Hyperion bankrupt?

[agami]

In order to open source Amiga OS 3.x one would need the source.

Check you history; The entire source code for 3.x does not exist. It went missing somewhere in the Commodore labyrinth. This was one of the issues faced by the early AmigaOS 4 team. There was no "gold" code stored in a source repository. Bits and pieces here and there. Decompile this and reverse engineer that.

IP rights are exercised on products and not code. Even Copyright in most jurisdictions does not cover code effectively. Think of code as a recipe. Two developers may write different enough code to accomplish the same task.

[agami]

If the bankruptcy is indeed overturned it does not mean it's not real. Most of you are looking at this either very pessimistically or very optimistically. The more realistic take-away from this experience is that Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is not in a stable financial situation.

Even in Belgium, if a company is doing OK financially they never need to go through the bankruptcy court. It's not a joke, it's not a right of passage. What this should have revealed to most of you is that the money just isn't coming in to make for a sustainable Hyperion. They may have got out of this one, but how soon before the next one? And what does this mean for continued funding for OS 4.2 and beyond?

[agami]

...

What does this mean exactly?

There could be a provision in Belgium's commercial law which would be akin to the now popular Chapter 11 in US. This allows a company to avoid bankruptcy by reorganizing.

You might ask: Why didn't Commodore file for Chapter 11 in 1993? Reorganization works only when the company still possesses the finances to support the reorg.

[agami]

Thanks for correcting me. I wonder what kind of reorg they proposed.