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From: bryce@hoser.berkeley.edu (Bryce Nesbitt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Why doesn't Commodore release Amiga source? (was dv2iff & tcp/ip)
Message-ID: <3866@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 03:52:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.3866
Posted: Mon Sep 21 03:52:39 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 01:06:21 EDT
References: <503@louie.udel.EDU> <1929@umd5.umd.edu> <775@sugar.UUCP> <156@splut.UUCP>
Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu
Organization: Flexible Pipes, Unlimited
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Summary: Why Commodore should not

In article <156@splut.UUCP> stu@splut.UUCP (Stewart Cobb) writes:
>
>   Why hasn't Commodore released the source to the operating system?
>
>   Think about it.  They can't be afraid of pirates: everyone who has an
>Amiga gets a copy of the OS, gratis.  Are they afraid someone would hack
>it up into a better OS?

Someone might port it to the Macintosh... or worse yet the Atari ST...
or worse yet the Commodore 64... Atari 800... Apple ][... IMSI 8080...
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

>	[more discussion deleted]
>    Can someone point out the flaw in my reasoning?  Or, perhaps, the
>flaw in theirs?

The worst problem would be the detailed internal knowlege that people
would have about the OS.  Many of them can't be trusted.  Some things
are much better off as "Black Boxes" because they can, will, or should
change.
With bad enough habits you get a system as un-upgradeable as the Commodore-64.
I once did a little babule called 1541 Flash!.  Would you believe that some
programs load values from absolute addresses in the ROM, compare them
to constants and *crash* if they are not correct?  Major, best selling,
programs?  And that's just the easy to find incompatibilities.
People won't do that to the Amiga... but they will do the next best thing;
reading, depending and worst of all changing private structures.  Depending
on interactions and side-effects that may want to disappear later.  Using
the BCPL globals or other such nonsense.  (Remember Scott Turner on this
point?)  Commodore has said that they are not telling how those things
work; yet still people want to use them.


>That would only sell them _more_ Amigas.  They
>shouldn't be concerned about having multiple, perhaps buggy, new OS's
>floating around, because everyone who has one of those also has the
>original to fall back to.... 

What Commodore *should* do, in my opinion, is release source to a lot
of the device-specifc stuff.  Here I mean printer drivers and such.

The source can only be used in an Amiga-specific way, and would promote
better drivers.

To protect Commodore's multi-million dollar investment in all this,
some legal vulture could come up with a distribution restriction that
reads "...intended for use only on computers sold by Commodore... must
retain copyright** notice..." whatever.

In cases where good support has been slow to show up (like with
DOS handlers) a relase of code can grease many locks.  (Someone
might hear about MODE_READWRITE... or pherhaps even implement it!)

I think serial.device is handled by now... but at a certain point that would
have made all the difference for a midi.device.  (A midi.device ought be
a standard part of the next Workbench release... )


** It is "Copyright" (The right to copy), not "Copywrite" (How to make a
copy with a pencil) or "Copywright" (Something out of Tolkien). Some 
shareware authors blow this not-so-fine point.

 
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