Hi André

Quoting myself: Actually, I was talking about the EFIKA sales resulting from MorphOS in reply to STKD. MorphOS would of course benefit from 5000 sales, but I was talking about R&D for the hardware. I should have made myself more clear here.
In this discussion, yes :-)
Sure I know - I have one myself. The problem is that the majority of those starting a business like that don't survive the first 3 years.
Small and mid-size business can survive because of the unique possibility they have to change direction from one day to another when a good opportunity comes along. Large companies cannot do this effectively. Also, a lot of those companies (in the technology and energy sector) survive thanks to consulting services or other, not products. (my own experience: http://www.vaasaett.com)
And then we come to the second part of running a business: advertising. I had the opportunity to demo MorphOS to a bunch of embedded companies and researchers here: http://www.puv.fi/en/events/iwes6/, but I did not receive a system from the developers (I asked for it through Bill). If AROS would have been available for EFIKA, I would have not even considered MorphOS. Thing is, I am keeping a close eye on AROS, as I think it has potential - I sadly don't have the time to help develop it.
ok.
As you said, it won't happen. Nobody knows it, and it does not have any track record. How can we change this?
I say the same thing, but I don't have as much money as he has, so even though he is not the richest man in the world, he has no financial troubles to think of either.
I feel the same way after donating 100 or 200 Euro to Fosdem every year, or giving a small community in Algeria internet access, or finish teaching a class at the end of the year where my students actually learned something useful... This is very much rewarding.
Those things matter the most to me too, but it would be easier if there was no loan to pay of or keeping the company afloat...

My use of the word "rewarding" in the context of this thread was purely in the financial context, especially in the context of Genesi (in reply to STKD).



In any case, this is the most interesting discussion I've seen on this forum for quite some time :-)

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

By far... and look what release sparked it. Doesn't that in itself say a lot?
The point is, I don't think the MorphOS guys particularly wanted to become a huge thing with the success you define as being in financial terms. I think they did it for the enjoyment of it and as something of a personal goal. It is a hobby, not a business and that's where you seem to be missing the mark slightly. They do at the same time have an entitlement to make whatever little money they can/want out of something they put so much into. Similarly, the people developing apps for MorphOS are equally aware that they're doing so for a small community. They still do it.

The trade off you look at in any OS solution is functionality vs/in comparison to ease of use. To us non-Linux types, who neither have the time, skill or inclination to want to sit compiling for hours, MorphOS wins that one hands down. My younger sister and probably my parents could install MorphOS and use it if I just pointed them at the installer. *That* is in itself something quite special. If you sat them or the average person down with DI_EFIKA and similarly no other documentation whatsoever, it really would be a case of hours of frustration. I doubt I could have done it myself without the Efika Book's superb guide. MorphOS undeniably wins that one, hands down.

As for something more specific... MorphOS is closer right now to the concept of shareware and perhaps that it the better way to think of it. You get a time limited version/demo, completely for free, to try out and see if it fits what you want it for. Not to do so for something as silly as disliking their "business" method seems a tad narrow minded but that's another matter entirely. We all knew what the deal was with it before it came out, we all knew roughly how much it would be.

I evaluated what I saw in the demo and judged that for what it did, paying for a full version was more than acceptable. As for saying it isn't `desktop ready`, well I could see the average person out there sitting emailing or browsing ebay or all those other small but important tasks the majority have vastly overpowered machines for anyway, and doing so quite happily. Web browser? Check. Image manipulation software? Check. Sketch app? Check. Able to play video, dvd, music, copy things back and forth to USB sticks easily (no "mount blah blah blah!")? Check. IRC client? Check. Gratuitous torrent client (Beehive does the job nicely)? Yep. Easy to use, friendly, nice looking GUI? Check. (Again... KDE or Gnome are far from filling that criteria. Sad but undeniable.)
I think that covers the majority of what anyone expects from a `desktop ready` OS. The average person could use this.

Sure right now it lacks some kind of office software, but do you really picture that situation lasting now the OS is out? Someone will do it for themselves, and release it simply to be used by those who want such things. It hits most of the goals that *any* OS should be aiming for - many of which such as simple user-friendliness and speed I mentioned before - and doesn't have the user cursing the hardware it runs on. The knock-on effect of which is that I *am* more likely to recommend the hardware itself.

