@COBRA

It really doesn't look good for them. I don't know if it's malice or incompetence, but entering as evidence a document that's got missing pages and pushing for a quick judgement really makes them look like they're trying to fool the judge.

Then again, it all sortof fits in with the other stuff we've been seeing, for example Jens Schoenfeld complaining that he couldn't get them to prove that they owned kickstart - it's entirely possible, from reading these docs, that they may own it but can't actually prove that they do. There's also the magazine article from a few days ago, where they describe Amiga Inc's offices as having a bunch of cardboard boxes strewn around - it all paints a picture of a very disorganized group of people. I know from experience that it's *very* difficult to do business with someone like that; even if their intentions are honorable, the chaos they carry around with them ends up damaging everyone around them.

@NutsAboutAmiga

The crazy thing is, Hyperion is claiming that they already have those rights, because Amiga WA went bankrupt and a clause in the contract kicked in giving it to them (at least, the right to call any OS they write "AmigaOS"). That was something I was not expecting to see.

@Ketzer

Quote:

Subcontracting core work without aquiring the full rights to that work ist really strange and could mean a violation of the contract. Eg Hyperion was supposed to hand over the entire project under certain circumstances which they clearly cant.

They do talk about the lack of assistance from AI and that under the given very difficult circumstances, their efforts indeed were "best". A claim which is probably not entirely devoid of substance. And they mention how the 'binary-only' state of ExecSG which they could provide is not actually very different from the 'sparsely commented asm code' which Exec was before. This is also an interesting argument.

@Ketzer

Quote:

Claiming the "developer pre-release" is the actual released OS4 is questionable. Much argument rests on this.

True. Their grounds for doing this are much stronger than I expected though, since they have demonstrated that the pre-releases do fulfill the specifications of the project, and they were publically available to anyone who bought an AmigaOne - there was no restriction to developers only.

Also, their case doesn't rest on this point, since they have also asked Amiga Inc to prove that they successfully transferred all the necessary rights across to KMOS/Amiga Inc Delaware in a legal manner. They also have a few other points of attack, so even if the court decides that OS4 was not released when Hyperion say it was they still might be able to win the case.

Now we must await the response from Amiga Inc and see if they are able to defend against any of Hyperion's attacks. From the quality of their included documents, it seems it may be the case that their documentation of the Amiga Washington period is incomplete, which may make it difficult for them to refute some of Hyperion's claims even if they are not accurate as far as they are concerned.

@CodeSmith

Quote:

The crazy thing is, Hyperion is claiming that they already have those rights, because Amiga WA went bankrupt and a clause in the contract kicked in giving it to them

They did not go bankrupt, they were insolvent, or so Hyperion argues, in fact they presented plenty of evidence to support that, including papers in which Bill McEwen claims to a court of law in the Thendic-Amiga case that Amiga is insolvent. Their next argument is, even if we consider they were not insolvent, the transfer of the contract from Amiga Washington to KMOS was invalid, because all parties must agree and sign to such a transfer and apparently Eyetech did not, as far as they know at least.

Quote:

dirigent wrote: They do talk about the lack of assistance from AI and that under the given very difficult circumstances, their efforts indeed were "best". A claim which is probably not entirely devoid of substance. And they mention how the 'binary-only' state of ExecSG which they could provide is not actually very different from the 'sparsely commented asm code' which Exec was before. This is also an interesting argument.

On the other hand they argue that execSG had to be rewritten anyway, but this means its hardly important which source code they had as a base. This could go either way.

In any case Hyperion did not announce that they assume they have aquired additional rights due to Amiga WA being insolvent and neither did they announce that they believe OS4.0 was finished at a certain date prior to Amigas contract termination, or inform Amiga that Hyperions contractual job has been finished. This looks like rewriting history, which I dont like at all.

@madtrekker

Something else that Hyperion has going its way is that their lawyer just seems more competent. There is a lot of detail, most if not all their claims are backed up by some or other document, and every one of Amiga Inc's claims gets a plausible counter argument. It will be interesting to see Amiga Inc's reply.

@COBRA

I believe I owe you an apology for having a go at your insistance on the subject of buyback money. It seems your point was entirely valid.

I shall down beat myself with some barbed wire.

(This has nothing to do with being sorry - I do this normaly to fluff up my body hair )

_________________
"Anyone with a modicum of reasonableness may realize that it is like comparing the ride in the world to descend the stairs to catch the milk in the house."

Google Translate

@Ketzer

Quote:

In any case Hyperion did not announce that they assume they have aquired additional rights due to Amiga WA being insolvent and neither did they announce that they believe OS4.0 was finished at a certain date prior to Amigas contract termination

It looks like they have been trying to keep their relationship with Amiga Inc, instead of shooting them in the head and just leaving with OS4. They wanted to resolve the differences internally in a friendly manner (through binding arbitration), rather than going out claiming full rights to OS4 and ignoring Amiga Inc.

@SpaceDruid

Apology accepted, although not necessary. My main point was, and still is, not to make conclusions too early, when we only have a limited amount of information.

Last edited by COBRA on 23-May-2007 at 09:09 AM.

@Ketzer

Quote:

On the other hand they argue that execSG had to be rewritten anyway, but this means its hardly important which source code they had as a base. This could go either way.

