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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Software News => Topic started by: amigakit on September 07, 2019, 11:54:40 AM
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(http://amigakit.amiga.store/images/news/News_Release_AK_Datatypes.jpg) (http://amigakit.amiga.store/pdf/News_Release_AK_Datatypes.pdf)
Cardiff, 7th September, 2019
AmigaKit Ltd is pleased to confirm that it has concluded an agreement with Andreas Kleinert to acquire the “AK-Datatypes” package.
AK-Datatypes is a collection of graphics datatype software for the Commodore-Amiga computer covering formats such as PNG, GIF, JPEG and TIFF.
Commodore included a narrow scope of image format datatypes within the operating system software as standard. Users demanded greater levels of compatibility with modern image formats and third party developers such as Andreas met that request. He first published the datatype package in 1996 and due to it's popularity it continued to be developed and upgraded for over a decade after release.
Each datatype is supplied with it's own Preferences utility to configure the image rendering settings. They were also supplied with CPU optimised versions from the 68000 through to the 68060.
Amiga Kit is pleased to commit to maintaining and developing software in-house. With this acquisition development of the datatypes will be now continue. It is planned that updated versions will be supplied as a separate software package for a nominal fee and additionally bundled with selected products.
Matthew Leaman, Managing Director of AmigaKit Ltd said: “We are delighted to add AK-Datatypes to our software inventory and invest in continued development of the package. It will benefit and enhance both our present and future software projects that we are working on.”
Andreas Kleinert said: “I was very excited when Matthew approached me and described his vision with regards to further support the Amiga platform. The agreement which we concluded makes me confident that he and his team will be able successfully continue from where I had to stop due general lack of time and ability to further commit to the platform on my own."
(https://amigakit.amiga.store/images/light/store_logo.png) (http://www.amigakit.com)
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Nice!
Please add support for .BPG and iPhone formats (HEIC, HEIF).. ;)
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What does this "acquisition" mean for registered license owners?
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Hey, the name is a perfect fit!
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What does this "acquisition" mean for registered license owners?
We plan to offer concessions against future upgrades for existing registered users.
Hey, the name is a perfect fit!
hehe! :-D Yes it was a good name choice.
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You should all probably be aware that this is not the first picture datatypes package that Amiga Kit have gone after :D
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I hope this is not going to be sold to the customer only, but rather included into the OS from now on with some kind of licensing.
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Well, anyone can hope, of course, but do note that AmigaKit are not the ones producing and marketing AmigaOS.
Best regards,
Niels
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I hope this is not going to be sold to the customer only, but rather included into the OS from now on with some kind of licensing.
Not sure I'd agree - OS4 already has WarpDTs licensed by Hyperion.
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Those sources are going to be merged, for the better outcome, sure.
Interesting the distribution and update policies may become, Yoda says....
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Those sources are going to be merged, for the better outcome, sure.
Interesting the distribution and update policies may become, Yoda says....
If you are saying what I think you mean, I think not, as that would amount to theft and breach of binding contracts, NDAs, etc. Amiga Kit have absolutely zero legal right to use any of my datatype source code from OS4. Just wanted to clarify that :).
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Those sources are going to be merged, for the better outcome, sure.
Interesting the distribution and update policies may become, Yoda says....
If you are saying what I think you mean, I think not, as that would amount to theft and breach of binding contracts, NDAs, etc. Amiga Kit have absolutely zero legal right to use any of my datatype source code from OS4. Just wanted to clarify that :).
I'm 100% sure there is not the remotest intention of doing that, I suspect the primary target is not OS4 anyway.
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My mistake. I thoght AK are the developers mainly in charge of everything the OS related.
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@thread
For what it's worth, this is the only place I've seen any comment/clarification from Andreas:
Source (https://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8421&start=20#100571)
#6
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I thoght AK are the developers mainly in charge of everything the OS related.
Yeah, no... there are two AKs here, well, three actually. Andreas Kleinert, who wrote the datatypes that is the topic, and AmigaKit, who bought them. And lastly, AmiKit that has been using them for years.
* AmigaKit is not "developers", though they hire developers to do their products
* AmiKit is sort of a distribution of AmigaOS 3, with all kinds if bells and whistles, primarily aimed at running under emulation, though there is also "AKreal" aimed at real hardware. AmiKit licensed the AK datatypes to be included from Andreas K, from what I understand, how AmiKit will be affected by the AmigaKit acquisition... probably not at all.
* If you speak of OS development, that is currently Hyperion, who also are not developers themselves
* But there really is no OS4 development going on, as Hyperion has no resources to hire developers and most developers already involved are fatigued and/or fed up, and even as there are components that have been improved, there is little incentive to coordinate a new OS upgrade, so these upgrades are just collecting dust currently.
* AmigaKit and AEON have merged, sort of... and are organizing "enhancement kits" as some sort of remedy for the lack of development of OS4 itself. Through hired developers they are maintaining a set of their own "OS components" like boopsi classes, various drivers etc. This could be extended to datatypes too of course, especially if these are written in C and not 68k assembler.
* Hyperion is currently "focusing" on OS3, as that's where a handful of developers are currently doing volunteer work, and Hyperion acquired ownership over the "Reaction" classes to allow them to be included in OS3
* Why on earth AmigaKit/AEON didn't buy Reaction a long time ago already, one can wonder... as they have spoken, for years, of "enhancer kit" for OS3 as well.
* enough for now :)
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@kolla
* Why on earth AmigaKit/AEON didn't buy Reaction a long time ago already, one can wonder... as they have spoken, for years, of "enhancer kit" for OS3 as well.
Hyperion licensed Reaction. Likely the contract either did -or- was interpreted -as- giving them a right to purchase as well. In other words, you can not assume someone else did not wish to purchase it or make the attempt.
#6
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@kolla
* Why on earth AmigaKit/AEON didn't buy Reaction a long time ago already, one can wonder... as they have spoken, for years, of "enhancer kit" for OS3 as well.
Hyperion licensed Reaction. Likely the contract either did -or- was interpreted -as- giving them a right to purchase as well. In other words, you can not assume someone else did not wish to purchase it or make the attempt.
One. Can. Wonder.
(as you just did)