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From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: OS/9 licensing
Message-ID: <2184@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 13-Jan-87 05:47:06 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.2184
Posted: Tue Jan 13 05:47:06 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Jan-87 19:50:09 EST
References: <2325@well.UUCP> <2146@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <1987Jan10.114601.29610@utcs.uucp> <288@unirot.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 36
Keywords: Volunteers needed

In article <288@unirot.UUCP> carroll@unirot.UUCP (mark carroll) writes:
>>>How about somebody trying to pick up where TLM left off
>>> and doing an OS/9 port for the Amiga
>>  Unfortunately, one needs a fair amount of money
>>to license the sources from Micro-Ware.
>  How much do they charge to liscence the sources? And also, any hackers
>in the central Jersey area whod be interested in giving me a hand with this?
>I think Id like to give it a try, but I just dont have the time to do it
>all by myself.

Just so's everybody can see it:

Last time I checked (2.5 years ago), you couldn't get the source to
OS/9-68K for any reasonable sum of money (i.e. - nobody would admit
you could get it at all). For a fee ($1500 and up, I think), you could
get a license to redistribute binaries, sources to some of the device
drivers, plus a years telephone support.

To do a port, you either needed a running OS/9 system (I think either
68K or 6809), or a Unix system (on a VAX, I suspect). Of course,
getting that was your problem.

If you're serious about doing a port, the thing to do is call
MicroWare (my notes say 515/224-1444; but that could be James Jones),
and talk to Andy Ball. He can tell you what things are like now, and
probably tell you what they were really like then (since he was
dealing with it on a daily basis).

Just to keep things bouncing, let me point out one more alternative:
write, from scratch, an OS that has the same system call interface as
AmigaDOS. That's what MINIX & GNU are (for Unix), and what various
people did for CP/M and TrsDOS. Me, I get more than enough systems
hacking at work, and am not about to tackle any more of it in my spare
time!