@chiriz.net

I dont quite see it like you.

This is how I see it

Either the Judge goes by the strict contract clauses were Amiga Inc has the first 3 early material breaches or the Judge sends them to mediation as their actions were conducted outside the strict contract clauses. Forcing them to come to some agreement.

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

@Spectre660

I think the Judge/Jury will go right to the original contract. After all it is very clear in that contract what is to be done or not done.

If Hyperion can prove that Amiga Inc. was insolvent (of course there WOULD be documentation on this if it did happen) then the case is pretty much shut, IMHO.

Otherwise it gets more complicated about payments, dates, etc. and Amiga Inc. might have a case since it seems they have proven the 25K payment to Hyperion.

I just hope it gets resolved soon and whoever wins, I am only worried about the underlying developers - I hope that they can still all get along and that this "dispute" is really between Bill Mc. and the Hyperion Management.

Isn't the hearing set for May 31st? What will happen at this hearing?

Last edited by HammerD on 27-May-2007 at 05:16 PM.

_________________
AmigaOS 4.x Beta Tester - Classic Amiga enthusiast - http://www.hd-zone.com is my Amiga Blog, check it out!

@HammerD

If the contract is used when we have Fleecy's declaration that Amiga expected Hyperion to get the sources from third parties on their own becomes a huge problem for Amiga Inc.

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

@Tigger who said Quote:

Which is what we all said above.

Except that your quote excluded many sentences that he gave, which I show in bold:
Quote:

many of the most important ideas of C stem from the considerably older, but still vital, language of BCPL, developed by martin richards. The influence of BCPL on C proceeded indirectly through language B which was written by Ken thompson in 1970 for the first UNIX system on PDP-7. Although it shares several characteristics features with BCPL, C is in no sense a dialect of it. BCPL and B are " typeless" languages: the only data type is the machine word, and access to other kinds of objects is by special operators or function calls. In C, the fundamental data objects are characters, intergers of several sizes, and floating point numbers. In addition, there is a hierarchy of derived data types created pionters,arrays,structurs,unions, and functions

I've underlined the most important part.

On a related point, it's worth noting that you can do automatic translation from 68k or x86 assembler to the C language, but that does not mean C is closely related to 68k or x86 assembler!

_________________

@ChrisH

Tigger used what's known as "the girlfriend maneouvre", which consists of changing the subject when you're losing the argument. He knows that it's not trivial to convert BCPL to C, so he switched to the history of the languages and pretending that my example was the literal job that needed to be done. That sort of thing tends to work when it's the gf doing it, not so much when it's some random guy on the internet.

I *might* be starting to get it now. Sorry if I'm slow but much of this court case info is brand to me, and I've put little attention or stock in all the rumors on these subjects these past years.

After much more reading of the latest docs, I think I begin to see the drive behind Amiga Inc's injunction.... As well as Hyperion suggesting perpetual licese for OS4, Amiga Inc believes it has evidence to show that Hyperion and/or it's contractors have been sharing OS4 developement data either directly or indirectly with other vendors/projects. At the same time Hyperion can't or won't share the same OS4 data with Amiga Inc though Amiga Inc says it has payed to buy back OS4. So Amiga Inc finally gets sufficient finacial backing and says it's now time to clean house at end this confusion.

Well that's my short interpetation. Perhaps it will help others still trying to catch up.

@Thread

And as for the rest trying to argue BCPL and C. Time for a rest. A competent programmer with the right skills can convert something as unrelated as MS Basic into PPC ML without much headache if properly motivated. The whole thing is just a disguised personal gripe anyway.

Plaz

Last edited by Plaz on 27-May-2007 at 08:57 PM.

@HammerD

The Buyback accounting:


Bill McEwan Wires $ 2,500.00 19Mar 2003
Penti Wires $ 2,250.00 03Apr 2003
Penti Wires $ 20,000.00 05May 2003
----------
Total Paid $ 24,750.00
Balance due $ 250.00

Before other open Invoices

no more funds paid until about 21Nov 2006
Amiga tries to screw Hyperion out of $250.00 or makes a mistake (2,250.00 instead of 2,500.00) .
That will prove to be a very expensive $250.00
thus up to 20 November 2006 the buyback has not been fully paid for.

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

Quote:

ChrisH wrote: @Tigger who said [quote]Which is what we all said above.

Except that your quote excluded many sentences that he gave, which I show in bold:
Quote:

many of the most important ideas of C stem from the considerably older, but still vital, language of BCPL, developed by martin richards. !

ChrisH,

Look at what I wrote, not what you think I wrote.

"BCPL as I recall. Its not that much different the C, in fact C was based on it to some degree."

Which is a totally true statement. And later I called BCPL an ancestor of C, also a completely true statement. None of the comments I posted are incorrect. And given that it appears Olaf has removed the BCPL from OS 3.1 before Hyperion received the sources, I think it silly we are still talking about what was a very small percentage of the code to begin with.
-Tig

_________________
We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

Quote:

Spectre660 wrote: @HammerD The Buyback accounting: Bill McEwan Wires $ 2,500.00 19Mar 2003 Penti Wires $ 2,250.00 03Apr 2003 Penti Wires $ 20,000.00 05May 2003 ---------- Total Paid $ 24,750.00 Balance due $ 250.00

The problem is that Hyperion wrote a reciept for the two Penti wires as 22,500, both parties have agree to that and included the receipt in there documentation, so either they were deceiving AI (in which case the best they can hope for is the $250), or they actually received the money, so this isnt going to be an issue.

