind"... :-D

[ Edited by ZB on 2009/2/18 13:42 ]

»2009/2/18 13:41

maurensen

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Order of the Butterfly

Joined: 2003/10/3
Posts: 234
From: Padova - Italy

Quote:

Am I in any way disappointed in all this? Not really. Even with "just" ABox, MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

Amen Piru!
MorphOS philosofy in a nutshell!
:-)

--
----------------------------------
Excusing in advance for my poor english
---------------------------------
Mauro Nardotto
(broken) PowerBook G4 15" @ 1.67 Ghz
(Working) MacBook 13" white unibody

»2009/2/18 21:41

Painkiller

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Acolyte of the Butterfly

Joined: 2007/11/19
Posts: 124
From: Nokia, Funland

More so what happen to this?

"Symmetrical multi processing (SMP)"

:)

»2009/2/19 8:03

Golem

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Moderator

Joined: 2003/2/28
Posts: 685
From: Denmark

@Painkiller

I don't think that was planned for ABox.

»2009/2/19 8:29

CountRaven

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Order of the Butterfly

Joined: 2007/12/11
Posts: 249
From:

Quote:

MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

MorphOS rules!

--
PegasosII, PegasosI, Efika, Amiga 4000PPC, Amiga 1200PPC, MacMini

»2009/2/19 8:46

jcmarcos

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Priest of the Order of the Butterfly

Joined: 2003/3/13
Posts: 990
From: Pinto, Madrid (Spain)

Quote:

Piru wrote:

Even with "just" ABox, MorphOS still kicks serious behind and is great fun.

Very nice information, Piru, it's indeed welcome.
Several days ago, Chris Hodges hinted something mythical: "MorphOS 3.0". He was talking about some changes in the USB handling.
Could you add some information about this? Why does this MorphOS release deserve a new major version number, instead of, say, 2.3?

»2009/2/19 9:05

kolla

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Butterfly

Joined: 2003/4/22
Posts: 64
From:

Quote:

ssolie wrote:
So what happened to MorphOS that caused it to become little more than an enhanced A-Box?

What happened was that Laire got an Xbox... :-)

»2009/2/19 9:24

Golem

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Moderator

Joined: 2003/2/28
Posts: 685
From: Denmark

@jcmarcos

Did he happen to give a release date as well?

»2009/2/19 9:27

Zylesea

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Paladin of the Pegasos

Joined: 2003/6/4
Posts: 1026
From: everywhere

Quote:

jcmarcos wrote:
Why does this MorphOS release deserve a new major version number, instead of, say, 2.3?

Mac Mini support.

»2009/2/19 13:36

jcmarcos

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Priest of the Order of the Butterfly

Joined: 2003/3/13
Posts: 990
From: Pinto, Madrid (Spain)

Has the MorphOS team ever given a release date before releasing anything? 8^)

Piru, could you please answer my previous questions?

»2009/2/19 13:38

Zylesea

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Paladin of the Pegasos

Joined: 2003/6/4
Posts: 1026
From: everywhere

Quote:

Zylesea wrote:
Quote:

jcmarcos wrote:
Why does this MorphOS release deserve a new major version number, instead of, say, 2.3?

Mac Mini support.

Also a 2.3 release is on schedule to be released soon (according to F.M.).

»2009/2/19 13:40

ssolie

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Cocoon

Joined: 2007/10/11
Posts: 55
From: Calgary, Alberta

Quote:

What happened was that Laire got an Xbox... :-)

That seems most likely from the responses so far.

Since we are offering opinions, I'll hazard a guess as to what really happened. I think Laire and company failed to deliver and squashed MorphOS (remember Laire declared it dead) as a platform. Genesi helped things along considerably by failing to pay everybody. Some of the devs that invested countless hours in the dream quickly banded together and convinced Laire to let them continue on the A-Box so they could at least try and recover some cash owed by selling licenses. Now, what is left of the original dev team is content to sell a few licenses and not worry about advancing MorphOS with any of the features originally promised back in 2002. The end.

