Well, that's part of why this is such a disaster. Both companies have delivered very important products. I want them to continue to do so, but this idiocy is preventing that.
The trouble is much deeper than this. This is not only about two competing companies (or "companies", in case of Hyperion). It is a matter of the legal entanglements, and it is a matter of development culture and product definition. Yes, I should really stop posting because this creates another shit storm, but nevertheless, some food for thought:
Cloanto seems to prefer an "Open source" development model, with everyone able to take or contribute to AmigaOs, releasing its sources. Trouble with that is that I would not even know how Hyperion might be able to deliver that. They don't have as many rights on AmigaOs as may be needed for this step. Thus, it would be necessary to hunt down all contributers, and negotiate with them. So, who is going to do that? Who still has the contracts from back then? For example, for the 3.9 contracts? Do they even allow opening the sources? Can the authors even be reached anymore? Contracts had been negotiated individually, so there is certainly some variance in them.
There are sources for which there is no publication right (the "narrator.device" we have, but cannot publish as it would require negotiations with SoftVoice, Inc, who does not want to give it away - been there, done that), and there are contributions in the Os for which Hyperion does not have the sources ("LoadModule" does not exist in source code form), and contributions for which Hyperion does have sources, but no clear statement other than "ready to publish in binary form" concerning its sources.
So that is a big pile of work, and it requires an expert in legal matters and an insider in the development history of AmigaOs to allow this. Thus, this "Cloanto dream" may just be a nice press release to "look nice to some users" and push the responsibility for this not happening into the direction of Hyperion, but the story is much more complicated than this.
Concerning the development model: This is another story. Cloanto seems to believe that it is a good idea that "the community" drives "development", they take a snapshot from time to time, put a nice box and a binder around it and sell the result. Nice model, but how to prevent that anyone can do the same who does not agree with "their branch"? Why shouldn't I publish "my branch" of AmigaOs then? What happens - which is likely - that multiple branches of AmigaOs came to existence?
Trouble with this model is: AmigaOs is not Linux - Linux has several important companies - yes, commercial entitities - that drive the process. Companies like Google and intel, AMD, network hosters and so on contribute a lot more than just individuals (shocking?), and they have an agenda. AmigaOs is "a bunch of hackers" (not excluding myself) that do not necessarily define a direction.Thus, if we end up with multiple AmigaOs flavours, how would it be possible to create products on such a diverse platform, if you cannot depend on "which version of the Os" the user has avaialble?
In my opinion, this makes software development impossible, as there are no stable interfaces to depend upon anymore, and it makes hardware development impossible, since there is no stable Os to depend upon anymore. This type of "erosion" we already see today: Vampire team being unwilling to offer such simple interfaces as autoconf, similar problems on the icomp side, causing all sorts of compatibility problems.
If you believe that a closed model is "undemocratic", I disagree. This is not "dictatorship". Democraty does not mean "everybody does what (s)he likes", but "finding consensus" and "finding compromizes" between multiple interests.
A good model, if you ask me, would be to hand over control to a "board", with multiple interested parties on the board, then negotiating on such board what the direction should be, then drive the process from there. I do have experience with such constructions - being a member of a board called SC29WG1, better known under the name of JPEG, which is also its most important "product", as in "standard" - so this model is doable. It is hard, though. But it does not mean "open sourcing anything", and "everybody does as he pleases". This would give everyone a voice, but also give AmigaOs a direction, which I consider quite important to create a platform that allows development of software and hardware.