A McBill era Amiga history, long version

[kolla]

Eh... who cares, share and enjoy - seriously, let those who claim ownership stand forth (if they dare, heh).

And yes, I just read the entire thing - great page, great effort, could make a half decent documentary.

[kolla]

Appearantly Hyperion and Fr...friends, are the ones that sit with OS3.1 sources at this point.

Anyways, sources are not that important as getting rid of the "piracy" stigma that comes with copying around classic OS and kickstarts for use with UAE, minimig or whatever. I personally have no track of how many legal copies I have of the various AmigaOS incarnations, or how many kickstarts or kickstart files I have, or even where I have them. I also have at least a couple of OS3.5 CDs that also come with 3.1, and a handfull of OS3.9 CDs that came with OS3.5. Some of those CDs are quite shady looking even though they no doubt are original. The last few times I bought kickstarts from "well known and reputed amiga dealers", I noticed that EPROMS were used - hardly originals. Not to mention all the magazine CDs that came more or less with full OS3.1, and likewise CD32 and CDTV CDs that also came with full OS install on CD.

I suppose it's time I just put what I have on my website already, just to see who will jump up and claim moral highground, or worse... ownership (hah!).

[kolla]

Sure they do

[kolla]

So where is the source of Workbench3.1?

Last known location - in the hands of OS4.x developers. Appearantly many things that were fixed and updated with OS3.5 and 3.9 never got into 4.x, as Hyperion never got the sources for those (who knows where they are now, locked up at H&P somewhere?), and basically had to start from 3.1 sources. Luckily for them, many of the devs that had helped with 3.5 and 3.9 also went onboard for 4.x so at least some of the 3.5/3.9 updates also went into 4.x.

I thought that AROS and MorphOS where based on Workbench3.1 and that therefore these projects had the source code available! or not?

No, they are reimplementations, not based on original sources. I suspect AROS at least could benefit alot from the 3.1 sources, if those would have been available. MorphOS developers in general has much deeper understanding (hehe) of how AmigaOS works (and is supposed to work) and have managed quite well without the help of the sources.

[kolla]

No. Even if Escom (and all its follow-ups) really could not prove the acquisition of the AmigaOS rights, somebody still owns them.

The owners neither know nor care.

What is more important to you is that Hyperion now thinks it has many of these rights (including the right to prosecute people pirating the AmigaOS IP) - and Hyperion is not exactly known for being shy about legal battles.

If the real owners did care, Hyperion would be out of luck, right?
Also, what would Hyperion have to gain on such a battle? They dont give a rats ass about OS1.x upto OS 3.9.

And what did that last settlement between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion say about who's owning rights to what again?

The German judge stated that "in the documents presented to him", he couldn't find proof for the acquisition of the Amiga rights by Escom. That's not the same as "you don't own these rights" or "there is no proof". Somebody claiming that Escom/Gateway/Amiga Inc. never owned these rights would still have to prove that in court.

Only if Escom/Gateway/Amiga Inc. bothered to sue in the first place.

There are no licenses left from the Commodore days, the oldest licensee would be Cloanto - who got a license from Gateway.

Who might not have been in a situation to give them a license in the first place  - seriously, rights to this software has vapourized over the years, and the only sensible thing is to pretend noone owns it and tackle who-ever pretends to have those rights as they show up.

[kolla]

I don't think you're in a position to judge who owns what. I'm certainly not - and in contrast to you I speak German and are actually able to read the judges's decision and reasoning.

So just like that you assume that I'm not capable of reading German, huh.

I'm not a Hyperion spokesperson, so I can't answer that. I was just trying to point out that m68k-amigaos might not be as abandoned as you think.

I didnt  say it was abandoned, I'm saying the rights have vaporized, and with that I mean that noone really knows who owns what anymore. There's heaploads of "object code" in 3.1, 3.5, 3.9 and even 4.0 that is lots older than 3.0 - who owns those? OS 3.5 CD contains 3.1 in full, and 3.9 contains 3.5. Hyperion now claims rights on 3.1, but has it been verified that Amiga Inc. had those to license away in the first place?

Perhaps you should reread it? Especially the part that grants Hyperion the rights to prosecute IP infringements on their own?

I have read it, and if I remember correctly, it says that Amiga OS up to 3.1 is owned by this weird entity that we know as "Amiga Inc.", and that Hyperion is sole owner of AmigaOS 4. It also says that Hyperion is granted a worldwide royalty free, transferable rights to 3.1, to do whatever they like with it.

However, all this is based on the assumption that Amiga Inc. had ownership in the first place.

That's wishful thinking, nothing else. You don't get rid of the (quote) "piracy stigma" just by pretending it's not there.

There's just one way to find out, isn't there? Standing around doing nothing wont do any difference. Earlier people have tried to distribute kickstarts with updated scsi.device and fastfilesystem for large disks, and they have not been stopped by Hyperion or Amiga Inc., but by Cloanto - how whack is that?