This is a fun discussion :D
As André mentioned, the initial idea was most likely for it to be a for-profit OS. They probably still have that in the back of their minds - and I sincerely hope they will make this come true one day.
The problem is that the user base is so low, that there are few new coders starting to write applications. How can this sustain itself? My point all along was that in order to be a success (however you define success) the user and developer base should increase, rather than decrease.

Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder - i.e., Linux is easy to use for me compared to Windows, e.g., since I can change the kernel to do things I need it to do. On the other hand, MorphOS is not easy to use for me if I want it on my ARM device - I cannot port it, so it is not easy to use for me.
It all depends on what you call "ease of use". I guess for most people on this planet "ease of use" means "clicking on the internet icon in Windows" or something like that. It all depends on what you grow up with...

See above. People who grow up with Linux will tell you differently.
The ability to install and OS is not really that important from a usability perspective, since most people buy a computer with an OS pre-installed. The only reason Linux installers have become so easy over time (see Suse and Ubuntu) is because people wanting to use it had to install it on a machine that didn't have an OS, or had Windows.
Maybe as an end user, but not as a company trying to enter a market with the possibility to use their OS.
It becomes too restricted and will fail.
Flash? Java? etc?
The web is turning out to be a development platform for applications (not that I like this trend).
Same on Linux.
This is again in the eye of the beholder. I do not agree with you here.
Ehm, no. the average user expects to be able to open Word documents, do internet banking, go to YouTube, use that crap 40Euro printer/scanner combo from the supermarket and expects to download a bunch of toolbars to clutter their browser.


Yes, I do. A word processor is not some small job to code. With a limited user base, what would be the point? Who would do it? I guess you could port something over such as AbiWord though - but you'd have to change the whole GUI subsystem to get that working native.


Johan

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Hi Johan,
that was not obvious to me. One reason why it was not is that the EFIKA was most definitely not designed for MorphOS so it is difficult to see the relation between MorphOS and the R&D expenses for the EFIKA.

That being said, Genesi did invest money into the porting of MorphOS to this hardware. It would be most desirable if these costs were recouped via additional sales either directly or, more likely, indirectly. (Since MorphOS does have great demonstration value, it might very well help to advertize the capabilities of the EFIKA 5200B and similar hardware. I am sure it is entirely possible to create a specific Linux distribution which does the same, but I personally would consider this option to be unlikely to cost less.)


I remember which is why I was slightly irritated by your earlier statements.

Also, I have cited this particular statistic many times myself. One prominent reason why startup companies go bankrupt is because they overextent themselves by having too big ambitions and an insufficient sensibility for possible obstacles.

Sometimes it is best to start small and build up your business via organic growth rather than to lead an Ahab-esque quest for a big deal that might never come.

Being a developer yourself, you will probably understand the reluctance to provide unfinished software with known stability issues for *promotional* efforts. The old saying "Bad news is good news" does not quite hold up for product marketing :)

I am looking forward to see it finally available for the EFIKA. It is unfortunate that it has not been made public yet. I sincerely hope the author is in good health and there are no serious reasons for the delays.

Please see above for my statement about organic growth. I think it makes sense for the developers to focus on pleasing all those people who do not need much to be convinced, rebuild a stable user base and have it slowly expand and grow.

BeOS might still be around today as a desktop OS if they had not done the fatal mistake of jumping on the embedded OS bandwagon in hopes of getting a big deal which would secure the future of Be Inc. for years to come.

You are absolutely correct. I knew I should have chosen a better quote when I wrote it but I was in a rush.

I hear you, I hear you :)

I do not disagree. But then again, I am not technically a developer which puts me outside of this website's primary target group.


André

Hi André.
I replied that part to this statement by STKD:
OK, I admit, I should be more clear next time :)
I'm just tired of running a business where it takes ages to see any results. The competition in the technology sector is unbelievably hard. We're at the point where we are differentiating ourselves by going into the... wait for it... agricultural business in Algeria. People need food - we are going to use technology to develop farms in the desert. It's easier than competing with the incumbent technology companies all over Europe.

