Are we going to miss the boat?

For years now I have been banging on about domestic servers and PS3, about the opportunity of AmigaOS to re-enter the mainstream.

The X11 server buoyed my hopes incredibly as a means of quickly bringing essential apps to our OS for such a move.

REBOL, out of the blue (for me at least, I had not kept a close watch on it for a long while), came up with solutions, that again for years I had been hoping for (re a Script based application environment).

SAM looked and still looks a perfect fit for a domestic 24/7 file server and service board.

I am not writing off OS5/AmigaAnything, but for the first time I can see all the bits and pieces ready to go.

1) A PS3 version of OS4.
2) A simple Server version of OS4.
3) A desktop version.
4) A stripped down version of OS4 for small devices and as a ported platform for REBOL (ie for different families of CPUs).

I don't really care who wins this court case, so long as it is won quickly and that this is followed up by creating the various flavours of OS4 outlined above. Three versions supporting legacy apps, Linux ports and traditionally compiled and designed OS4 apps (ie compiled for the PPC family), a bare bones ported OS4 which does not (just a platform for REBOL and its ported base and extensions).

But the window of opportunity is closing already.

There was until recently only "big" servers that could be used "domestically", then Network Drives, which were awkward - but now there are are from Japan, simple plug and play Network Drives that act as printer servers, simple file servers and, critically, multimedia servers (DLNA-based).

That is a window that has been closed and will take some effort to reopen in our favour.

A similar device that controls av equipment and other domestic electronics, with the simplicity of the newer network drives, remains open, but there is a lot of catching up to do there (re hardware and software) for us.

PS3 porting is a major hole, that could be quickly fixed and then refined, promising a large market, but as Linux wallows alone in that position, disinterest will gather in the market - we have until October when the PS3 will make another major move (system updates are coming out each month, 1.82 yesterday, in Australia it came out as 1.6 at the very end of last year).

It seems to me that the court case did not accidentally come now, rather it came because the players know this is crunch time. It was in this sense inevitable that it happened now just on the cusp of make or break. My only wish and hope is speedy and final resolution.