Hyperion bankrupt?

[wawrzon]

Yes I am referring to 3D support.  Does Aros support Mediator ?

its a long time i have looked into that. afair there might have been some basic support, i recall that pci tool might have recognized the cards. but it wasnt complete and working, it lacked interrupts or so.

i can check it again, but why and what for do you need here aros at all?

[Yasu]

I just thought of something. Up until now we have all assumed that the best scenario of a bankruptsy is that A-Eon buys Hyperion upright in order for AOS4 not to return into A Inc.'s hands. But is that really the best scenario?

Remember, if HE goes down they will take with them a lot of debt. Debts Trevor has to pay off to get the OS. That sounds expensive. But if no one buys the whole company (who would besides Trevor?), the rights to the OS reverts to A Inc., then it must be in McEwans interest to sell the OS. Cloanto already got the original. And since there is only one realistic buyer A Inc. can't ask for too much.

So, instead of paying off a lot of debts, it might be cheaper to negotiate a transfer of IP rights with Amiga Inc. instead.

Thoughts?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

So, instead of paying off a lot of debts, it might be cheaper to negotiate a transfer of IP rights with Amiga Inc. instead.

Except then you have to deal with McBill.  Otherwise, a solid plan!  :hammer:

[Yasu]

Yeah, but Cloanto was able too so ...

I forgot about all the parts that's not the property of Hyperion but the individual developers. But my bet is that they are willing to sell it for real money.

[number6]

I just thought of something. Up until now we have all assumed that the best scenario of a bankruptsy is that A-Eon buys Hyperion upright in order for AOS4 not to return into A Inc.'s hands. But is that really the best scenario?

Remember, if HE goes down they will take with them a lot of debt. Debts Trevor has to pay off to get the OS. That sounds expensive. But if no one buys the whole company (who would besides Trevor?), the rights to the OS reverts to A Inc., then it must be in McEwans interest to sell the OS. Cloanto already got the original. And since there is only one realistic buyer A Inc. can't ask for too much.

So, instead of paying off a lot of debts, it might be cheaper to negotiate a transfer of IP rights with Amiga Inc. instead.

Thoughts?

Hard to say. Some people prefer being lied to by a lawyer. Some prefer being lied to by an owner.
Regardless, any such proposal should be sent to Darren B. Cohen.
http://www.reedsmith.com/darren_cohen/

#6

[Nlandas]

impossible as it has been told 1000 times, so why are you still praying?

Do tell, it sounds like the IP to 3.1 is now held by Cloanto so why can't they choose  to Open Source it?

i
what is that "work already done on os4" that are you missing with aros? actually aros misses some optimiztation on 68k still it runs better under uae than os4.

OS3.9/4 added different things to the 3.1 source. I'm not going to enumerate all of the changes here.

http://www.amigaos.net/content/1/features

arguing like that you sound definitely like you were effectively one of those "name followers".

I'm not certain what you mean by "name follower". I've played with AROS multiple times but not found it stable when I was testing it. I don't have anything against AROS but we are fragmenting into AROS, MorphOS, legacy 3.1, and 3.9/4.0.

I still maintain it would be nice to have an official Open Source AmigaOS/Workbench(don't care the name) project from the current I.P. holder. Perhaps, AROS could even benefit from access to the original source code itself.

BTW - Why the attack?

-Nyle

[Heiroglyph]

Open sourcing it might be nice, but I'd just like to see it being maintained and updated by professionals.

Open or not, unless you have a strong project leader, you're going to get people going off in left field doing crazy additional stuff that drags down the project and breaks compatibility.

With cash on the line, I think there is honestly more incentive to stay on track and produce something of value.

If someone can make a little money there, good for them, I'm willing to pay for quality work.

Also, I may be inferring too much, but it sounded like Cloanto only had access what was released by Commodore. To me, that seems like binaries, documentation and probably the NDK.

I never heard anything about Cloanto and source code.

[alphadec]

What we need the most right now is new hardware. If you have tried getting a classic amiga you know most of it needs repair and parts are getting more and more difficult to find.

So what we need is new hardware. If there is not made any new amiga's the next 5 years I think we are in lots of problems. So someone better do something about this fast!.

My hope is there comes a fpga amiga or maybe a-eon could release some classic amigas built on new hardware with updated tech.

[matthey]

I personally would very much like to see Radeon R200 support available for Classic AmigaOS 3 on the Mediator.  If you have a proposal so we can support that, I will be very much interested.

