Who owns the copyrights to Workbench/AmigaOS?

[som99]

The whole thing is kind of funny. None of the amiga grave robbers have ever provided any legal proof when they have claimed ownership of anything amiga... They just make claims and threaten people.

Silly Billy and Amiga inc selling the rights to a name or trademark they can not
even prove they own...? Thats funny. Thats their only so called asset... The name... They make zero products, for how many years now? Wait they did recently sell some amiga rebranded tablets, but some people ordered them or there was some controversy with that... Those products vanished from their website,now their only "products" are amiga classic games... For blackberry?
Well its a step up for them actually...

Grave robbers claiming ownership of kickstart roms they can not prove they
actually own... Threatening to sue people when the roms are posted on websites for download... The whole thing is funny...

I say its been long enough, let the grave robbers go get real jobs, stop trying to live off the corpse of a long dead company and let amiga be free for its users.

Amen to that. Well said! The whole kickstart mess is laughable, let them be free it's not like people won't get em anyways...
Would be fun to see what happens if I would make new replacement cases for Amiga with the same logo on for people who want new white cases. Been toying with the idea to make replacements for wedge cases for a while but besides the cost I guess I would be sued for them having the Amiga logo...

[som99]

you will likely never have free kickstart that is legal beyond doubt. except there is aros kickstart, which is free, open source, compatible with the whole range of kisckstarts since 1.x till 3.x, and provides additional and better features. this kickstart and aros 68k still needs some work in order to be fully usable on amiga hardware, under uae it is quite usable as of today.

so dont moan about making kickstarts free, since no party that claims ownership is interested in supporting original amiga community (68k)  except cloanto/amiga forever. do something. support aros. programmers, help optimize it. users: test and report. its in your hands.

Wait what? I do not moan about it since we all can get them if we want for free from many online sources or dump our own. I just think it's silly that it's illegal to spread them for emulating purposes for us users even more when they are so easy obtainable.
I do not believe that spreading them freely would hurt cloanto since at least the people I know who bought Amiga forever didn't buy it for the kickstart roms but for the DVDs and hassle free emulation.

A user of WHDLoad might not need the complete package or users who set up their own emu environment etc so at least let people buy only the roms or let them be free, also as far as I know they do not ship all kickstarts from all amigas and thus you still need to obtain a complete dump set illegally if yo want/need them all.

Also believe me, if I had time to help the aros team I would in any way I could. I got loads on my plate and to little time and my boss are not keen on me doing private work when I'm at work.

[som99]

cloanto has even contributed considerably to aros kickstart replacement bounty:
http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/5
so its certainly not their intention to charge people for the roms. likely they are conttractualy obliged not to give them avay for free, perhaps they have to pay their share themselves.

what concerns supporting aros, we all have real life, we users same as also aros developers (who work free of charge). it isnt fair to demand things like free amiga, but refuse to help with a slightest thing. none needs to take more load that he cant carry. but even slight help as just using a system and providing educated feedback is contributing to an open and future proof platform.

I did not know that Cloanto contributed to the development of the AROS kickstart neither that they probably pay a share.
So if that's the case I apologize and take back the free part. Tho I would still like to see them sell only the roms without AF for the ones who wants them.

Why you bring up AROS on me I do not know, I never said I was demanding a AROS kickstart for free and done right now from them, I never demanded anything from them, hell I would even pay for it if it had cost money also if they had a donor system on they page I would gladly pitch in money now and then without doubt since I love what they are doing.

As for contribution, since I do not use AROS right now and have not for some time because of a shortage of spare time I have nothing useful to contribute to them, I have most of my spare time filled by my own projects and I help here and there when I can, I will give feedback to the AROS devs when I have time to use AROS again in the future and I am following the development of the 68K port as much as I can.

I am tho currently exchanging words with a old dev of an excellent old x86 RPG and talking bout price to buy the source from him to start working on a port for 68K AmigaOS and if I am allowed the source will be released to the Amiga public and AROS/MorphOS/AOS4.x might see a port in the future also and this is something I will pay for my self and not charge anyone for and release for free if me and the devs can agree on a price.