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

[cgutjahr]

But then, there is a company that is named Amiga Inc. that is the only one that is claiming that IP is theirs, and is even considering granting some licenses for a fee.

Amiga Inc. do indeed claim to own the IP, but they actually gave up the idea of licensing it to a third party: According to the settlement between Amiga and Hyperion, the latter got the exclusive right to license AmigaOS to third parties.

Btw., another open question is what the settlement actually refers to: "the product named AmigaOS 3.1", or "AmigaOS up to version 3.1". But I'm sure you got that covered in your lengthy and detailed analysis of the situation regarding AmigaOS 3.

[commodorejohn]

You know, it would be really nice to just clean-room reimplement the whole damn thing and sidestep this entire disgraceful corporate toddler fight. Maybe I'm just talking crazy talk, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard; the documentation in the ROM Kernel Reference Manual, coupled with the fact that the whole OS is based around application reuse of what other OSes would consider to be OS-internal structures and code, gives a remarkably clear window into how the system works without even needing to get into disassemblies of Kickstart binaries.

(P.S. I know someone's going to mention AROS, but no. Whatever its other merits, it has exactly one 68k port, which is deprecated and not even for the Amiga, and one PPC port, which seems to require an existing Linux install. It might be an Amiga-inspired or Amiga-based operating system, but it's not an Amiga operating system.)

[ChaosLord]

@cgutjahr
+1
+1

[Heiroglyph]

(P.S. I know someone's going to mention AROS, but no. Whatever its other merits, it has exactly one 68k port, which is deprecated and not even for the Amiga, and one PPC port, which seems to require an existing Linux install. It might be an Amiga-inspired or Amiga-based operating system, but it's not an Amiga operating system.)

FYI, it has a native non-Linux hosted x86 port and in the last couple of weeks, the native 68k Amiga port has finally been revived and is making serious steps forward.

The first bounty was assigned and has a delivery date of around December if I remember correctly.

I'd expect a usable native 68k Aros in the next 6 months to a year if they keep this pace.

[orb85750]

I'm sorry, but perhaps you should "use google or the wayback machine or ask an old enough really involved Amiga user" yourself.

German company Escom bought the remainders of Commodore in April 1995. They soon got into a legal battle with another German company (VillageTronic, IIRC - I think the argument was about VT distributing 3.1 Kickstart ROMs). In 1996, Escom went bancrupt.

In July 1997, a German appeals court ruled in the Escom-VillageTronic litigation, that the (long defunct) Escom had not provided evidence that they actually bought the AmigaOS copyrights from Commodore, not just the trademarks and patents. Escom's bancruptcy trustee tried to repair the situation by creating new contracts between two (defunct) Commodore entities and Escom - and signing them for all three parties. He was entitled to sign contracts for Commodore under certain circumstances, but if he was entitled to sign this particular contract in the name of Commodore is another unanswered question.

That's the story about the open questions regarding AmigaOS ownership - we don't know if Escom ever owned the copyrights, so we don't know if any of their successors ever owned them. Anything else (hello Gulliver) is more or less daydreaming or wishful thinking. Of course there's no proof that "Amiga Inc ever acquired AmigaOS rights from Gateway", because we never saw the contracts between Amiga Inc. and Gateway.

Are you saying that *nobody* knows whether Escom owned the copyrights in the end?  And if they did not, then ? Is Amiga OS public domain? (my wishful thinking)

[Gulliver]

I'm sorry, but perhaps you should "use google or the wayback machine or ask an old enough really involved Amiga user" yourself.

Anything else (hello Gulliver) is more or less daydreaming or wishful thinking.

But I'm sure you got that covered in your lengthy and detailed analysis of the situation regarding AmigaOS 3.

@cgutjahr
Hello
Why do I feel this thread turned into something personal for you?

Just chill, this is just (or I hoped) a friendly conversation. If you have another view, then it is okay with me. I never said I knew everything there is to know, I just have my own view about the subject, much like you do have your own.

[orb85750]

I see your point, but then see it this way:

Does anyone know with certainty who owns the, lets call it original AmigaOS?
No, not really. But then, there is a company that is named Amiga Inc. that is the only one that is claiming that IP is theirs, and is even considering granting some licenses for a fee.
 
So, in the worst of scenarios, you pay money to that company for this license, and then if they really, legally dont own it, and somebody steps in as the legit owner, we can allways pledge that we were inocently fooled by Amiga Inc, but that we acted in good will by buying those alledged rights.
So, no charges may be filled against us, only an order to cease and desist from the rightfull owner, and maybe even an offer from them for a real license.
 