I suppose as long as it is bringing in cash it doesn't matter what the plan was.

--
Sam440ep-flex (667) + AmigaOne XE (7455) + A3000D (68030)
Amiga Users of Calgary (AMUC)

»2009/2/19 18:54

Fab

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

MorphOS Developer

Joined: 2003/6/16
Posts: 793
From:

@SSolie

except that you're quite mistaken about the "bringing cash" leitmotiv. MorphOS isn't done by a company as such, and its development is not really driven by sales. For most ppl in the team, it's more about hobby and fun.

The fact that 2.x is sold can be seen as a way to finance further platforms support and included sw licenses, but profit isn't really the aim there (it would be quite crazy to hope making profits in such a niche, really :)).

[ Edited by Fab on 2009/2/19 18:49 ]

»2009/2/19 19:45

Piru

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

MorphOS Developer

Joined: 2003/2/24
Posts: 213
From: finland, the land of pony trekking and camping

@ssolie
Quote:

I'll hazard a guess

You guessed wrong.

»2009/2/19 19:52

Piru

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

MorphOS Developer

Joined: 2003/2/24
Posts: 213
From: finland, the land of pony trekking and camping

@jcmarcos

The development MorphOS branch is called MorphOS 3. It's a number that comes after 2.

»2009/2/19 19:57

takemehomegrandma

Re: What happened to original MorphOS goals?

Paladin of the Pegasos

Joined: 2003/2/24
Posts: 1448
From: Sweden

Quote:

ssolie wrote:

I think Laire and company failed to deliver and squashed MorphOS as a platform.

Failed to deliver?

:-?

No other Amiga NG OS developers has delivered as much Amiga compatibility, as much new features, as modern user experience, as much performance, as fast progress, etc, etc as the MorphOS team. They were first, they are best, and they are still going.

Nowhere is MorphOS as a platform squashed, and never did they fail to deliver.

Quote:

(remember Laire declared it dead)

What he said back when Gerber made his kamikaze stunt and nuked his Ambient desktop was that he saw a different future for MorphOS than desktop (and you must remember that it was at a time of great frustration for many people). IMHO this was (and still is) a sensible conclusion, even though the Ambient development later could continue as an open source project. I think MorphOS can still have a commercial future, but hardly as a traditional desktop OS.

Quote:

Genesi helped things along considerably by failing to pay everybody.

The Pretory/Thendic blowout was indeed bad for everyone, but it was inevitable at that point. However, as everyone can see, MorphOS is still here, better than ever, and the developers remaining are here for the love of the OS. Sure, things could happen faster with full time developers on a payroll compared to a hobby project, but that wasn't possible. Salary must come from sales, and there isn't any business based on MorphOS. But Genesi continue to sponsor MorphOS developmnet in small ways and AFAIK they paid for the Efika port, and I'm sure they'll come to some agreement with the MorphOS team if they ever releases new PPC hardware some time in the future. As has been proved, coming to such agreements is very much possible.

Quote:

Some of the devs that invested countless hours in the dream quickly banded together and convinced Laire to let them continue on the A-Box so they could at least try and recover some cash owed by selling licenses.

I think it's obvious to most people here that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

Quote:

Now, what is left of the original dev team is content to sell a few licenses and not worry about advancing MorphOS with any of the features originally promised back in 2002. The end.

Those features, Memory Protection, SMP etc, are *Quark* features, things that can't exist in a traditional Amiga context. Quark is there, but it's merely a micro kernel, nothing more. The "A-box" is a Quark process, and this "A-box" is what everyone here is interested in, it's why we are here. And it has been advancing in a most impressive manner, and it still is. The 2.0 release last summer was a giant leap, followed up with a 2.1 and later 2.2 with several new features. A 2.3 version is around the corner, as well as a "3.0" or whatever the Mac version will be called. *Lot's* of things are happening, and if you fail to see that you must be blind.

Quote:

I suppose as long as it is bringing in cash it doesn't matter what the plan was.

MorphOS 2 has sold, what, 500 copies? And you think it's all about the money?

--
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :-)