Greetings to the Amiga community,

A week ago we shared with you our joy as we move towards the rebirth of the Amiga desktop platform. The AmigaOne and AmigaOS4 are projects that have occupied almost every day of our lives for the last two years. For the community, the wait and the false dawns have been unbearable.

Contrary to the rumours spread in some circles, we have spent considerable time and resources in creating a strategy that will see the Amiga desktop platform move back into the mainstream and take its proper place in the market. The AmigaOne and AmigaOS4 are just the first and most visible signs of this strategy. It is very important to us that we provide a total and compelling Amiga experience to future customers.

The first measure we are announcing is that we have pledged ourselves to the production and development of a platform where both users and developers are guaranteed not just a quality product but a total quality experience as well. This will be achieved through a combination of a strict set of Quality Assurance certifications and the AmigaOS only being available to licensed solution providers for the shipping of combined hardware and software solutions.

From the top of the company to the bottom, we are committed to championing the cause of quality for the consumer and will ensure that substandard products do not make it into the Amiga market where they can do irreparable damage to the reputation of the platform. Licencees will have to develop and resource a full customer solution, with guarantees on product quality, delivery, and most important of all post sales support, with firm commitments to repair, replacement and turnaround, elements that have blighted the platform over the last five years.

In addition, the close co-operation between Amiga Inc and solution licencees will ensure the tightest binding of the software to the hardware, providing the highest possible performance and providing the basis for rapid development as we move forwards together.

As a result, AmigaOS4 and all future versions will ship only on those hardware products to which Amiga Inc has specifically granted a license after reviewing the capabilities of both the solution provider and their product. The only exclusion to this policy is a temporary measure to support the community members who have invested heavily in existing PPC accelerators and will cover products where an Amiga manufactured or licenced Kickstart ROM is present (for instance A1200/A3000/A4000).

Currently this hardware comprises:

• Eyetech's AmigaOne series of PPC motherboards
• Cyberstorm-PPC accelerators by phase 5/DCE
• Blizzard-PPC accelerators by phase5/DCE

We have also been approached by and are currently in negotiation with the following companies for the licencing of the AmigaOS to allow for a combined hardware and software solution:

• The Shark card by Elbox
• PPC accelerator cards for the Prometheus by Matay
• Merlancia Industries MMC Toro Series
  

In the case of newly available hardware, including the Eyetech, Elbox and Matay products above, the licence requires that OS4-specific extensions are included in the hardware's boot ROM as an anti-piracy measure. For hardware which is not capable of being used in conjunction with Amiga WB 3.1 (such as the AmigaOne) we will require, as part of the licence conditions, that a copy of Amiga OS is purchased with all boards sold that are capable of running it.

The measures identified above have been put into place after consultation with our partners, developers, dealers and users, and represents a recognition that if the Amiga platform is to become successful again, it needs to exude professionalism and responsibility where the needs of the customer are paramount. With these measures, AmigaOS4 and the new hardware solutions, the Amiga desktop platform is primed to move forwards.

Bill McEwen
CEO
Amiga Inc
Snoqualmie, WA