I fell in love with Amiga because it was open in the best sense. Not open source on paper, but open in spirit. You bought any Amiga 500, you got a soldering iron, you swapped disks at a copy party, you typed in listings from magazines. If you made something cool, you shared it. Aminet. Fred Fish. That is our culture, even today.
So I have to be honest, as a woman who still sits every evening with my Amiga 1200 humming next to me in Bergen: I’m worried about where the Amiga as a platform are heading.
Take Vampire and Apollo – What are you Doing?
Technically? Amazing. What the Apollo Team has achieved with SAGA, with FPU, with speed that makes any old 68030 weep — I respect it deeply. I love seeing my Amiga fly.
But ApolloOS is taking its own route. Its own 3D drivers that only work on Vampire. Yes, there is games made by Apollo Team that only works on their hardware???… Its own closed toolchain. Its own distro that doesn’t invite the rest of the remarkable Amiga community. When Apollo Team develop something, it’s for Vampire only. Not for Amiga community using AmigaOS 3.1, 3.2 etc.
They never release applications or games for the Amiga community, not for my friend with a humble ACA, Warp card or a PiStorm.
We used to build applications and games for every Amiga. It’s all on Aminet etc. categorised as Classic AmigaOS, MorphOS, AmigaOS 4 and AROS. Now Apollo Team build walled gardens inside a garden that is already too small to be divided. Do we need that? No. If Apollo Team wants their products to be made with the Amiga spirit in mind, then release and create your software for all AmigaOS flavours. Please…!?
And it hurts to say the same about AmigaKit and A-EON
AmiBench. The name itself uses “Ami” — our name, our heritage, our identity that we all carried through the dark years after Commodore died. But the new AmiBench as with ApolloOS applications? Only available for their OS. Not for AmigaOS 3.2, which so many of us paid for, supported, and actually use daily.
When you take “Ami” and make it exclusive to your store, you are not expanding the Amiga. You are franchising it. The Amiga community doesn’t deserve this. Does Trevor ever think about what AmiBench is doing to the Amiga community?… Trevor? …
I know what some will say: “Emiko, this is competition, this is progress, let them do their own thing.” But we are not Apple vs Microsoft. We are millions of people worldwide trying to keep a 40-year-old computer alive. We cannot afford to fragment.
If you make a 3D driver, make it so it can be adapted for 3.2, for Warp3D, for PiStorm. If you make an Ami-named app, release it on Aminet too. Invite us. That’s what made Amiga survive. Not specs. Sharing.
I love Vampire. I love A-EON friends. But love means being honest.
I want to boot up any Amiga at a demoparty in Berlin or at my desk in Oslo and feel we are still one community. Right now, I boot ApolloOS and I feel I’m visiting a different platform. I boot AmiBench and I feel I’m in a shop, not a scene.
We can do better. We were better.
The Amiga girl in me Emiko, still believes we can find our way back to each other. But then stop splitting up the Amiga community. I thought we were done with the red, blue and black wars,.. but what Apollo Team and Amigakit / A-EON is doing is even worse. Just look at the new Amelinium web-browser, … Look at how many AmigaOS flavours it supports…
Builds:
- Amelinium - 68000 (works on all Amigas, slowest)
- Amelinium_020 - 68020+
- Amelinium_040 - 68040 WITH FPU (not 68EC040/68LC040)
- Amelinium_060 - 68060 WITH FPU, fastest (not 68EC060/68LC060)
- Amelinium_low - AmigaOS 1.3 (Kickstart 34+). No images, no downloads
and NO MENU BAR - so no settings, bookmarks, tabs or
About.
- Amelinium_020_JS - 68020+ with built-in JavaScript
- Amelinium_040_JS - 68040 WITH FPU, with built-in JavaScript
- Amelinium_060_JS - 68060 WITH FPU, with built-in JavaScript
- Amelinium_AROS_i386 - AROS on i386 (32-bit x86 PC), with JavaScript
- Amelinium_AROS_x86_64 - AROS on x86_64 (64-bit PC, ABI v11), with JavaScript
- Amelinium_AROS_aarch64 - AROS on 64-bit ARM (Raspberry Pi 3/4/5), with
JavaScript
- Amelinium_AROS_i386_v0 - AROS ABI v0 on i386 - the classic 32-bit line
from axrt.org, with JavaScript. ABI v0 and ABI v1
are DIFFERENT systems: take the file that matches
the AROS you installed.
- Amelinium_OS4 - AmigaOS 4.x on PowerPC
- Amelinium_PUP - PowerUP: a PPC card in a classic Amiga (Blizzard PPC /
CyberStorm PPC under OS 3.x). With JavaScript and
HTTPS. Needs no AmiSSL - TLS is built in.
- Amelinium_MOS - MorphOS (PowerPC), with JavaScript and HTTPS. Needs no
AmiSSL - TLS is built in. This is the FIRST release
of this target, so it may not be perfect yet.
- Amelinium_WOS - WarpOS on the same PPC cards (Blizzard PPC /
CyberStorm PPC under OS 3.x). With JavaScript and
HTTPS. Needs no AmiSSL - TLS is built in. This is the
FIRST release of this target, so it may not be perfect
yet.
It’s time to work together. Can Apollo Team and Amigakit / A-EON stop splitting the Amiga community? At least release ApolloOS and AmiBench applications and games to the publicity?
What do you think about this topic?
