@bhoggett
When I entered the Amiga World it was because it was on the bleeding edge, that edge is so far away now that it is an unreachable goal, so why bother, Hyperion have a market that wants on a few changes, a retro OS that can use more modern hardware and one in which they can do a few modernish things, that's a doable thing. That appears to be Hyperions target.
And that market doesn't care about price, they'll pay what it takes.
Sure, but is it a 'market'? Do sales even cover the cost of development? I seriously doubt it.
Not that it matters. I agree that Hyperion are only interested in the people already committed to their strategy, which is exactly why the rest of us are going to read the above news and just go "Meh". It makes no difference to us because we know Hyperion will do nothing to make the platform more accessible.
With Amiga Inc., AmigaOS would have been in the hands of a company incapable of doing anything progressive. With Hyperion, it is in the hands of a company
unwilling to do anything progressive - at least going by their track record so far.
Accord to Hyperion's website they have an exclusive license to the name AmigaOS. Meaning that the name AmigaOS still belongs to Amiga Inc, so Amiga Inc being the owner of the name could conceivably still produce an AmigaOS and they still own Classic AmigaOS.
Actually, the
exclusive part of that license means Amiga Inc cannot produce their own version of AmigaOS unless that licensing agreement is terminated. We are not party to the terms and conditions of the deal, so it would be a matter of speculation as to what could legally constitute a reason to terminate the agreement. Hyperion don't own the brand or the name, but they are the only ones who can produce AmigaOS.
Obviously this would not affect existing licensing agreements, such as the one under which Cloanto distribute the Classic AmigaOS.
@EDanaII
Yes, MorphOS is in the same boat, but they are unaffected by this story.
