Generation Amiga has reported today a tweet from Hacker Fantastic saying that the Amiga OS source has been leaked, including both Kickstart and Workbench. Looking at the @hackerfantastic’s tweet, there is another user with the handle @TheWack0lian that offers a link to download the OS in a 130MB tar file which expands to 540MB of source code.
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Apparently the source code is really related to Amiga OS. The tar file name refers to OS 3.1 but folders from the source code refers to version 4, which could mean the source code is pretty much up to date.
From what I can gather, it’s not fully 100% complete, but it’s still a pretty significant leak. With the number of times this software has changed hands, it’s remarkable it’s taken this long.
I don’t have my developer KickStart and WorkBench manuals anymore, but I was sure the source code was already included in them.
Nope, source code wasn’t included in the manuals (have a copy here). It did include the basic schematics. There are technical manuals which had a bigger version of the schematics and more background i think. Never got my hand on one of those yet.
No source code for the OS, but it did include all the needed include files (.h and .i) for USING the OS. It also had stubs for C compilers to call OS functions, and had example code for doing various tasks. It also had a couple reference source codes to show how to do a driver in general, a printer driver, a library, and a file system.
Quite easy to find on torrent
These idiots at twitter think they will block anything now.
I totally get the allure of retro computing. It’s interesting and fun.
But why does anyone care to keep the source code closed?
Usually one does this when developing new software that has market value that might be eroded if people could just build it for free.
Windows sucks, so if Microsoft were to release the source, then there’d be lots of community builds you could get, and people would use those rather than may good money for the same broken software. (Moreover, the community builds would likely have many of the bugs fixed.)
First problem: An Amiga doesn’t have much market value. In this era, you’re not going to sell millions of them. Or even thousands.
Second problem: If I did buy an Amiga, I’d expect the OS to come with it. So what difference does it make if the source code is open or not? I’m paying for the hardware.
Third: On another hardware platform where I might be able to run this, I would be thinking of it as a toy. Certainly I’ve spent a lot of money on toys (you should see my Lego collection). But I would not be inclined to spend much money on software I’m not going to use a hell of a lot.
So what’s the big deal here? And why are they keeping the source code secret? What does it benefit them, given the lack of market demand?
Source code gets kept closed for many reasons. Essentially though it’s money.
It may contain code licensed from a third party. Releasing the source code could be a breach of license, or it may require a license renegotiation.
It may contain code that implements patented techniques. If the patent is owned by the original code authors and it has not yet expired then some form of license can be granted with the source release, but that has a cost. If the patent is owned by a third party and is still valid that’s also a licensing problem. The code could also implement patented techniques that the original author did not license, so opening the code could open them up to being sued.
Finally the code could contain trade secrets.
Working through all these issues to release source code on an obsolete platform is a very costly exercise. Usually it just isn’t worth it.
As told before; the market is bigger then you can imagine. Besides, giving it away would undermine their own value as a company (Hyperion is the sole developer of “the” AmigaOS nowadays, the rest are open source implementations that don’t have all features; examples; morphos and aros).
LMAO. This comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKie-vgUGdI
Hyperion is NOT the sole developer, sorry but your wrong there.
Hyperion develops AmigaOS 4 for the next gen PPC machines, but Cloanto develops AmigaOS 3.x for the classics and emulation.
Cloanto have just released a updated kickstart ROM for the classic Amiga machines and are constantly updating AmigaOS 3.x.
In fact OS 3.x has now surpassed what was OS 3.9 in a few ways, large disk support been one of them.
It is very much alive and kicking, and long may it continue!
I think the biggest thing is kickstart. It’s essentially what holds back a lot of distribution of amiga software. And there really is a market there still. Take gog for example. They recently gained the rights to the goldbox dungeons and dragons games. The amiga versions are the best for the majority of them. But even if they have the rights to distribute the amiga versions, they can’t bundle it with emulation software like they do the dos builds of the game. To do that they’d need kickstart. And to get that they’d have to licence some kind of deal with whoever owns the rights now. They might not be making much off that old software. But holding a way to get any kind of passive income is often something people are loathe to give away.
Are we sure this is for the AmigaOS from the 80s/early 90s? I’m thinking that a source size of 500+MB uncompressed is probably for one of the modern incarnations not the legacy one. If it is the one from the 80s/early 90s then I don’t see why anyone would care at this point. Technically it’s illegal, and technically there may be other company IP in it, but it’s ancient history in computerspeak. If it’s for the AmigaOS people have been actively working on for the past decade or so, then shame on the releasers. While I am a huge fan of open source, the current active developers have decided not to open source their code so don’t take it upon yourself to do so.
As said in the article, this is a AmigaOS 4 version probably. That means it’s the later variant that can’t be run on the old 80’s or 90’s systems, unless they have PowerPC accelerators in them.
No, this is OS 3.1 source code from 1993. The last version before Commodore went belly up.
However this release isn’t complete, there is quite a bit missing. Setpatch isn’t there amongst some of the other missing important parts.
This is not the first time the source code has been leaked. It circulated in various warez boards around 1996-1997.
Also, this is of limited use as the code is written in several strange programming languages that requires special hardware and compilers to work. No use for most people.