A new AmigaOS 3 (and possibly later AROS) Warp3D Radeon driver would be great but the whole W3D software for AmigaOS 3 needs serious updating. Here is what is needed:

The Avenger (Voodoo 3) driver has a Z-buffer bug which overwrites innocent memory in a big way. The C generated CheckIdle() function is so slow it doesn't work right. The optimization level (NOP instructions in the code which flush the CPU pipeline for example) and floating-point rounding are very inefficient. The 6888x is not suppoted and the 68040 compiled driver traps on the 68060 which is very slow. The AmigaOS3 Avenger driver version lacks support for most Napalm (Voodoo 4-5) enhancements. I have free optimized assembler code available which would help the speed on the 68k.

The Permedia2 driver has a bug with floating point rounding modes which causes distorted or black colors for objects or even the whole screen (bright color values may wrap to dark). This was a compiler problem of GCC not initializing the FPU properly when the Permedia2 code was compiled. Karlos has an updated Permedia2 driver for W3D with more features added.

The 68k Warp3D library itself doesn't have too many bugs but suffers from serious optimization problems. I optimized it in assembler to nearly 1/2 the size with less than 1/2 the size being possible. With all my optimizations, I can get 25fps in GLQuake with 68060@75MHz and more is possible.

I would try to get Alain Thellier to work on an update (with the help and testing of others). He created Wazp3D and knows what he is doing. He could probably even make a software renderer for Warp3D which would be good. I would be willing to lend a hand myself so the same optimization disaster doesn't happen again.

I just thought of something. Up until now we have all assumed that the best scenario of a bankruptsy is that A-Eon buys Hyperion upright in order for AOS4 not to return into A Inc.'s hands. But is that really the best scenario?

Remember, if HE goes down they will take with them a lot of debt. Debts Trevor has to pay off to get the OS. That sounds expensive. But if no one buys the whole company (who would besides Trevor?), the rights to the OS reverts to A Inc., then it must be in McEwans interest to sell the OS. Cloanto already got the original. And since there is only one realistic buyer A Inc. can't ask for too much.

So, instead of paying off a lot of debts, it might be cheaper to negotiate a transfer of IP rights with Amiga Inc. instead.

Thoughts?

The License between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion may no be transferable or at least a buyout would make the situation more complex. A-Eon would like to continue AmigaOS 4 development as it's needed for their hardware. If the debts aren't too large, the easiest solution may be for A-Eon to bail out Hyperion (probably becoming majority shareholder) and Hyperion becomes just a software development house for A-Eon and possibly a legal shell or zombie business. It wouldn't be a bad business arrangement as it could avoid costly legal costs and keep AmigaOS 4 out of the hands of the blood sucking criminals at Amiga Inc. A-Eon seems to be more friendly and open toward AmigaOS 3 which is a good strategy that could benefit AmigaOS 4 also. Honey attracts more Amiga users than vinegar.

[Nlandas]

well, i must give you that, you actually have a reason not to switch to aros on amiga hardware currently as it is still less responsible than the genuine os. and it lacks some soft and hardware support. therefore i run hd-rec still under 3.9. aros is though potentially a good and compatible os replacement/improvement and one that reacts to users most, closest to crowd funding initiative, so if the user base actually builds up some tension, it may have some effect it wouldnt have elsewhere.

I've tried AROS multiple times over the years and even had a few friends who like alternative OSs play with it. It's a neat project but it might too benefit from access to the source code. Heck, perhaps the two projects could be melded into one project. I don't know how much of the AROS project being based on 3.1 would be possible to port into a new Open Source OS with the original 3.1 code as reference.

It certainly doesn't sound like it would hurt.

[wawrzon]

Do tell, it sounds like the IP to 3.1 is now held by Cloanto so why can't the Open Source it?

wanna approach them with that proposal?

OS3.9/4 added different things to the 3.1 source. I'm not going to enumerate all of the changes here.

http://www.amigaos.net/content/1/features

most of the changes are rather cosmetic, and aros incorporates comparable functionality anyway except of things like interfaces or so objects factualy dimnishing backwards compatibility.  

I'm not certain what you mean by "name follower". I've played with AROS multiple times but not found it stable when I was testing it. I don't have anything against AROS but we are fragmenting into AROS, MorphOS, legacy 3.1, and 3.9/4.0.

the fragmentation is a fact we cant do anything about. whats up to everybody is to choose alternative that is most promising. while i dont resign on genuine os for my amigas for the time being i see no alternative to improve it without patching other than aros68k.

I still maintain it would be nice to have an official Open Source AmigaOS/Workbench(don't care the name) project from the current I.P. holder. Perhaps, AROS could even benefit from access to the original source code itself.

perhaps, but is is out of question, so why bother?

BTW - Why the attack?

-Nyle

sorry if being sharp. the owners or licensees of os4 stated repeatedly that open source is not an option. live with it, why return to it over and over?

