Does Hyperion own the rights to OS 3.1, 3.5, 3.9?

[orb85750]

and what about earlier versions: 1.x and 2.x ?

[Gulliver]

Things are not as easy as they seem:

Amiga Inc. claimed to inherit the 1.0 thru 3.1 back from Gateway. Wheter this is true, has been a subject of discussion a long time before. The results are inconclusive, there are no proofs of anything, only claims.
Amiga Inc. partnered with Haage & Partner to produce 3.5 and later 3.9. Basically all the funding and developer effort was managed by Haage & Partner, who signed a contract in which Amiga Inc could buy back the 3.5/3.9 code which was based on 3.1. Fact is Amiga Inc. never bought back the 3.5/3.9 code.
Then as part of these more recent lame trials between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, Amiga inc. agreed to grant Hyperion exclusive worldwide distributor rights for AmigaOS 3.1

So to sum up:
1.Amiga Inc. claims to have legally inherited all AmigaOS development upto 3.1
2.Haage & Partner + Amiga Inc (That is, in the exclusive case of Amiga Inc, if you believe point 1 is true) both own 3.5/3.9
3.Amiga Inc granted Hyperion a worldwide exclusive distribution rights for AmigaOS 3.1 (The validity of this right depends on point 1)

[HammerD]

Things are not as easy as they seem:

Amiga Inc. claimed to inherit the 1.0 thru 3.1 back from Gateway. Wheter this is true, has been a subject of discussion a long time before. The results are inconclusive, there are no proofs of anything, only claims.
Amiga Inc. partnered with Haage & Partner to produce 3.5 and later 3.9. Basically all the funding and developer effort was managed by Haage & Partner, who signed a contract in which Amiga Inc could buy back the 3.5/3.9 code which was based on 3.1. Fact is Amiga Inc. never bought back the 3.5/3.9 code.
Then as part of these more recent lame trials between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, Amiga inc. agreed to grant Hyperion exclusive worldwide distributor rights for AmigaOS 3.1

So to sum up:
1.Amiga Inc. claims to have legally inherited all AmigaOS development upto 3.1
2.Haage & Partner + Amiga Inc (That is, in the exclusive case of Amiga Inc, if you believe point 1 is true) both own 3.5/3.9
3.Amiga Inc granted Hyperion a worldwide exclusive distribution rights for AmigaOS 3.1 (The validity of this right depends on point 1)

I wonder how we could get your work on Boing Bag 3 and 4 into official updates...

[Heiroglyph]

I wonder how we could get your work on Boing Bag 3 and 4 into official updates...

I'm not sure that they see anything related to OS3.x as being beneficial to themselves.

It seems like the abandoned product that still competes with the current one.

Making OS3.x better only hurts OS4 sales.

[murple]

Making OS3.x better only hurts OS4 sales.

Seeing that OS3.x runs on real Amigas with 680x0 CPUs and only OS4.0 runs on PPC enhanced Amigas, I don't think this statement is entirely true. I can't justify the cost of a PPC accelerator for my 1200 or 4000 and have no interest in the newer pseudo-Amigas needed for OS4.1 so... I'll never be using OS4.x so there's no competition for people like me who see Amigas just as a retro hobby and use more mainstream modern machines and OSes for regular everyday computing.

[Gulliver]

It is not really that important to be "Official".
We can extend the life of 3.9 as much as we can, but then there is no future in it, and every step we go forward is getting more difficult and slow.

What is more important than extending the life of 3.9 with huge coding efforts, is to empower AROS guys to deliver an open, modern and freely available 68k operating system for our beloved Classics.

For this, I keep my fingers crossed, my hopes high, and pray for them every night before I go to bed.


PS: But, just in case AROS devs cant deliver, I will still try to keep pushing 3.9 forward.

[Heiroglyph]

Seeing that OS3.x runs on real Amigas with 680x0 CPUs and only OS4.0 runs on PPC enhanced Amigas, I don't think this statement is entirely true.

I meant it from the viewpoint of someone selling OS4.  Making OS3 more usable does nothing to promote an OS4 sale.

Frustration with OS3.x however, doesn't hurt OS4 sales at all.

[WolfToTheMoon]

It is not really that important to be "Official".
We can extend the life of 3.9 as much as we can, but then there is no future in it, and every step we go forward is getting more difficult and slow.

What is more important than extending the life of 3.9 with huge coding efforts, is to empower AROS guys to deliver an open modern and freely available 68k operating system for our beloved Classics.

