Hyperion Entertainment Q&A Chat Log

[JoannaK]

Seer: Real reason behind this delay is that Hyperion needs to *pay* their 3rd party coders when they release final OS4 .. These beta-releases are essentially free for them cause no-one gets nothing from Hyperion until OS4-final is out.

Thus.. No OS4 final until there are enough sales to cover both Ainc lisences (including the old ones, that are partially unpaid according Eyetech) and payments to all 3rd party coders. And no.. 10 or 20 Classix-owners ain't going to cut it..

[JoannaK]

Seer: The basic problem is .. that At the Beginning.. Hyperion publicly (and privately) announced that OS4 Would be final in THREE MONTHS (target was march 2002).. So everyone who agreed to lisence their code was left to impression that they could collect their payments sometime Soon.. Instead, Hyperion has been using and distributing  these unpaid programs/drivers etc (as a beta releasess) for allmost Four years without payments, and there is no obvious end in sight.   You tell me, is it rigth to mis-use loose wording on contract that way???

About Ainc license.. according some.. It would be about 20USD a piece, but I've no proof of this.. If those previous 1000+ machines are indeed unpaid (see Eyetech Farewell speech in Aw.net fall 2004), that would make 20K USD or more depending on systems sold..

[JoannaK]

Seer: Actually.. One did... Remeber what happened with Dopus some years ago.. It was supposed (and widely announced by Hyperion) to be licensed to OS4 but deal was cacelled due nonpayment of Hyperion. It was years ago, but tells a lot about their financial status even back then.  

Besides, AmigaInc has (had?) nasty habit on adding some ugly clauses on their lisence Agreements... All AmigaINC-developer Deals (and at this point I boldly *assume* this is herited to Hyperion deals too as this is Ainc sanctified project) DENY developer to negatively commenting (or suing!) Ainc ...

And.. At least some of the devs are so much name-lovers that they are quite willing to give everything for free just to support the peoject.. (yep. I agree that they free to do so, even though it's supposed to be *commercial* system)

[JoannaK]

Wilse: Why did Hyperion bother making an Irc-sessiion if they had nothing impoetant to say in first place? Ok, having update-4 sometime soon is a good thing, but IMHO it does not justify a 'press confrence' like approach.

I had *small* hope they had been able to find some real and working (+available to end-users with decent price) hardware by now.. But it looks like they keep on avoiding the most profitable (even though also somewhat humiliating) alternative of porting it to Pegasos2...

Well. it's their (commercial?) OS and they are (assumingly AmigaInc don't interfere nor have $$$ to buy them out) free to mess with it in a way they see fit.

[JoannaK]

Red_Melons: Sure.. And it was not the first time I've heard/read about this licensing deal, but I have not seen the *official* signed document so I can't tell if that version on net one was accurate or not.

All in all.. it's interesting paper to read, be it accurate(or real) or not.