Hyperion vs Cloanto

[wawrzon]

all i can say, that it was obvious that a shit storm will arise of all this and i am staying reassured, that there is unfortunately no constructive way to build whatever amiga updates upon proprietary code base, nor there will ever be such a secure option. this will always depend on a good will and sanity of parties who may or may not behave as people expect and/or wish them to. luckily im in a comfortable position not to need to place my bets an any stack here, as i went for an open alternative long ago. whoever has not yet realized what the situation is, has only to blame themselves.

[wawrzon]

You are wrong again. You should read the entire court case.

we shouldnt be required to.

there is no angel and no devil here

i assume that.

Capitalism at its best.

as long as we, as community, be it plain users or developers/contributors, sanction/tolerate this behavior, or even effectively support it, letting the entities in question cash up upon it, we are co-responsible and it will never end.

[wawrzon]

The problem is that this is a dirty competiion that is fought between two companies by means of lawyers. The situation would be much more managable if this competition would be fought by market means: Whoever has the better product wins. That is the usual way how you approach such problems.

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?

[wawrzon]

I really think we all should move to MorphOS/AROS etc.

But this is exactly what split Amiga in the first place (the only few ppls which where left to code got split)... not all the TM and Copyright issues ... ppls where impatient and wanted to do their own thing... and now all is even more complicated.

for years it was impossible to contribute to amiga development in any way. it was intentionally blocked to feed the so called "ng amiga". it failed. but in the meantime people had to make their choices. dont blame them for splits.

[wawrzon]

The result of letting Hyperion die..

to be honest, i dont feel like it is a matter of my opinion or in my responsibility. no matter whatever me, you, anybody else, think or do, one day they might to choose to simply throw the towel and walk away. and they would be within their right to do so.

Remember, if Hyperion dies, it does not simplify development.

i think we need to grow ourselves resistible to be blackmailed like this. people here have been told to and are shelling out money for years for stuff they apparently dont need "just to support the platform".. i think it is wrong. and i think it is morally destructive.

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.

i understand the you are emotionally attached to these sources and are trying to rescue them. but if the partners do not cooperate sometimes one needs to let it go.

im none to tell you what to do. i know there likely will not be legal way to access and build up upon cbm sources. let alone os4 extensions (if there is any value in them for us). as i said i have given up on this long ago. since there already is open source replacement for almost all of this code. it may not be complete or of enough quality in places, but we are not left with nothing to start from scratch.

However, I cannot resolve this conflict.

sure, neither can any of us. best to stay out of it.

[wawrzon]

i dont really like to take sides here. i understand that you have placed your bets with one entity and therefore tend to side with them. but look: for many many years this entity has declared complete disinterest for a market share held by another entity. now, probably as result of independent developments in this area and in consequence of of your following initiatives (p96, 3.x update) this market share become increasingly attractive and the entity you allied with started to expand in this area. what have you expected to happen? i mean, you are actively intermediating in licensing of these codes for a while, or at least trying to, you must have been informed about the reality of the situation and the risk involved. this is essential for quality cooperation, id expect.

[wawrzon]

You need to re-read the open letter to the Amiga Community by Thomas and Olaf to understand that.

but the community is simply not in charge, open letters wont change that.

Hyperion just happened to give green light to the 3.1.4 project

for a revenue. if you asked someone else to "give green light to the project" (for that revenue) and they granted you that, you might likely find yourself blocked off exactly the other way around.

and had sufficient rights to ensure a legal umbrella under which this project could be carried out.

apparently this remains to be proven.

[wawrzon]

In that vein of "settled", think of Judge Martinez, whose court spent almost 2 years on this the last time (2007-2009). The result? Start all over with even more parties involved and even more issues to be dealt with...

i simply wonder for how long yet the amiga community intends to be just an audience of such a boring soap.