The Second Wind mailing list

Invitation

We would like to invite you to participate in a user-initiative that has been discussed for many months now by a rather impressive group. The discussion has involved half a dozen or so important Amiga veterans, including RJ Mical, Dale Luck, David Haynie, Carl Sassenrath and others who helped make the Amiga what it is, plus active users and developers in the US, Canada, Europe, Africa and Japan. Giorgio Gomelsky of Amuse, the ADF, the IAS and the Amiga TV show has played a major role, and people like Fred Fish, Kermit Woodall and Harv Laser have also been involved.

Our discourse hasn't been naīve. We all understand that the Amiga has been pretty badly neglected, and in many ways has fallen behind. Still, many would like to see some continued, even improved, support of their existing machines, as well as continued work toward next generation Amigas (and/or their 'spiritual' descendents in whatever form they may take) as well as a next generation OS to run on them. Discussions have resulted in the following conclusions:

The Amiga community, user and developer, is deeply divided, and needs to become organized into an effective force. Both users and developers have been sorely taken for granted, and rightly feel 'ripped off'. Nonetheless, there reamins a tremendous latent power to be harnessed for the right sort of solution.
Leaving the 'Amiga redneck fundamentalists' out (the sort who would have your hand cut off if you've ever touched a PC with it) the reasonable sort shares certain realistic views:
- Custom chips do not an Amiga make; the OS does. Custom chips have been a bonus in the past, but generally may have outlived their practicality - or at least are not critically important.
- Current OS work by a variety of firms/individuals is primarily focussed on providing a path for at least some of the OS 3.1+ code to be run on PPC/RISC boxes - pOS is a bit of an exception, but does not seem to offer the quantum leap required to fully meet the needs of the next generation. Thus all these efforts, whether more or less worthy or practical or not, are at best stopgaps, though stopgaps which could be considerably aided by an open licensing policy by Gateway 2000.
- Survival, or, perhaps better, a metamorphosis will absolutely require work to be done concurrently on the 'Quantum Leap OS.' Phase 5, PIOS, and QuickPak do not appear to be able to care for this need at this point, and even if they could tackle it later, development of an OS is a 3-5 year project-too late to succeed.
The Amiga community would greatly benefit from:
1. A non-profit association of Amigans, organized to protect and advance the Amiga and its software, open to representation/contacts with the other major user/interest groups. This would be a place to organize the voices of like-minded Amigans, to get them heard, to support an Industrial Council of Engineers and developers, and to help fund (possibly by research grants) appropriate development projects.
2. A "council of elders" consisting of some of the high profile "creators" of the Amiga who've been involved in discussion on the ARise list. We hope that they will be able to provide some authority as people who 'have a clue', as opposed to bankers, lawyers, corporate bean-counters etc. We would hope they would help be a unifying force in the fragmented community.

The "ARise" and "Second Wind" (2W for short) mailing lists have spawned and are run by the Jay Miner Society for the Advancement of Personal Computing as places for discussion of the Amiga and it future users. "Second Wind" also serves the function of giving you a chance to become familiar with JMS organization, goals and methods, and the JMS a chance to meet you, before you consider applying--and we consider accepting you--as a member. There is "ARise" list is currently limited to veteran Amiga engineers, such major developers and user reps as mentioned above, and JMS members.

After an initial "get acquainted" period, 2W list members who agree with our general aims are currently invited to contribute $50 US for a founding membership, which will involve annual voting rights and other membership privileges. We will also offer affiliation options for user groups tailored to their size. Our web pages will show you exactly how any money is spent as a matter of policy. Also, because the JMS is organization is registered as a not-for-profit society, its financial dealings are open to public scrutiny.

You can join the discussion and begin to find out what's going on by e-mailing dwarner@albany.net and putting in the body of the message:

> please add me to second-wind <

Guidelines

Please start by introducing yourself, and giving a brief testimonial on how you use your Amiga). Bear in mind the size of our list, and the fact that very busy people like Amiga engineers Dave Haynie, Andy Finkel and Michael Sinz are on both lists. Try to restrict yourself to a maximum of 5 posts on the list a day, so that everyone can "speak" without being snowed under with mail. Remember, you are always welcome to post to people privately.

Also, please be sure that:

Your subject line reflects your message.
You have read ALL the relevant posts to avoid duplication.
That you have edited down any quoted material, and clearly indicated whom it is from.
You have edited and spellchecked your post to make it as clear and concise as possible. Please remember that we have people from around the world on here, for some of whom English is their 2nd or 3rd language.
You have done your best to keep to a page or so, and clearly indicated changes of subject with subheads and formatting. (That suggestion - no, plea - is from people like Carl Sassenrath who support this effort and are interested in your thoughts, but have mountains of e-mail to contend with!)