So, it is not so stupid, you see, it is in fact, a good business tactic when you want to make businesses with IPs apparently no one is interested in enforcing/marketing them. At the end, the company granting those licenses takes the blame, and not the one that was "fooled" into this scheme.

Yes - plausible point.  For if Amiga Inc. somehow doesn't own it, I suppose that someone (other than any of us) does own it, so respecting copyrights is probably sensible even in this case.

[commodorejohn]

FYI, it has a native non-Linux hosted x86 port and in the last couple of weeks, the native 68k Amiga port has finally been revived and is making serious steps forward.

Uh, "native x86 port" is kind of missing the point, when the Amiga has never used x86 in any form. I mean, again, good for them, but that doesn't help anybody with an Amiga. The Amiga 68k port is good news, though; even for those of us not particularily interested in AROS, an open Kickstart would be a huge step towards getting past this stupid corporate pissing contest.

[the_leander]

Heh, the further back this goes, the more screwed up it appears to become.

[ferrellsl]

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

I think the Atari Coldfire developers will disagree with you.  They have a Coldifre processor running just fine and have already produced hardware.  See:  http://acp.atari.org
And who said 99.8% compatibility isn't "good enough"?  All the major operating systems have dropped a slight bit of compatibility with older software as time progressed.  That's true with Windows, Linux, OSX, etc.....as well as with AmigaOS.  The only thing that will satisfy the irrational people here who insist on 100% compatibility is a time machine to take them back to 1985.  I would welcome ANY OS that has 99.8% compatibility with software written for previous versions.

It's funny how the detractors here say that Coldfire can't be done yet they ignore the fact that an entire Amiga, nay several Amigas, can be fully emulated on a processor as alien as an x86 with better than 99.9% compatibility.  I for one can live without those few programs in that .1-.2% range.  And why couldn't UAE be ported to run on a Coldfire processor?  That's a rhetorical question......

[Plaz]

Coldfire has been demonstrated to work (I remember someone putting a video of the prototype being demoed here on AO).

Oh yes, it will work. But eventually it will run into a bit of 1.x-3.x OS or legacy game code with one of these miss interpeded op codes and crash something. We should I suppose distinguish "working" from "completely stable" then.

Plaz

[Plaz]

I think the Atari Coldfire developers will disagree with you.  

...[And who said 99.8% compatibility isn't "good enough"?  

They don't have to disagree with me. They just need to get a work around for those problem op codes. Perhaps classic Atari avoided them from the begining better than Amiga?

In many cases 99.8 might be good enough, but from my reading, a particular set of these codes are used in classic AOS (kickstart too.. can't recall now). There's probably ways around all this by rewritting bits of important libraries and softbooting to a problem free kickstart. But none so far have been able to work out all the bugs.

I'm hardly a detractor either. Years ago, I was really on the coldfire band wagon. Reseaching the CPU, working up hardware and I/O layouts, looking at ways to trap those trouble codes... but now with other options like soft cores, FPGA tech, and newer processors I don't know if it makes a much sense as it once did.

And why couldn't UAE be ported to run on a Coldfire processor?  That's a rhetorical question......

I think it could since you have alot of control over rewritting all the peices involved unlike constraints that have to be overcome in making a plug in compatible with  classic hardware.

Plaz

Edit: botched quote

[Plaz]

You know, it would be really nice to just clean-room reimplement

That's why minimig and minimi AGA are such cool thing and I hopw they see a lot more development.

Plaz

[ferrellsl]

That's why minimig and minimi AGA are such cool thing and I hopw they see a lot more development.

Plaz

I going to hold out for a Natami, but for all the same reasons!

[Heiroglyph]

Every new version of Kickstart and Workbench broke things.

Some games can't even deal with an external floppy or fast RAM.

Our 040 and 060 systems aren't even 100% compatible.  Remember those libraries we have to put on the system to get them to boot correctly?

100% compatibility wasn't a deal breaker when the platform was actually evolving.

[fishy_fiz]

Uh, "native x86 port" is kind of missing the point, when the Amiga has never used x86 in any form. I mean, again, good for them, but that doesn't help anybody with an Amiga. The Amiga 68k port is good news, though; even for those of us not particularily interested in AROS, an open Kickstart would be a huge step towards getting past this stupid corporate pissing contest.

Actually, AROS runs on x86, x86_64 and ppc (sam440ep and efika) natitvely in addition to the various hosted flavors. Also, just because an architecture isnt binary compatible doesnt mean os3.x (or any amiga os system) cant benefit from AROS, it can, and has. The 68k port/kickstart replacement looks very cool though as well and I was pleasantly surprised to see Toni Wilan now working on AROS in lou of this.... AROS Devl-ML has been pretty active in the 68k regards lately, interesting reading