please do not come up with this free market idealism, you are certainly not being that naive. business is war, remember? and war is politics by other means. isnt that expectable for warring entities to grasp any means (inclusive legal proceedings) at hand to fight each other? the problem is not how its being carried out. the problem is that the entities consider each other aggressor in the first place, so that a conflict arises. dont tell me you have not seen it coming. and if not, you have been warned, havent you?
The result of letting Hyperion die would have been that years of development would have been lost. Not a good alternative either. Remember, if Hyperion dies, it does not simplify development. It means that whoever picks up their sources (whoever that may be, even "if") will have to hunt down everyone who could potentially have contributed to it, and would need to check in how far this software could be used as basis for development.
So, just to give you ideas: There is more than just CBM code and my code in the printer device. There are (IIRC) at least two additional authors that also contributed to it in one way or another. Hence, one would need to contact them, check with them which type of agreement they had with Hyperion back then, probably re-negotiate contracts with them...
What is embarrasing is that the income of this work goes into the pockets of lawyers. I do not claim that I need the money, but at least it should be in some way re-invested into the development, and let it be only for infrastructure or servers. Unfortunately, that probably goes for whomever you pay for Amiga these days, even if it would probably be more beneficial for both party just to let this bullshit rest and instead develop good software.
However, I cannot resolve this conflict. I can only contribute with software, and software that is beneficial for users. So, in that respect, mission accomlished.