Is Amiga (the company) dead?

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recidivist wrote:
  IF Bill Gates wanted to be sure of keeping yet another would-be competitor OS down,

They don't need to... with a 95% markest share and a software legacy that goes back over 10 years... the last thing you need to worry about is another OS... unless the other os is MacOS X :-D  

a brilliant strategy would be for another company ,which just happens to be contractually prohibited from releasing a non-Microsoft OS,to acquire the  competing OS.
 Thus the other OS is out of the market,yet Microsoft can claim it was not their doing.

Does this actually make sense to you?

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Lando wrote:

snowman040 wrote:
OMG who the :madashell: is KMOS now ? :-( South American soap operas are simple comparing to this :-o

So I guess if there >WAS< some company X with milions of $ and willing to buy Amiga name (from whoever), site (from whoever2), patents and IP from Gateway, OS4 from Hyperion, solve mess with Genesi (omg?) ..... it would be years of lawyer time and millions of $ wasted on papers instead R&D

The patents aren't really needed to produce a new Amiga computer and/or OS - they mostly relate to 80's technology that serve no useful purpose in the 21st century.

Yup, it's only the trademarks that have any value... even that isn't really worth much... except perhaps for some retro gaming comapany?

The 'OS4 from Hyperion' bit is probably the easiest - if/when OS4 'final' is released, it's just a single $20k payment to get it back.  And if it never gets released, Hyperion only have the rights to 4.0x, so the new owner can just release their own new official version of AmigaOS as 4.1 (or 5.0) and bypass Hyperion altogether.

But if I've been reading the forums right, certain parts of AmigaOS4.0 are not owned by Hyperion (but by their "friends")... "ExecSG" being the key point here... which effecitly makes "AmigaOS4.0" useless to anybody other than Hyperion.

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SHADES wrote:
Sorry but as far as I know, Gateway own some AMIGA patents only. Ainc bought the rest.

Ainc only bought the Trademarks... and a licence to use exisisting Amiga Patents/Technology from Gateway.

I know for sure, Gateway does not own the OS in any way.

There is a great deal of uncertainty as to exactly what Escom did buy from the Commodore liquidators... there appears to be no mention of the Amiga Operating System, by that token... Have gateway ever owned AmigaOS?
 

From memory, Hyperion own OS4 but A-Inc have a clause saying they can buy it back at any time or something along those lines.

Except for the parts which Hyperion have cleverly developed outside of their "contract".

There's also some sort of NDA preventing certain ports etc. You would have to ask Hyperion for more info on this however they won't break the NDA.

Urgh...

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Bodie_CI5 wrote:

[...]Hyperion only owns the code that does not infringe on Amiga Inc's IP.

So this supplement or advancement to AOS by Hyperion, is it a "dilution" of the whole OS as we know it? By dilution I mean are a series of companies able to stake a claim to the OS causing further problems down the track?

Yeah, that's a pretty good way of looking at it. I have also read on forums frequented by OS4 developers that advanced parts of OS4 are owned by their respective developer rather than Hyperion... This increases the number of claimants to the OS.

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pierre wrote:

but they DO own the rights to the OS, they licence/share them with hyperion, at least for 3.5 3.9 and 4.0 thanks all I know and it may be wrong?

As I've said before and has just been posted, One cannot be certain Escom ever got AmigaOS from the Commodore liquidators... as such AmigaOS is most likely legaly stuck in abandonware limbo (not public domain), if it really mattered to anyone... but since AmigaOS is of no value, I doubt anyone cares.