It is the best of times, it is the worst of times; seem to be the sentiments amongst the polarised individuals that in some way, big or small, still maintain a connection to the Amiga, be it classic or NG.
Whom do you believe?
There are many who saturate the various online forums with spades of evidence that this is the best of times. Never has there been so much choice available to the non-conformist Amigan; From free and commercial emulation software, and the low cost commodity x86 and free open source AROS, through the flexible MorphOS, and all the way to the somewhat pricey Sam 4×0 PPC boards bundled with AmigaOS 4, and the coveted AmigaOne X1000.
Then there are just as many who reciprocate evidence to the contrary. They’ll cite precedents and personal experience to support their notion that this is the worst of times. Platform fragmentation, divided user loyalties, lack of medium-to-long term plans from…pretty much anyone, creating a dearth of uncertainty and an overexcited collective rumour gland that compounds the problem.
Friends, fellow Amigans, we have come a long way, we may not have all jumped aboard at the same port or harbour, but we’ve all arrived to the same predicament; too few survivors scattered across islands each being proclaimed as the new Amiga.
Enough metaphor, give it to me straight.
The state of the Amiga union is dire. When there are only a few thousand users left the worst thing that can happen is to have multiple choices, especially when there’s much dissimilarity between them. The user is unsure of where to invest their hard earned money and spare time, and a developer is unsure for which platform to develop. Not everyone lives in the first world and even if they did, not everyone can afford to invest their energy, money, and time in two or more of the various options.
Choice is good when there is a thriving ecosystem. It allows for new ideas to emerge, new entrants into the ecosystem, and cross-pollination. What the Amigans need is unity, a single choice, an easy choice. The liberating freedom of constraint.
What are you saying?
I’m not expecting that the respective camp sponsors unite and come-up with a comprehensive multi-year unification plan. Not impossible but highly improbable. I’m not expecting that all Amigans unite and support only a single of the many options out there and force the sponsors to unite with the user supported choice. I’d sooner start a cat herding business.
Then what?
Unfortunately, nothing. The situation right now resembles a defunct governing body, a democracy that is failing its citizens. All the factions are eager for your vote but neither of them has enough votes to form a majority government. Nothing gets decided, nothing gets resolved. And even the wealthier Amigans who support all the choices with their time and money (fence sitters) have but one favourite among them, the one they’d most want to see succeed. But any success in a broken system is only short-lived.
There is however hope.
Throughout history whenever participants of an ecosystem grow weary of their predicament, one action usually followed. Revolution.
What Amigans need, nay yearn for, is a revolution, more so than any other uniquely identifiable group of computer users. They need something and someone to lift them out of this quagmire, out of the inane choices between the squabbling factions of who has the rightful evolutionary claim and heredity to the proto species Computo amigensis. Like that even means anything after 16 or so years.
The state of the Amiga union is that there is no union. There is little hope of their ever being a union from the current stock. I’m not sure what shape the revolution will take or who will lead it, but I do know it isn’t any of the current factions. And I also know. that we’ll all instantly recognise it when it happens.
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I haven´t watched the Amiga-community from 1996 to 2008, but I can´t say that we were all friends in the 90s. And while forums are often filled with flamewars, we tend to get along in RL pretty well. I don´t think we have to merge the red and blue team (is AROS the black team?) to gain relevance. In my oppinion the competition works to the benefit of even these small groups – then again, I live in Europe and the original Amiga was much bigger here than in the US, so your milage may vary.
All Amiga-systems have one thing in common: they run the old 68k stuff. That is why they appeal to us. And we have another thing in common: we are small in number, so we have to support small development groups and resellers. Amiga should not try to become the next Apple, where all coders have to write Cocoa, all artists use Photoshop and (worst of all) everyone is using iTunes to manage their Music.
And while you probably can´t make a living from supporting – say AROS, there is certainly some good software and support for it and the same is true for all the other Amiga-platforms. So the model works. And if some team has a breaktrough product – they will surely gain followers.
So bring them all, the X1000s, SAMs, eMacs, Ares 2s, CommoUSA Amigos, and Minimig!
It truely is the best of times.