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

[cgutjahr]

In the same sense, Windows is "held hostage" by Microsoft.

Did Microsoft blackmail the original rights owner into handing over the Windows rights for free?

I haven't seen anything like that for Hyperion, i.e. I do not know what exactly they got.

The settlement agreement - which details exactly what they got - is publicly available.

Worse, what about the components that were generated for Os 3.9? What about those? They went partially to H&P

None of these components "went" to H&P, the authors sold H&P a non-exclusive  license to distribute them with 3.9. These licenses automatically expired after 10 years, which means all the rights have gone back to the original authors years ago anyway.

The only parts of 3.9 H&P ever owned were the stuff they wrote inhouse: The new installer, a few prefs programs (IIRC) and documentation.

certainly not "Open Source"

Absolutely. But since (a) the code has already been floating around since the late nineties, and (b) nobody is going to do anything with it for obvious reasons, I don't see the need to argue about it. As long as it is "for the Amiga", people really don't care about proper licensing. Not too much of a surprise IMHO, given that most of us were socialised by crackers and the warez scene...

[cgutjahr]

Do you now the business practise of microsoft?

I certainly do, and I'm sure they didn't blackmail the original Windows owner into handing over the rights for free. Hence, it's not fair to compare them to Hyperion in this regard.

Not much to discuss here, AFAICT - I was just asking a rhetorical question.

Do you have a source available?

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking - do you want to know where you can find the settlement agreement?  A German summary is here:

http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2009-12-00036-DE.html

the actual agreement can be found here:

http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/washington/wawdce/2:2007cv00631/143245/147/1.html

Just in case you're wondering what Amiga got out of this deal: according to my sources, this is indeed the only (still) valid agreement between "Amiga group" and Hyperion.

For my contributions, the time span is two years. For system component upgrades, however, the situation is much more complicated because you cannot separate the upgrade from the original component, even though the contract tried to do that in some convoluted sense I do not remember exactly.

You're right on the time span - I mixed that up. Ten years was the lifetime of the license from AInc, IIRC.

As for the rest - it's not complicated at all. You own your code, AInc owned their code. H&P owned neither part, they only had non-exclusive licenses. If your contract said anything else, you either f?cked up or you got paid a lot better than the people I talked to.

Most people could easily relicense their work to Hyperion a decade ago, that should give you an idea about how 'complicated' that whole situation is.

Thus, in particular, *I do not own* the Amiga Shell even though I made contributions to it for 3.9. I neither *own* layers.library.

Nobody ever claimed you did.

The problem is: You do need to care if you want to make it available public in any particular way.

There are people who don't care (you know one of them from discussions on this very forum), they'll release anyway - and 99,9% of the users won't notice. Again: I agree it's not ideal, but I don't think it's a big deal.

And no, I was never part of "warez" or "kool koderz" in any way.

Hence my use of "most of us".

[cgutjahr]

So what do you call sources that are floating around on internet for anyone to download

Stolen code.

and for which the ownership is unclear

Ownership of that code is clearly defined.

and for which the acclaimed owners do not take any legal action for whatever reason?

The actual (not "acclaimed") owners do take legal action whenever they find a copy of the code being hosted somewhere.

[cgutjahr]

Take action, whoever you are!

I don't get that attitude. Several Github repositories and regular downloads have been taken offline after the rights holders (both Cloanto and Hyperion) took action. They do take action, period.

Now you're trying to provoke them into taking down something they apparently haven't noticed yet, potentially hurting the maintainer of the BB3+BB4 projects, and definitely hurting the people interested in these projects. And even if your approach works (nobody takes action so you can shout "told you so, open source, Thomas Richter is a doofus" in a lot of future threads) - it doesn't actually achieve anything: because the code still can not be used legally and thus will only be tampered with by the likes of Cosmos.

Maybe it's just me - but that looks like a massive dick move, doesn't it?

[cgutjahr]

Are you now callow BB3+4 illegal? Which is it?

I'm not "calling" them illegal, they are. Doesn't bother me, but I'm not into redefining reality until it suits my needs either.

This conversation is pointless, obviously.