AmiOpen

Having roots in the Amiga community creates a certain mindset in a person. One of these mindsets is the concept of sharing and the word Amiga is almost synonymous with concepts like freeware, shareware, and giftware. The Amiga community abounds with shareware and the repository for this wealth of Amiga shareware is Aminet. This one institution, with its nature of providing freely distributable software, is arguably the single most significant reason the Amiga has survived as a platform to this day.

Many of the Aminet programs were written by programmers to fill the void left from Commodore's bankruptcy. Today, just as many write programs for the Amiga-with its streamlined and elegant OS-because programming on the Amiga is a joy. They are looking not for profits but recognition and release their work for others to enjoy. They are coding on the Amiga "just because they can." Through these unselfish contributions, Aminet became a lifeline for the Amiga community and this instilled the mindset that the open-spirited Amiga community was a cut above all the rest.

This Amiga open spirit continues today. It should be no surprise that Amiga Inc. wants to carry this open spirit into the future and will do so by providing some portions of the new Amiga Digital Environment, or the Amiverse, as Open Source-or AmiOpen as we like to call it. We think this will stimulate innovation and allow any developer to make additions, changes, or advances to the Amiverse, "just because they can." We think this will enhance and strengthen the Amiga Digital Environment (DE). We believe strongly in both the value of Open Source and Commercial software development and intend to put these beliefs into action in our developmental process. The Amiga has always been about innovation, being the best, and doing things "just because you can."

AmiOpen differs slightly from the Linux model of "free software" in that Amiga Inc. will incorporate open source with commercial IP. Most of the utility programs we need as a Digital Environment are open source and easily portable. This gives a wealth of porting experience right out of the box for Amiga DE programmers.

Work for the AmiOpen project is well underway with several utilities and demos already being ported to the AmigaDE. A few of them are: W3M; Bison Parser Generator; bzip; Chunker; EUAE, a port of UAE; Ewinease; Artix Free Utilities; Gawk; Gzip; Inital IxemulNG Code; Juggler, The Classic 1986 Juggler Demo; LhA; PGP, SOX (Sound Exchange); tar; Tunnel, a simple AVE tunnel effect demo; Units, a Unit System Converter; Externals, Doom and Quake demos; and Jzip, Level9, and Magnetic, which are Text adventures. Work on larger projects is also underway, including a commitment from Doug Mclaughlin to port Stricq to the AmigaDE as well. If you would like a look at what is currently available or would like to upload your own ported work you should visit: ftp.amiga.com/developers.

Amiga Inc. intends to blend AmiOpen and Commercial software development along with hardware independence into the most advanced computing experience possible. The core features of the Amiverse will be handled internally by Amiga and will not be AmiOpen. Residual Amiverse features like tools, drivers, editors, some of the interface layer development, as well as exciting new enhancements like MP and VMM, can easily be enhanced and/or developed by an AmiOpen movement. In addition, there are literally thousands of great Open Source projects that could be ported over in quick order.

Amiga has established several initiatives to further this goal, the first of which is an open mailing list for developers at: open-request@amiga.com. This mailing list is for developers who wish to talk openly about the Amiverse and/or developmental tools, and who would like to assist with or become involved with this process. Our goal is to make as much of the Amiverse as possible easily accessible for all developers while still maintaining intellectual property rights as we design and implement these enhancements into the new Amiverse. Amiga believes that a fully closed-source developmental program limits innovation. By opening up some of the Amiverse to the developmental process, Amiga hopes to capture the spark that has always been inherent in the Amiga community.

Shortly, we will implement bulletin board messaging systems that are open to developers so that they can share ideas and assist each other in the developmental cycle. This will function as a pool of information that developers can reference to help with problems, bugs and software specifics. Other support structures, such as email support (from a staff of support techs located in various time zones around the world), CVS, Bugzilla, and Developer specific news will be available as we move along in the process.

In addition, our web-enhanced support structures will be home to commercial development as well. We have many commercial developmental partners on board with more coming every week. These partners will add many games, tools, drivers, and applications considered mainstream on other platforms.

We are inviting developers across community lines to come help us build our dream and they are responding to these requests by the hundreds because people are looking to find a fresh alternative to the same old thing. Many former Amiga developers are back. We have developers offering their time from the Linux/Unix world, from the BSD world, and many other computing worlds as well. We understand that coding is not just a job to most programmers, but a passion. We hope to encourage this passion by offering an AmiOpen option with the Amiga.

Few companies take the approach of mixing Open Source and Commercial aspects of software development the way we have chosen, but few companies have the platform independence that Tao Elate/InTent gives us. Some might think this approach controversial, but we think it will offer us momentum, innovation, and positive results.

This is about "The Dream." We need each of you to help build the dream for those of us who have believed all these years. Imaginative developers will recognize real opportunity in writing plug-ins, tools, drivers, and applications for the Amiverse. AmiOpen lets them achieve this opportunity without all the constraints inherent in Closed Source development.

Amiga hopes that the readers understand what we are trying to achieve and encourage you to send in your thoughts. We certainly appreciate the outpouring of response we have gotten so far and would expect nothing less for the Amiga community.