A statement concerning the distribution situation of Amithlon

[Kees]

"There has been a considerable amount of discussion and speculation about the future of Amithlon on Amiga news sites as well as on the Amithlon mailing list recently ...

In the early hours of March 9th, Melbourne time, I received an email from Amiga Inc, In which Amiga Inc informed me that they considered the distribution of AmigaOS XL to be in violation of their intellectual property rights and thusillegal ... "

Read more about this at Bernd Meyer's Amithlon site.

[Dr_Righteous]

(repost of my comment on ANN, this has been a fuzzy issue in my mind for some time now)

Woah woah woah, back this truck up... Exactly who is it that owns Amiga Technologies anyway? I was under the impression that Gateway still owned all the patents, and granted licenses to Amino Inc, who subsequently created Amiga Inc. to utilize those licenses. Please, feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

Either way, WOW, this is NUTS!

[Tomas]

i really dont like this

[System]

I got the same message from the Amiga Boys to!

[redrumloa]

I hope H&P does the right thing here. Bernie doesnt derserve this crap :evil:  :evil:

[zacman]

In a first statement on amiga-news.de Juergen
Haage said that H&P was in negotiations with
Amiga Inc. for many month but they never
came to an agreement.

For him it looks like they (Amiga) have done
this action to make pressure on H&P to force
them to sign inacceptable current contracts.

[KennyR]

I have always personally seen XL (and amithlon) as a burst artery, bleeding the Amiga to death. But even I am taken aback at this action. Ainc have recognised the threat this emulator poses, and have acted to stem it in a cynical and ruthless - if very effective - way. Or perhaps I'm just reading too deep into this. But that's certainly what it looks like.

The ethics of this are very questionable. In fact, it is a very dirty trick. But such things are common in the business world, and I will leave it to the reader's discretion as to whether it can be justified.

Just think about this: all I know is that this will be good for the sales of remaining amiga hardware and sofware. But perhaps the price of this success is too high. I can only begin to anticipate the anger of XL users.

[Kronos]

Hi Kenny
No i don't think this will do any good to A1/AOS4 sales.
Many Amithlon-users (like me) are considering AOS4 even
just for its geek-factor, or because they think AOS4 will be
a step ahead.

After this dirty trick (if it is one) i'm not prepared tp spend a single
Cent on AInc-licences. I don't think i'm alone on this.

Even non-Amithlon-users and PPC-fans might reconsider.

The only winners will be AROS/MorphOS or even Windows.

[Loki1]

I don't feel that any dirty trick has been played by Amiga Inc.  

The dirty trick is by H&P, They broke the law when they sent out the very first copy without a signed contract from Amiga giving them the lic to use their software.

Loki

[Chathurawind]

From what I have read, this is very underhanded.

Now, regardless of what we think of Amithlon - I find it intolerable that companies act this way. Bernd has asked H&P to stop distrubution, - invoking a contract clause - and they ignore him. If he does get sued, he could probably counter sue because of this - and all the mental, physicall, life, health stiff etc.

Amiga are also being heavy, when you take into account that it wasn't that long ago when they were banging Amithlons drum, and announcing it as AmigaOS for X86. Surely they can be big, and come to some arrangement with H&P. H&P should come to some arrangement with Bernd. even if its a case of saying your only allowed to distrubte a further x number of copies.
In some ways this whole Amithlon thing, is a bit of a Pandoras box - best left closed.


Going back to Dr Rightouse - like him, I was also under the impression that Amiga Inc was licensing technologies from Gateway. Could somebody in the know inform us as to who owns what? It could prove real sticky in the future to find that Gateway actually own the name Amiga - and we can no longer use it!

Cheers

[Chathurawind]

This is true - but Amiga helped promote it! H&P did wrong. In fact din't H&P allegedly distribute stuff with OS3.5 that they hadnt payed licenses for? If this is the case then maybe they should be grilled - you can do it once, and pass it off as an accident - but twice? hmmmmm. There is a consistency here...

I cant help but think that the real victim in this is Mr Meyer. Roll on Amiga One...

[redfox]

This is indeed sad news.  I hope Bernie does not get burned after he put in so much effort.

I was anticipating a future where I could choose to express the Amiga experience on any platform of my choice   :-D

Amithlon or AmigaXL on X86
AmigaOS4 on PPC platforms such as AmigaOne
AmigaAnywhere on Windows or Linux
AmigaAnywhere on PDA, cell phones, etc
AmigaOS 3.1 on my trusty old Amiga 2000HD :-)

Even QNX realtime platorm V6 by itself is really neat once get it installed and working....

[MasterOfReality]

IIRC, Gatway own the Amiga patents and Amiga own the OS and inventory
(and a license to use the patents). H&P own 3.5 and 3.9 since they
were produced under license, not under contract. I suspect the problem
is that they didn't pay Amiga to use the 3.1 ROM image in the AmigaXL
package.

[_Steve_]

Whichever way you look at it, having read the posting Bernie made, you cannot lay the blame on Amiga Inc for defending their intelluctual property rights. It would seem that from Bernie's statement that he was under the impression the distribution of Amithalon/Amiga OS XL was cleared with AI (a point he repeats many times), and that after receiving the email from AI, he had clarified with H+P that this was indeed not the case. As such he asked for distribution of Amithalon to cease, which so far has been ignored. Therefore, the problem lies with H+P and not AI.

To start making it into an Aminthalon vs OS4 war is silly, just as some of the comments like "I won't be spending a cent on blah blah blah". Those people making those comments obviously didn't pay too much attention to what Bernie said. It is simply an intelluctual property problem, and once resolved, legal sale of Amithalon/AmigaOS XL would resume.

[Tomas]

I totally agree _Steve_...

Btw is it just me who have troubles with quote?? Often the Quote button is just missing... Or am i doing something wrong??

kinda annoying