[Nlandas]

Open sourcing it might be nice, but I'd just like to see it being maintained and updated by professionals.

Open or not, unless you have a strong project leader, you're going to get people going off in left field doing crazy additional stuff that drags down the project and breaks compatibility.

Very, very true. I agree. However, if it's held by a small company with limited profit potential we end up with an orphaned product like 4.0. If it's Open Source the possibility always exists that an active project can start again even if one fails.

With cash on the line, I think there is honestly more incentive to stay on track and produce something of value.

If someone can make a little money there, good for them, I'm willing to pay for quality work.

Also, I may be inferring too much, but it sounded like Cloanto only had access what was released by Commodore. To me, that seems like binaries, documentation and probably the NDK.

I never heard anything about Cloanto and source code.

That might be possible though my impression was that Cloanto had the original I.P. from CBM just not the Trademarks. I would think that meant if they have the I.P. rights, they have the rights to the 3.1 OS and source code. They sounded like they didn't have 3.9 or 4.0 rights as those deals were separate. I too will pay for AmigaOS/Workbench but only IF, I can run it.

If an Open Source project existed that was active and working towards porting Workbench to multiple platforms and perhaps partnering with other projects or joining with them. I'd "buy" their project as well. I still think it would be nice to have someone like Cloanto as the final say on the Open Source project. In that sense an "official" original I.P. Source Code based project.

-Nyle

P.S. Thought it simply has to say AmigaOS though, I mean, I'm totally brand specific. Won't use anything else, well except for Windows, Linux(Unbuntu, SLES, etc.), Android, etc. I mean if it doesn't say Commodore and Amiga on it - well I just won't try it out. LOL!

[wawrzon]

I've tried AROS multiple times over the years and even had a few friends who like alternative OSs play with it. It's a neat project but it might too benefit from access to the source code. Heck, perhaps the two projects could be melded into one project. I don't know how much of the AROS project being based on 3.1 would be possible to port into a new Open Source OS with the original 3.1 code as reference.

It certainly doesn't sound like it would hurt.

aros is in many ways more advanced than os4. as example it has working gallium. if it does make sense on 68k is another matter, it doesnt fully work on this platform anyway.

gaining access to genuine 3.x sources might be  nice but might be also a handicap. that ip is contaminated with complicated and uncertain ownership, which might pose a threat for an open project.

[agami]

In order to open source Amiga OS 3.x one would need the source.

Check you history; The entire source code for 3.x does not exist. It went missing somewhere in the Commodore labyrinth. This was one of the issues faced by the early AmigaOS 4 team. There was no "gold" code stored in a source repository. Bits and pieces here and there. Decompile this and reverse engineer that.

IP rights are exercised on products and not code. Even Copyright in most jurisdictions does not cover code effectively. Think of code as a recipe. Two developers may write different enough code to accomplish the same task.

[matthey]

Open sourcing it might be nice, but I'd just like to see it being maintained and updated by professionals.

Open or not, unless you have a strong project leader, you're going to get people going off in left field doing crazy additional stuff that drags down the project and breaks compatibility.

I tend to agree as AROS is open source and hasn't replaced 68k AmigaOS 3. Several of the current 68k developers are around and could continue organized development instead of throwing development into a state of chaos and uncertainty. The best would be if the AmigaOS 4 and AmigaOS 3 developers could share code and try to maintain similar APIs where possible. One could argue for bringing AmigaOS 4 to the 68k which is a bit heavy but could be done. AmigaOS 4 needs to move toward 64 bit, memory protection, more security, SMP etc. (workstation, server and business stuff) which is not the greatest fit for the 68k unless we made an ASIC. AmigaOS 3 is probably best as an efficient and compact "fun" but still useful AmigaOS for small computers, old and retro computers, hobbyists, electronic gadgets, netbooks and maybe some embedded purposes. If both groups of developers were allowed to create freely but share code, I think there would be mutual benefits like faster development and bug fixing.

In order to open source Amiga OS 3.x one would need the source.

Check you history; The entire source code for 3.x does not exist. It went missing somewhere in the Commodore labyrinth. This was one of the issues faced by the early AmigaOS 4 team. There was no "gold" code stored in a source repository. Bits and pieces here and there. Decompile this and reverse engineer that.

Most of it exists and is available. ThoR and Olaf "olsen" Barthel are active on the forum here. ThoR claims he knows how to contact Heinze Wrobel also. There is the AROS code to look at if anything is missing. We need to either get AmigaOS 3 back or fix AROS up for the 68k.

[wawrzon]

We need to either get AmigaOS 3 back or fix AROS up for the 68k.

first one isnt an option, and second one is always being dismissed with disinterest, so it isnt looking good.