Rats leaving a sinking ship, or something else?

[Hammer]

bhoggett wrote:
@meerschaum

I think thats totally correct, I mean Amiga GAINS from selling DE right?, why are they so against porting it to Pegasos? IIRC bbrv even said that Thendic/Genesi where doing the porting and it wouldnt even cost AI any money. It looks to me to be more of a personal vendetta then anything else. All business logic says they should do it apperantly.

Well, we don't have all the details. Business logic based on what we are aware of suggests they would benefit from letting Genesi port it, but it is entirely possible that they can't do it and stay legal. Remember, letting Genesi port it involves handing them the ENTIRE source code, including that which is under TAO's copyright. Are they really entitled to do this without TAO having any say in it?

It could be that Amiga find themselves in a situation where they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Not that I sympathise, since it's a situation of their own making.

IF Amiga Inc doesn’t have the authority to port Tao’s IP property then the contract between AmigaInc & Thendic wouldn't be a valid one.

In Australian context, it’s Powel vs Lee(1908) case(i.e. having the capacity or the authorisation to make the contract on behalf of the relevant entities). I’m not familiar with the US version in relation to that precedent.    

[Hammer]

Paul_Gadd wrote:
Why on earth would Genesi disgrace themselves by getting involved with criminals? it makes no sense at all.

The sooner these criminals get brought to justice the better.

I recall the case between Thendic VS Amiga Inc is a civil case not criminal case
(assuming IF Aussie/UK legal terminology is similar to the US legal terminology).

[Hammer]

JoannaK wrote:
Hammer: Well. If they didn't have right to port it why did they sing the deal in first place.

Depends on the interpretation of the said contract. (It’s up to the courts to decide that issue).  Did anyone disclose the contract between Thendic and AmigaInc for the public consumption?

Some contracts are classified as a voidable contract i.e. a contract with flaws/defect (e.g. vague or lose wordings).

Besides they have been doing so (or someone has?) since there are Amiga-DE players for various pocker-PC thingies (and Linux + Windowse).
 

I recall, Amiga_Inc’s IP is just some middleware/branding added on top Tao’s Intent technology.

[Hammer]

AmiGR wrote:
No, Amiga's lawyers (or may I say, the whole law firm) applied to withdrew from the case, leaving
Amiga Inc undefended till they find another lawyer.
It's most probably cause AInc is out of money, and
I seriously doubt that anyone will take that case
due to that fact. 100$ (according to McEwen himself)
are not enough to hire a lawyer.

It could be use for delaying tactics i.e. draw the battle out on the cheap.

[Hammer]

why are they so against porting it to Pegasos?

Consequence of the legal win (for Thendic/Genesi group) may give Thendic/Genesi the legal use of Amiga branding (via AmigaDE route**) on MorphOS/Pegy platform. This may give some legitimacy (for their Q/BOX-ABOX marketing purposes) in regards to 68K Amiga brand secession.      

**Going via AmigaDE route for obtaining the Amiga brand will bypass the AmigaOne and AmigaOS 3.X/4.0 licensing schemes. Such an action nullifies the brand recognition of AmigaOne/AmigaOS 4.0 advantage.

What would be the consequence IF IBM’s OS/2 Warp has the legal use of MS Windows branding? For example, “MS Windows Warp 4.0” Vs MS Windows NT 4.0/MS Windows 95.

Even in Linux world, branded Linux distros (e.g. Red Hat or SUSE (with IBM)) does make a difference in obtaining a government/big business contracts.  

[Hammer]

That was the first thing to pop into my mind when I read about the law firm dumping Amiga Inc. If it is that, it's way too late as the judge is about to rule on the sanctions and having or not having counsel won't impact on that since they had counsel submit their replies already.

In due process. The ratio decidendi has yet to be given.

If the judge pulls the plug, I could see him delaying it's execution till Amiga Inc has time to find new counsel and file an appeal.

I’ll just watch and eat some more extra strength butter and fine salted pop corn.

 I just don't see Amiga Inc being able to secure another counsel without having some fresh cash to offer.