Didn't mean to get you irritated though.
This works well in theory, but it's not the easiest way to go at it in the technology sector - especially in software.
Where that does work (or worked anyway) is the graphics industry - I did that in the past with a 3D Graphics company.

The demo could have been done with a very restricted set of applications, i.e., one - running a game or video on Noël's portable or something like showing the boot times... There wouldn't even have been a need for the user interface; just something to get people interested.

We've done promotional efforts in the past with prototype software just for that reason - you just have to make sure you control the demo, not the person looking at it.
Same here!
I sincerely wish them the best - it will be a long and difficult journey.


BeOS was just ahead of its time, and management (especially JLG) was too stubborn. I'm looking forward to Haiku though - they're making some great progress.
I think we can use as many people here as possible - developers or not. Having different points of view is necessary to get somewhere.


Johan.

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Unfortunately, this would have been a good opportunity for MorphOS, apparently again sorely missed, just like every opportunity for promotion.

Genesi has attempted to show MorphOS to a lot of partners, and even has warned them that this might be something they cannot have for 6 months to a year. They have generally been excited to start with, and then we have had to tell them no demo can ever be shown because the developers do not agree.

So, MorphOS advertisement and promotion has been SOLELY conducted not through demonstration to partners, but through democoder/scene shows and Amiga-related events.

It was fine to show a bunch of Amigans an unfinished product 3 years ago, with "MorphOS 1.5", and keep them hanging until now. Of course there was quite a lot of time between then and now, so it wouldn't have been prudent to take it anywhere else.

But 6 months ago? I do not see any changes in MorphOS 2.0 that have not been demonstrated at Amiga events and demoparties 6 months ago.

Re the IWES6 presentation, MorphOS as a tool for students and as an example of several pertinent embedded technologies (MorphOS' new memory allocator is fairly fancy) would probably be a great benefit - it allows some direct hardware access, lacks memory protection to make that easier, and is wonderfully efficient, and actually quite intuitive as long as you can get your head around the old Amiga-like APIs.

That is a boon; basically, teaching students about Linux means teaching them about dynamic linking, nitpicking of ELF file formats, userspace and kernelspace issues (not supervisor vs. user *mode* but the copying of data and piping it through specialized APIs), none of which exist on MorphOS, because they are not required. You can start with the important lesson and not spend a whole course nose-deep in man pages before you can even start.
The irony is that AmigaOS *and* MorphOS have made the same mistakes despite the benefits of riding out that particular storm. Pandering to Amigans and trying to kick the shit out of Wintel and Apple is not any secure route to success in any business :D

Nobody at all, except the MorphOS developers, wants an Amiga desktop. What they might want is a ridiculously efficient media OS - MorphOS has been demonstrated to run pretty okay versions of MPlayer at great speed, then you put Reggae on there instead, with some decent codec support (this can be very quickly attained if a company wants it).

I dare say that bringing the entire Amiga Desktop OS up to scratch just so you can play media files with some player controls on some embedded device would take 12 months.

Like I said, they had their chance.. and refused it.
You do your part :)

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Matt Sealey

I guess you're a bit too harsh here (I know it's your habit to speak out straight). Of course a lot went 'suboptimal' (to say the least) druring the last years with MorphOS. But let's see if this release brings a bit new momentum to the entire MorphOS endeavour.
In the end, now there is not much to lose, but rather to gain.
I agree completely that MOS's only chance is to get established as low footprint media OS if it wants a larger audience (hence my media frame project, which I demoed tonight to some guys and they liked it quite a lot). This "train" is under steam already but has not yet left the station completely. But it'll be difficult to catch it though...

Hi Matt,
I myself was involved in getting a MorphOS developer version to a potential partner of Genesi...

If you were seriously interested, I would suggest you look harder. There are quite a number of things that were added shortly before the release. All those users who evaluated MorphOS 6 months prior to release at one of the many user meetings should be able to find differences.