In fact, as Hans-Jörg has stated in his declaration, WarpOS was to be ported according to the original contract (see page 2), which due to AI's failure to secure the necessary rights was not possible. So a rewrite of Exec was not originally planned. Looking at the contract this seems to be true.

Quote:

dirigent wrote: In fact, as Hans-Jörg has stated in his declaration, WarpOS was to be ported according to the original contract (see page 2), which due to AI's failure to secure the necessary rights was not possible. So a rewrite of Exec was not originally planned. Looking at the contract this seems to be true.

Actually, the first task listed is "Port Exec to PPC", one of the friedens just now declared that the old exec is in asm and thus useless on a ppc (this is true for any 3.x), so a complete rewrite was the only option from the beginning. Also porting WarpOS is declared as "will essentially mean writing a new warphw.library". This means the actual source code is not really helpful, what you really need is the documentation.

@Ketzer

Quote:

Also porting WarpOS is declared as "will essentially mean writing a new warphw.library".

I assume this to mean that instead of writing a new Exec, the WarpOS kernel can be used without much modification (basically recompile), but the warphw.library will need to be updated. warphw seems to be sth like a HAL for WarpOS, according to these words. Maybe someone who knows this better can confirm or deny this.

Last edited by dirigent on 23-May-2007 at 09:19 AM.

@COBRA

Quote:

They wanted to resolve the differences internally in a friendly manner (through binding arbitration), rather than going out claiming full rights to OS4 and ignoring Amiga Inc.

... and when this failed, they decided to call a horse a horse and say that OS4 was, according to the specs, finished already a long time ago. Possible. But did they "deliver" it to AI?

Whoa, interesting reading indeed!

To me the most surprising thing is the very circumstantiate response by Hyperion, something I honestly didn't believe it would come after reading the first public documents by its lawyer (about the language issues).

The contract AInc submitted to the court apparently is a fake one (could the fact it was not signed just a coincidence? seems hard to claim now), the infamous AInc --> KMOS --> AInc. property change which might be null and void because it was ignoring Eyetech for the assets sale, the whole 3.x source nightmare, "official" release date based (IMHO correctly) on the features mentioned in the original agreement, the $25000 not fully paid... honestly, things seems to get quite bad for AInc after this flood of counterclaims.

I have only one doubt (a big one actually), should Hyperion got the rights to OS4 with this lawsuit, would they be allowed to port it on any hardware they wanted to?

If so, some interesting scenarios could suddenly open, the first that comes to mind considering the excellent relationship between Hyperion and ACube is obviously a version of the operating system compatible with (but not limited to) the SAM440...

@dirigent

Quote:

and when this failed, they decided to call a horse a horse and say that OS4 was, according to the specs, finished already a long time ago. Possible. But did they "deliver" it to AI?

Why would they deliver it to AI? They delivered it to customers (pepole who bought the AmigaOne so far) and it was a product sold together with AmigaOne boards.

@dirigent

Quote:

.. and when this failed, they decided to call a horse a horse and say that OS4 was, according to the specs, finished already a long time ago. Possible. But did they "deliver" it to AI?

They would only need to "deliver" code after the buyback option had been done.
The only other issue would have been royalties for each Amiga one OS4.0 was supplied
for use with.None were shipped with it but CD's were sent out by dealers and later the updates were available for download to "registered OS4.0 users" .

If you understand the Agreement it leaves Hyperion to to sell the stand alone version with no royalties after they finish it.There is no role for Amiga Inc in the distribution of OS4.0 on any of the target hardware.

_________________
Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@COBRA

Quote:

Why would they deliver it to AI? They delivered it to customers (pepole who bought the AmigaOne so far) and it was a product sold together with AmigaOne boards.

That's true actually. I was thinking about Tigger's "they delivered nothing", but that remark of course went together with the assumption that the "buy-in" had been executed. So no steps were necessary to inform AI about the completion? Actually the contract doesn't seem to specify a means of communicating it.. But calling it a "pre-release" in official announcements is maybe not going to help. How about a photo-op on an aircraft carrier ("Mission Accomplished")?

Edit: But the contract says AI have 6 months after "completion" to release an updated version. How would they do that if OS4 had not been "delivered" to them before?

Last edited by dirigent on 23-May-2007 at 10:18 AM.
Last edited by dirigent on 23-May-2007 at 10:11 AM.

@Turrican3

Quote:

The contract AInc submitted to the court apparently is a fake one (could the fact it was not signed just a coincidence? seems hard to claim now),

The fact that there were no terms about how much was to be paid for the work or method of calculating payment was suspicious.

Look at how it was done in the real contract.

_________________
Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Ketzer

Quote:

In any case Hyperion did not announce that they assume they have aquired additional rights due to Amiga WA being insolvent and neither did they announce that they believe OS4.0 was finished at a certain date prior to Amigas contract termination, or inform Amiga that Hyperions contractual job has been finished. This looks like rewriting history, which I dont like at all.

It has been stated by both parties that there had been ongoing discussions between them, for over 18 months, to resolve the situation. So that back to mid/late 2005. During those discussions I don't think it would have been in either parties interest to air their differences in public, just look at this thread.
Not publicly announcing things does not mean re-writing history, it just means trying to sort problems out between themselves, rather than the whole (Amiga)world.

_________________
Peter Swallow.
A1XEG3-800 [IBM 750FX PowerPC], running OS4.1FE, using ac97 onboard sound.

"There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."