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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Another Amiga OS clone is a cute retro project, but this is not forward motion.

Nobody seems to want to clone QNX, which is a better architecture. QNX was a great technology lost to bad marketing. Blackberry has it now, and it's used industrially and in automotive systems. But Blackberry dropped the desktop version and the hobbyist version, and you have to cross compile from Windows now.

It was open source for a while, and was suddenly made closed source when Blackberry bought it. Sadly, no one seems to have saved the open source version. I wish I had. I didn't have enough disk at the time.

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> It was open source for a while, and was suddenly made closed source when Blackberry bought it

It was never strictly speaking open source. It was a "shared source" model in which people could download the source code, but you had to pay QNX money to use it in production. And you weren't free to redistribute it.

Originally they'd let anyone download the source code so long as they agreed with the license. Then they changed the policy so only paying customers could get it.

> Sadly, no one seems to have saved the open source version. I wish I had. I didn't have enough disk at the time.

Even if someone has saved it, they aren't legally allowed to redistribute it, since it was never open source, just shared source.

It wasn't meant to be forward motion. It was started shortly after Commodore's bankruptcy as a way of providing continuity

In fact there was a split between factions at the time who wanted continuity vs. something new. Nothing came of the attempts to create something new, but AROS persisted.

It wasn't retro when it started.

(Also this is the difference re: qnx: AROS persisted because of the then large, committed Amiga userbase and nostalgia... How many people have used QNX knowing they were using QNX?)

Funny that you mention this. You are actually the reason I know QNX. I spent a decent amount of time some years ago pouring over code code you wrote for the Overbot. Thanks for donating that to UCSC :)

I enjoy how sometimes you'll see people recognizing each other on HN despite the use of pseudonyms. Gives a sense of a tight-nit community.

nit: knit

nit: knit: nitpick

Edit: knitpick

I wonder if this is a copy of the open source version https://github.com/aogrcs/qnx-opensource

No. There are two files there. The first file is the source code to some drivers but not to the whole OS. I don't believe posting it on GitHub like that complies with the license agreement either:

    * Copyright 2010, QNX Software Systems. All Rights Reserved.
    *
    * You must obtain a written license from and pay applicable
    * license fees to QNX Software Systems before you may reproduce,
    * modify or distribute this software, or any work that includes
    * all or part of this software.   Free development licenses are
    * available for evaluation and non-commercial purposes.  For more
    * information visit http://licensing.qnx.com or email
    * licensing@qnx.com.

The second file is the binaries (not source code) of a QNX port of XFree86.

I seem to recall when Amiga was bought by that PC clone company (their ads always featured lots of cows and the founder) they had QNX onboard to develop a new AmigaOS.

But then the Amiga curse struck and it all went south like all the companies who got involved in the Amiga IP.

He is dead Jim.

PS It was Gateway.

Look into Genode, and their dynamic scenario, Sculpt.

Note it is not QNX's architecture. It is a better one.

Have you looked at/into https://genode.org ? Seems more likely to get something widely usable out of it.

Is this helpful? There is a folder called "repository" in this torrent.

https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=6545894

Out of curiosity, what makes QNX a better architecture than AmigaOS? I had a Blackberry Playbook back in the day but that's the extent of my exposure to it.

Used QNX 15+ years ago. The supposed best value is micro-kernel. Kernel is very small, all the device drivers, file system, TCPIP stack are run in user space outside the kernel.

I have not used AmigaOS and no clue if it has the same micro kernel design.

We have Fuchsia now.

As great as Fuschsia’s architecture (the Zircon kernel) may be, I’ve yet to see any devices that come with it.

Sort of, but AmigaOS didn't have memory protection so the distinction doesn't mean much as the distinction between supervisor and user mode on a plain m68000 is very minor.

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