The bit the bugs me is the income (from licensing) from the AmigaOne sales i.e. where does the income go to?

The bank statement only proves the current bank balance, cash deposited and cash withdrawal. It doesn’t prove any other external (i.e. outside the said entity) bank accounts. One could be liberal in regards to entity separation between the other external bank accounts and the business’s bank accounts.

Who's going to take them when they have just stiffed their last counsel?

Is the claim "stiffed their last counsel" the real situation or speculation?  

[Hammer]

that_punk_guy wrote:

uncharted wrote:
 If their intentions are to capture the whole market by having "the name", then that won't work either, because their employees and fanboys (not talking regular users, but the MOS equivalent of MikeB) have pissed off to many people, and also there are those of us that prefer AOS4 simply because it's closer to what we want than MOS is.  

But if Genesi owned the Amiga brand, at least to the extent that Amiga, Inc. does now (not forgetting Gateway's patents) surely we'd be able to have OS4 for the Pegasos?

One problem with current Pegy/MorphOS is the dual control of OS and HW under one entity (i.e. Genesi). It’s IBM all over again (i.e. IBM PS/2 & OS/2 (conflict of interest)). I don’t see MorphOS running on “AmigasOne” boards.

The ideal situation (in traditional commercial sense) is an independent OS provider with cloned HW vendors (i.e. the Microsoft/X86 PC structure). This classic structure enables the 8086/286/386 PC platform to compete with superior hardware (non-unified 68K PC and RISC PC boxes) at that time.

X86’s success also translated to X86 Linux's success (against classic Unix markets i.e. one couldn’t deny the succuss of Linux without the dominance of X86 bandwagon).

The PowerPC market has some elements of a clone market i.e.
PowerPC motherboard builders and support
+Eyetech (out-sourced to some Taiwanese company)
+Genesi (via DCE(?))

PowerPC Chipsets vendors
+ Marvel
+ MAI

PowerPC CPU vendors
+IBM
+Motorola

PowerPC BIOS Firmware
- Element missing due to non-compatible BIOS ecosystems. Must achieve the some cross compatibility as with X86/AT BIOS clone vendors.

PowerPC OS vendors
- Weak at market presence (largely tied to related market structural problems).

The wheel of PowerPC clone (desktop) market is dogged by infighting and lower level ecosystem incompatibilities.  

So we'd have the choice, plus cheaper hardware to run it on. Sounds good to me...

The chipset war between NVIDIA (e.g. nForce II) vs VIA (e.g. KT400/600) was good for the AMD Athlon K7’s market. The incoming K8 chipset battle between AMD vs NVIDIA vs VIA vs SIS vs Ali/ULi will bring price or/and function benefits to the consumer(in long term it benefits AMD’s K8 platform).  The X86 motherboard clone war adds an extra competitive edge against other motherboard markets. Before that could happen, other critical low level ecosystems must be common.

[Hammer]

I realize that this is really Ben's arguement

I don't think that section text is relevant to my post...

but lets be honest about it. Commodore owned everything and that worked better then anyone since

Commodore’s success would be considered to be a dismal failure compared to MS Windows/Linux/AMD/Intel based solution (i.e. CBM went bust in the long run).

In addition, MorphOS does run on the Teron boards (which are AmigaOnes without the custom ROM)

Notice " " characters i.e. I already know the Pegy I is a variant of Teron based solution. The point of reference for cloning POV (in relation to multi-vendor compatibility) is the X86 PC world.

and in fact posts in the last few weeks have pointed to it running on actual AmigaOne boards, whether it actually does or not isnt a real issue, its not a significant effort if it doesnt at this point.

Statement i.e. "whether it actually does or not"  is self defeating.  

and other PPC cards

No different to OS/2 Warp on certain PC X86 clones.  

there are alot more systems that MorphOS runs on then there will ever be AmigaOnes.

Numbers was not the point i.e. it’s about even level field for other HW vendors. A vertical integrated company will have certain advantages over its competitors (within market level).