@PhantomInterrogative

Quote:

If that ends up being the case, they will want people like Mr. Krueger to foster development for their newly acquired/stolen OS.

Considering that they are taking *legal* action as a measure to acquire the AmigaOS from Hyperion, the outcome will either be that they are legally entitled to it and therefore granted access to it or that they are not legally entitled to it and therefore not granted access to it. The definition of theft is when you take possession of something you do not own without the real owner's permission. Naturally, this will not be the case for any of the possible outcomes of the ongoing legal proceedings.

As a metaphor to easier describe what this case is about; your mechanic might decide keep your car until you pay for the repairs you hired him to make, but would it be theft if you decide to take legal action to get your car back when you have paid and the mechanic still refuses to give you your car back? It doesn't matter if it turns out that you paid too late or whatever else reason their might be for you to loose your rights to that car, it's not to steal to excercise your rights to a fair trial and any outcome in a court of law is never illegal.

Furtermore, I don't get why some people seem to think that Amiga Inc. should simply give AmigaOS4 to Hyperion for free. It's irrelevant wether Amiga Inc. never added a single line of code to the AmigaOS themselves or not or whatever else reason you might have to dislike them, it's still their product that they paid millions of dollars for. If they want to lock it up in a vault for collecting dust over the next couple of decades, it's in their right to do so with whatever they own.

But they chose not to do this. They decided to allow Hyperion continue development. Hyperion was even granted an exclusive, royalty free license to develop and sell a new version of the AmigaOS. Again, these rights cost Amiga Inc. millions. The only catch was that upon completion of AmigaOS4, Amiga Inc. would be able to take development back "in house" and be granted access to all AmigaOS source codes produced by Hyperion for the amount of $25,000. The contract with these terms was drafted by Hyperion's own managing partner, Ben Hermans. Amiga Inc. was in no way obligated to give Hyperion this license agreement and Hyperion hasn't had to pay Amiga Inc. a dime for it either. Yet, Hyperion seems to not be satisfied with this. They want to keep it and they want to keep it for free. In fact, they want even more and are now challanging Amiga Inc's rights to the Amiga name.

At the same time, it seems that Hyperion hasn't even produced most of the sources for AmigaOS4 themselves. As it turns out, most of it has been done by third party contractors that are now also suing Hyperion, for not paying them. So, without paying the price for the rights nor the work behind it, Hyperion seem to be trying to take it all and exploit it as they please. I'm *really* not so sure it would be appropriate to accuse Amiga Inc. of stealing the AmigaOS from Hyperion...

Last edited by samface on 30-Jan-2008 at 04:58 AM.

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