That appears to be a good point, Matt. AROS should be even better suited as motivated students could contribute to the OS itself and get a better understanding of its inner workings by looking at the freely available source. Last but not least, it is likely to run on hardware commonly found in student homes.

You seem to grossly misunderstand what drives MorphOS users and developers. It is not about "beating" other operating systems, it is about providing an alternative which hopefully fits better to the indvidual needs of those people who are unhappy with either Windows or MacOS.

There is a niche for "alternative computing" just like there is a niche for convertibles in rainy England. The acts of interacting with a computer and driving from place A to place B may seem incredibly boring. However, given the right tools, they can be rather fun.

See above.

No idea what you are referring to.

Hi Johan,
this phenonemon is often mentioned in business literature. It is the curse of every manager :) Things never seem to get done fast enough.

Many inside the IT industry tend to forget that technology is a means to an end.

So, I am not overly surprised. In fact, I find it very, very interesting. The availability of affordable wireless technologies can help to radically change how farmers organize and monitor large amounts of animals, for instance. I am sure there are a great many opportunities for innovative use of technologies in the agricultural sector.

I would think that founding a hardware business is in fact more difficult since you usually have to invest more money before you can start to operate. If you develop software, the bare minimum is a development computer and a website so you can sell your products via download online. If you design and produce hardware, on the other hand, you need special equipment and have to finance each production run (no matter if it is handled in-house or by a third party).

My personal opinion is that what you just outlined does not sound sufficient for any serious promotional activities. Of course, one might argue that it would not have hurt. I do not disagree whatsoever. Nevertheless, it does require a certain level of assistence which is time not spent on development. In this particular case, I tend to think that it might not have been worth it.

That being said, it is now available for everyone to try. So, I assume there is little point to discuss the unavailability of MorphOS for the Efika in the past.

I am not fond of their user interface design (or that of BeOS), but I would certainly like to try it at some point and compare it to the original.


André

I think this pretty much covers it from my point of view. As someone who uses a variety of OS variants daily - XP and Server 2008 being the most common since 2K8 is my desktop OS - the most important factor for the one I use most constantly tends to be whichever I find most "fun" or "enjoyable" to use. Sure I can and do run all the types of software under 2K8 that I do on MorphOS, but I find doing so on MOS a far more fun experience. I also find, particularly if using IRC, that people respond with a lot of interest towards the OS and the hardware running it when it comes up.

The people interested in the Efika hardware as a device, more than likely already have one if it's of use. The people interested in the Efika as a computer that does those kind of things and runs that kind of software - at a fraction of the power and energy costs - can now consider doing so in a far more "end user friendly" manner. MOS gives the ability to do so to those that want it.

The genius of the Efika *hardware* now though is that it fits both of those needs perfectly.

I have my sources as to what the current state of MorphOS was at any and every point, and have even demoed a copy of MorphOS 1.5 at a government level in mid-2004. It was hard to even get that copy, but after some phone calls it was agreed (the day before the demo).

To be honest, MorphOS 1.5 was good enough then to show, despite Ralph's objections at the time, I do not see how it turned to trash, stagnated over a period of 4 years, only to be fixed to the point of being demonstrable barely a week ago.
I do not think any of them affect the stability of the OS as a controlled, private demonstration.
The whole point is that they do not need to know these inner workings; otherwise they would not be taught Java or C# programming on Windows. They do not have the source code to the JVM sitting next to their own code for reference and simply do not need to. MorphOS, Java and C# have stable, well documented APIs (of some sort), whereas you cannot say that about Linux from one kernel to the next, sometimes you cannot even rely on the same API being there from one distribution to the next.
No, not really.
I do not think you can be unhappy with MacOS and think that MorphOS is some kind of solution. Don't get me started on the messiah complex surrounding this group of operating systems (MorphOS, AmigaOS, AROS).
Transistor radio kits were fun 25 years ago too, but now we have multiplexed, multichannel high-fidelity digital audio broadcasting.

The benefit and curse of MorphOS is it brings that 25-year-old naïvité out, just like no student or developer is going to be soldering together a few kit components to make a DAB receiver, therefore they need to cut their teeth on building their first electronics hobby kit, they are also probably not going to have a PDP-11 to learn about UNIX on, so they have to run FreeBSD or heaven forbid Linux.

