Complete Amiga Story- Read it here

[amigite]

I Only have three questions;

(1) Why, and how in the world could Hyperion sign a deal to code OS4 for only $40,000 (US). This makes no sense at all.  Even one man would be paid this much over 5 years!.  Did the deal originally say that Hyperion would make some of the profits of the sale of OS4?

(2) Where is Amiga Inc. getting their money from? They bought out a company, paid for naming rights, maintain offices, and bring law suits, How?

(3) Is Amiga Inc. able to block installation of OS4 on non- supported hardware by the use of the eeprom they have installed on the motherboard, U-boot.?

See the entire story here; http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39362

[B00tDisk]

amigite wrote:
I Only have three questions;

(1) Why, and how in the world could Hyperion sign a deal to code OS4 for only $40,000 (US).

I think they hoped that Amiga, Inc. would be completely out of business by the time they "finished" and could just assume it themselves.

[Tigger]

amigite wrote:
I Only have three questions;

(1) Why, and how in the world could Hyperion sign a deal to code OS4 for only $40,000 (US). This makes no sense at all.  Even one man would be paid this much over 5 years!.  Did the deal originally say that Hyperion would make some of the profits of the sale of OS4?

Actually they signed a contract to deliver OS4 in 5 months for 25K.   After they were over a year late, Amiga Inc decided to buy it back and find someone else to finish it and gave them 25K, plus $7,250 for some other expense they said they had incurred.   Finally last year at end of the negotiations, Ben claimed that AI owed them $8,850 more for the buyout so they sent that money.   They made money on sales of OS4, Eyetech paid royalties to ship OS4 with the AmigaOnes.

(2) Where is Amiga Inc. getting their money from? They bought out a company, paid for naming rights, maintain offices, and bring law suits, How?

They have made millions selling very small percentages of the company as of late.  

(3) Is Amiga Inc. able to block installation of OS4 on non- supported hardware by the use of the eeprom they have installed on the motherboard, U-boot.?

The U-boot thing was totally Eyetech/Hyperion thing, AI had nothing to do with it.

    -Tig

[ffastback]

(2) Where is Amiga Inc. getting their money from? They bought out a company, paid for naming rights, maintain offices, and bring law suits, How?

They have quite a bit from an investment from this firm:

http://www.prokom.pl/en/index.php

Which also invested in Hakia.com, which is another firm that Penti Kourri is involved in besides being involved with Amiga.

The investment hardly seems worth it to many, hence why there is much talk surrounding this about things perhaps not being on the "up and up".

Since Amiga is a private company there is little way to understand this further.

As to their maintaining of offices, the NYC office appears to have been a maildrop only by most accounts (yes people went there to see it and took pics), the Washington office eventually was Bill's house as I understand it, the London one, Fleecy's house as documented by Fleecy in recent court docs.  

[Van_M]

(1) Why, and how in the world could Hyperion sign a deal to code OS4 for only $40,000 (US). This makes no sense at all. Even one man would be paid this much over 5 years!. Did the deal originally say that Hyperion would make some of the profits of the sale of OS4?

developers with the skill of the Frieden brothers easily go for 60.000+ a year... You can easily find a C# or Java programmer but ppl with the skill of developing a whole OS from scratch (well more or less) + drivers is hard to come by.
'been lookin' for a job last year and I was comparing salaries/skills

[mikrucio]

great article. and the last 3 lines sum it all up.

no matter who wins this.
The Amiga fans are the real losers.(edited coz of misinterpretation).

The Amiga fans are the real losers. Coz we will never get a new OS. or new hardware after this.

[guru-666]

they are all amatures that have no clue whats going on...the whole lot of em.  Amiga fans on the other hand are NOT loosers, they did morphOS by reverse engenign os3.1., amigathlon and the minimig,Aros, winUAE, and so many more cool projects... some projects go killed by the amatures. Also a lot of amiga fans (like me) now have good jobs doing graphics or other computer jobs becase we are so skilled.  
inc = looser,
hyperon = looser,
amiga fans, well mate that up to you..

[jorkany]

(1) Why, and how in the world could Hyperion sign a deal to code OS4 for only $40,000 (US). This makes no sense at all. Even one man would be paid this much over 5 years!

I sure wouldn't work for just $40K per year, much less over five years...

Did the deal originally say that Hyperion would make some of the profits of the sale of OS4?

I dont see anything in the contract about Hyperion making a profit. They sure don't act like the kind of company that's into making a profit.

(2) Where is Amiga Inc. getting their money from? They bought out a company, paid for naming rights, maintain offices, and bring law suits, How?

The theory is it's from an offshore investor somewhere in the vicinity of Poland.

(3) Is Amiga Inc. able to block installation of OS4 on non- supported hardware by the use of the eeprom they have installed on the motherboard, U-boot.?

It's very likely that OS4 checks for a key value in the BIOS, much like the original PC-DOS did.

[AmigaMance]

I Only have three questions;

 And here is my answer to your questions and to all the ppl who recently created a flood of speculative, gossip blah-threads: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28918
 First post..

[McVenco]

amigite wrote:

(3) Is Amiga Inc. able to block installation of OS4 on non- supported hardware by the use of the eeprom they have installed on the motherboard, U-boot.?

U-Boot? Oh my god, do they have submarines now as well? :eek:  :egad:

[Agafaster]

I sure wouldn't work for just $40K per year, much less over five years...

I'm paid a bit more than that - and I'm only a Support Analyst/Programmer !

someone with the talents of the Freidens should basically be able to write their own paycheque. if they are good at negotiations that is !

[Tigger]

Van_M wrote:


developers with the skill of the Frieden brothers easily go for 60.000+ a year...

Friedens and Skill in the same sentence shouldnt really happen, unless you throw something like "have little" before skill.   I'm not sure I'd pay the Frieden half that money for there dubious talents and have lots of software engineers working for me that make alot more then the 60K you are talking about there.  
       -Tig

[nyteschayde]

Yeah not sure about what you guys in the UK get paid, but the going rate for an intermediate Java developer here in the states is 80K/year. Junior devs start at 60K. I make more than double what a junior dev gets, because I work in Java, C/C++ as well as advanced client side web stuff including AJAX, CSS and general DHTML.

Some of my friends working in the game development field (C++/Windows/Mac) make more than I do for their specializations. I consider OS development to warrant more money from a big company.

Given that Hyperion and AInc are much smaller and the given the passion that most Amigans feel towards their platform I *could* see working for beans if I had a supplementary income. The benefit to one's resume and self satisfaction would probably pay for the development of the OS.

I think, and hope, that Hyperion gets the rights to sell the OS. It, for us, would be the best chance most of us would ever have to start enjoying the OS.