For this, I keep my fingers crossed, my hopes high, and pray for them every night before I go to bed.


PS: But, just in case AROS devs cant deliver, I will still try to keep pushing 3.9 forward.

You think AROS will run fast enough on 68K?
Hmmm... what I'd like to see is a Coldfire-based replacement board for 68K classics that could run OS 3.9 or/and AROS(68060 is 88 MIPS@66 MHz, Coldfire is 400 MIPS@233 MHz) that would include a more powerful gfx chip and faster bus/memory + FPGA for 68k custom chips. Atari Firebee shows the way(it costs 650 euros, pricey, but somewhat still acceptable).

[ChaosLord]

what I'd like to see is a Coldfire-based replacement board for 68K classics that could run OS 3.9

Coldfire is not compatible with the Amiga.  The End.

[WolfToTheMoon]

Coldfire is not compatible with the Amiga.  The End.

Not out of the box, it isn't... but with some alterations to the amiga os, it could be. Same with TOS/MiNT on Firebee.

[ChaosLord]

It is not possible to edit all 50,000 Amiga apps and convert them from Motorola 680x0 asm into coldfire asm.  Therefore Coldfire is not compatible.  Final Answer.

[Plaz]

Coldfire is not compatible with the Amiga.  The End.

And if anyone wants to know why it won't work.... I'm done my homework on the subject. There's a small number of instructions that exist on both 68K and Coldfire, but each executes them differently. It's possible to trap 68K instructions that are invalid for coldfire and "reroute" them. Using this trick make the two about 99.8% compatible. Trouble is these other instructions are not invalid, can't be trapped and will cash Amiga code because of the way they operate. Also there's an issue with I/O differences.

One suggestion I had for the coldfire dev group back in the day was to run dual processors. One to prescreen code, make changes if necessary then feed the corrected code to the second processor. Back then coldfires were not very fast so basically doing JIT compiling would have killed performance.

These days I'm thinking porting one of the Amiga like OS's to cheap dual core 1GHZ ARM processors would be a fun project. Picture this... Core_1 doing JIT recompiling and feeding Core_2 that's running a "softcore 68K" emulation. Piece of cake, I should have all that done in what.... two weeks?  


Plaz

[Amiga_Nut]

I meant it from the viewpoint of someone selling OS4.  Making OS3 more usable does nothing to promote an OS4 sale.

Frustration with OS3.x however, doesn't hurt OS4 sales at all.

Costs of A4000 PPC cards make x1000 look positively a bargain so the two are mutually exclusive. Not that anything designed after CD32/A4000T is actually an 'Amiga' though, all the newer stuff are just OS4 compatible boxes to me.

As for the stuff about Amiga Inc may/may not even own KS and Workbench then surely Gateway's current holder will step up and claim their property. If Amiga Inc don't actually own KS/WB then Cloanto are royally screwed as are the OS4 producers.

Not that I really care any more, NONE of them have inched any further than an asthmatic snail superglued to the pavement in moving towards funding a REAL Amiga replacement since the last A4000/A1200/CD32 was manufactured anyway so screw them all really. Like I always said just release KS/WB 0.9-3.1 into public domain and leave the beautiful legacy of Amiga to RIP in the hands of the retro fans who love and cherish what was the worlds most advanced machine architecture light years ahead of every other machine on launch day.

(A1000 in 85/86 that is)

[desiv]

I'd be interested to find out who owns the right to the kickstarts..
I know (or think, which is almost better!) that Cloanto has permission to distribute them, but I believe they can't distribute a non-tweaked ROM.

But, who owns the rights to the ROMs (or the code in them I suppose)?

Is that included in the OS rights?

desiv

[WolfToTheMoon]

It is not possible to edit all 50,000 Amiga apps and convert them from Motorola 680x0 asm into coldfire asm.  Therefore Coldfire is not compatible.  Final Answer.

Not according to Atari Coldfire team...

[SIZE=-1]- CPU 266 MHz The main component of the MCF5474 is a ColdFire V4e Core. It is very  similar to the 680x0 CPU family, but not fully compatible. Basically,  some complex or rarely used instructions and addressing modes have been  removed. Thus the ColdFire CPU is more simple and cheaper than any 680x0  CPU, while being a lot faster. With an additional lightweight software  layer, the ColdFire CPU can be made compatible with existing 680x0  programs. [/SIZE]

They intend to run TOS/FreeMiNT on it so it is possible.