You can run MorphOS on a board made a year ago (hopefully even on one made a year from now) and it's an easy to access system which you can build a lot of things from (considering the interdependency of components and size of the OS). It doesn't have a heavy legacy of constant, intrusive updates such as Windows or MacOS has (MacOS isn't even the same OS, you could say that too about Windows 2000/XP/Vista).

However, it brings with it this whole Amiga legacy of "this is the best OS ever made" or at least "it shares it's roots with the best OS ever made".

As a desktop OS, it's fairly obviously untrue, and anything more than using it as an easily embeddable technology is pointless though except as a native developer environment (nobody seriously uses MorphOS in a development capacity however without a null modem cable and another PC sitting next to it to capture the output).
Pick any time we had a chance to show MorphOS to a set of partners and developers that were willing to plough hundreds of thousands of dollars into development, only for the "MorphOS Team" to decide that they did not want to show it in the state it was in.

Fast forward less than a month from that time and I will show you a video in Polish, Hungarian, Finnish, German, showing that OS to a bunch of drunken Amiga geeks who have only sat down to see it because they are waiting for Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2 to load from floppy..

That is what I mean by refused, that is what I mean by missed opportunities.

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Matt Sealey

@ Matt
Well, I can tell you that it was not particularily difficult to get a developer version in May of 2007. I fail to understand why you insist that it has been impossible for Genesi to get access to MorphOS within the past 4 years while I know for a fact that this is not correct.


As for the version you saw in 2004, most of its key features (3d hardware acceleration, new Ambient, new MUI) have been available via numerous free updates to users of MorphOS 1.4. Anybody who wanted to demonstrate those in the past four years was able to do so. Provided that this person had access to Pegasos-based hardware such as an Open Desktop Workstation, that is.

My whole point is and was that simply because you are not required to have access to the sourcecode of an operating system in order to successfully develop for it does not imply that having this level of access is useless and completely undesirable.

It is the year 2008. The messiah died a long time ago. Today is all about catching up while the OS hopefully retains its core identity.

I cannot imagine any group of people to have more insight into the quirks and mistakes found in a particular operating system than a development team who created a compatible OS from scratch which is actually capable to run 20 years old legacy applications.

I personally do not recall any instance when a serious inquiry was shot down.

To me, "opportunity" implies a realistic chance for a positive reward which noticably outweighs the required efforts. You may have a different definition of the word.

Well, this is not a bad as Eugenia Loli-Queru's implosion on OSNews:
That is a great way to destroy a site and offend a readership. She also made a few comments about MorphOS, the EFIKA and the Pegasos on the recent MorphOS 2.0 thread.

We would have expected two diligent, smart and able people who have *both been working in Genesi for more than five years* to keep this discussion offline -- too bad.

Now that you have both had your chance to express your personal opinions, we would appreciate if you refrain from posting anything else related to this subject. Thanks.

R&B

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

I actually liked this discussion a lot, but for sure the boss is right, and it's come to an ending point. The fact that it's mainly between two employees of the same company looks GOOD in my opinion, believe me. Mostly becasue their comments could have been removed, and they haven't. Nice attitude from their company.

It's a pity that MorphOS team lost relations with Genesi, but life goes on. Now, it's only about an operating system, with no business intention whatsoever. Love for technology. That's pure and respectable. I hope users are aware and prepared.

I still believe that Genesi could have started many interesting things business-wise, that this brilliant team of programmers don't care about. Hey, now that you mention OSNews, remember that it was Genesi who gave Eugenia a free Pegasos, and that led to the most well public mention of MorphOS, in her nice article. Alright, coding MorphOS is important, but nobody can fail to see the importance of enabling this kind of public awareness. In fact, in today's world, it's MORE important than the actual product.

For me, it was very sad to see NOTHING about the MorphOS 2.0 release in BBRV's blog. It gives a precise image to the reality that MorphOS is no longer part of Genesi's products, and there's no longer any relationn. It's a pity, because MorphOS is a very clever system, but Genesi needs to do business.