A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with AmigaOS
architect Carl Sassenrath about his new company, REBOL Technologies.
We spoke for an hour, and you can read about most of what was
discussed in the article I wrote about REBOL for Linuxworld.  During the
interview, I also asked Mr Sassenrath several questions about the
Amiga, but I subsequently couldn't find a way to fit his answers into
the article I wrote.  Petr Krenzelok asked to hear about them and
thus saved them from the ignoble fate of lying forever neglected on
the cutting-room floor. My apologies in the case that this report is
so disjointed that you feel it still belongs there ;)


I have to say that Carl Sassenrath is an incredibly nice guy. I
haven't been working in tech reporting for very long (but I have been
a reporter for kindof a long time now) -- and he's probably one of
the nicest people I've ever interviewed. Especially if you stop to
consider what he has accomplished, you might be tempted to forgive
him for being arrogant or overbearing. But he wasn't anything like
that -- just very, very, very nice.

He was very happy to talk about the AmigaOS, and I got the feeling
that it must still be one of his favorite past projects. Of course,
by that I mean the original AmigaOS.

I did ask Mr Sassenrath if he had participated in the development of
the new Amiga, and he said that he had "watched it very carefully,
and participated in some discussion groups," but that he wasn't
involved to any greater extent than that.

He did, however, speak of Gateway's original motivation in buying
Amiga. "The technology which was sold to Gateway was primarily a deal
to buy the patent on the 2-button mouse," he said. "That is why
Gateway bought Amiga -- but then they got... thousands of emails
asking if they were going to relaunch the Amiga. So they figured,
'why not?'"

Mr Sassenrath was very matter-of-fact when he spoke of Gateway's
cancellation of the Amiga NG project. "[Gateway] launched a division
which was to put together the next-generation Amiga in 18 months," he
said.  "But it didn't happen, and so they shut it down." He pointed
out that, since OS development is not Gateway's core business, it was
probably a sound business decision to spin off the project rather
than to allow it to run past deadline.

REBOL Technologies Business Development Director, Dan Stevens, added
that "There is a large push on the part of the Amiga community now,
and it is supported by the guys over in Europe, to convince Gateway
to open source as much of the code as possible. But as far as we
know, there has been no follow-up from Gateway."

There has been follow-up from Carl Sassenrath, though. Not on the
effort to convince Gateway to open-source the old Amiga code, but on
his life's work -- of which the original AmigaOS was most certainly a
part.

In the interview, Sassenrath told me that his new project, REBOL, is
"...really a culmination of 20 years of experience. It's the thing I
wanted to do all my life and finally got a chance to do."

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the thing Carl Sassenrath
wanted to do all his life was to write a scripting language. On the
contrary: I left the whole interview with the impression that Mr
Sassenrath is planning to take all of the experience he has gained
over the years -- which naturally includes that which he gained while
working on the Amiga -- and apply it to his new project. Personally,
I think that the main reason that REBOL Technologies is very careful
to emphasize the fact that REBOL is NOT "just a scripting
language" is that, in the end, it will be much more than that.