Consequences of the AmigaOS 3.1 source code "leak", one year after?

[Gulliver]

For me it was an educational experience:

I understood how the modularity approach in development led to some of the third party system extensions, replacements, patchs and hacks that we love and enjoy in our Amigas. But as downside, it also made the build and release process way too complex and less focused with lots of integration issues.

I still think modularity was the right approach for AmigaOS given the hardware it ran on, but I would have chosen a more unified set of tools for its development, with a more strict coding guideline. And a clear roadmap designed with the help of the developers for them to follow in pushing new releases of the OS wouldnt have hurt.

It was also interesting to see what Commodore plans were at the time it went bankrupt.

[Gulliver]

Thus, I really wonder under which rights Cloanto and Hyperion are selling ROMs?

Probably under no right whatsoever, but as there is no entity to legally sue them, they can have it their way and also threaten/deter anyone else from doing the exact same thing.

Additionaly, they can show/throw old contracts or lawsuits, which have nothing to do with this particular subject, which can trick the average Joe into their scheme.

We are royally f*cked!

[Gulliver]

The essential issue is that Amiga Inc. never had rights to CBM/Escom property, they only had rights regarding the brandname. So for example, they could build/sell/license cellphones or tablets with the Amiga name, but that was it (they had no rights regarding any former software or hardware design asset).

The CBM/Escom property still belongs to Gateway (well, to the series of companies that bought Gateway). This property was never transfered to Amiga Inc. and probably is now a dossier in some archive room in a technology company that doesnt give a damn about the Amiga, and worst of all, doesnt even know it has it in the first place.

At the time, there was concrete evidence of the brandname transfer from Gateway to Amiga Inc. I remember that the Amiga community was screaming out loud and complaining that AmigaOS and its 68k hardware designs were not transfered and Bill Mc Ewen, who was a man hungry for the quick buck, saw the opportunity to capitalise on this market, and then rectified former statements and claimed they also got the software and hardware design rights. It was just his unsubstanciated claim, nothing else, and no real evidence of property transfer ever surfaced. So Hyperion can claim the favourable court judgement, but Amiga Inc. had no rights regarding AmigaOS 3.1 to begin with. It is only  just a contract judgement due to unfullfilled obligations of a party but not a proof of ownership whatsoever.

Cloanto only had a licence to distribute AmigaOS for emulation purposes. Nothing else despite their claims and attempts to register every Amiga related jargon as a brandname of their property. They certainly dont have rights to sell burned kickstart roms for real hardware, or floppies for real Amiga systems, but then who is going to challenge what they are doing?

Both CBM and Escom based their business around selling hardware. AmigaOS was, from a businees point of view, seen just as a hardware accesory or even as an additional feature, not their main revenue income by far. Getting a license to build and redistribute AmigaOS during those days was pretty easy and affordable for the average developer. If I remember well enough, as a developer you could get a license to redistribute AmigaOS with your own software by paying CBM just $50 a year. So it was not an issue.