Quote:

That will prove to be a very expensive $250.00 thus up to 20 November 2006 the buyback has not been fully paid for.

Receipt from Hyperion says Itec paid 22,500 and Bill McEwens receipt says $2,500, so they are all paid up.
-Tig

_________________
We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Tigger


I think that the Hyperion's receipt combines Bills 2500.00 an Penti 20,000 for 22,500.00
no receipt seems to have been issued for Penti's 2,250. Their own wire receipts show that there is a 250.00 discrepency. These things do happen when the source of funds and pourpose is not quite clear initially.

Last edited by Spectre660 on 27-May-2007 at 10:54 PM.

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

@Spectre660

EDIT: I see Tigger beat me to some of this...

The curious thing is that Hyperion claim not to have received McEwen's payment of $2,500. This means that according to your figures (which bizarrely come from Amiga Inc's own submission, despite their insistence elsewhere that they paid $25,000 in full) Hyperion should have received $22,500 - and indeed they claim this in their submission.

Why then is there an invoice from Hyperion (and an e-mail from Ben Hermans discussing that invoice) for $25,000. The only way you could get to that figure would be if you were including the Itec and McEwen payments (although surely it wouldn't be correct to invoice all of that to Itec? Besides, Hyperion said they didn't receive that payment?).

Also what about the two other payments made by Amiga Inc? Hyperion state that the $8,850 payment was for "other, unrelated debts". They dismiss the $7,200 payment since Amiga Inc did not provide evidence of it, but they don't actually deny that they received it, which is a little odd.

In general, the accounting surrounding the buyback seems very fuzzy, and I don't know whether in the end, the actual amounts exchanged will actually end up being as important as the intent by both parties at the points where the money changed hands. Hyperion clearly knew at the time that they were taking money intended to activate the buy-back clause. If the money provided at the time by Amiga Inc was insufficient to cover this, you would expect them to have raised this as an issue at the time. (And if the buyback was not activated, aren't Amiga Inc owed a hefty refund?)

Although there are still some obvious issues over the way these payments were made (and recorded) I think this has become one of the weaker of Hyperion's lines of attack (and if they can't succeed in proving that OS4 was released more than six months ago, it will be moot as Amiga could just offer to settle any outstanding difference, anyway).

Last edited by madtrekker on 27-May-2007 at 10:57 PM.
Last edited by madtrekker on 27-May-2007 at 10:55 PM.
Last edited by madtrekker on 27-May-2007 at 10:54 PM.

@madtrekker

The "Mcewan/Penti/Penti" 3 wire receipts add up to 24,750.00. 250.00 short.
I do think that Hyperion made a genuime mistake with their receipt combining
Bill's 2,500 and Penti's 20,0000 but did not factor in Penti's 2,250.00 .

also Ben Hermans email mentions 22,500 from Itec which is right. 2,250 + 20,000.

This status ,being short 250.00, would have been up to the November 2006 letter and wire. so the shouting over no code handed over would not have been vailid before november 2006.

also notice the hyperion shared 10,000 euro for legal stuff is mentioned in mcewans exibits.

Last edited by Spectre660 on 27-May-2007 at 11:23 PM.
Last edited by Spectre660 on 27-May-2007 at 11:21 PM.

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

@CodeSmith

Quote:

CodeSmith wrote: @ChrisH Tigger used what's known as "the girlfriend maneouvre", which consists of changing the subject when you're losing the argument.

How on earth would you call it that. I post what I did about BCPL being one of the sources for C, you make a comment, everyone on this thread that commented on it assumed as I did and corrected you that I was right and you were wrong. Then you told us that you were talking about using a converter.

Quote:

He knows that it's not trivial to convert BCPL to C, so he switched to the history of the languages and pretending that my example was the literal job that needed to be done.

Actually I've been paid to do it before, have you? I didnt switch to the history of the language, I started with the history of the language, everyone who commented about what you said thought you were arguing about the history of the language, when you clarified what you were disagreeing about, I answered that question, you are the one who seems to be changing the subject as others disagree with your comments. All this because someone didnt remember what language Dos.library was written in, and I told them what it was, it now turns out that apparently Olaf had corrected that issue by getting rid of the need for a sun workstation to recompile OS 3.1.
-Tig

_________________
We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Spectre660

Reading the letters and seeing the receipt is for Itecs money, I dont believe that the receipt is for the money from Bill, in fact they seem to implying Bill didnt pay them 2500, despite us having receipts to the contrary. Now the either means that Itec corrected the mis wire of 2250 by adding 250 later or Hyperion told them they had paid the wrong amount, and Itec believed them, but in neither case does this help Hyperion. I also think it interesting that Hyperion agrees that AI paid the 7200 and 8850 but thinks they havent paid in time now as if the OS was actually shipped in Dec 2004, despite them not paying Olaf, etc.
-Tig

_________________
We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.

@Tigger

Strange things do happen by accident. I bet that 250.00 was not paid. All the Amiga Camp have do is show another wire for 250.00 or more before November 2006 and the initial 25,000 for the buyback is met without the "Outstanding Invoices" issue.

It would have the effect of moving a certain time line to November 2006.

Last edited by Spectre660 on 27-May-2007 at 11:32 PM.

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

@madtrekker

Quote:

Although there are still some obvious issues over the way these payments were made (and recorded) I think this has become one of the weaker of Hyperion's lines of attack (and if they can't succeed in proving that OS4 was released more than six months ago, it will be moot as Amiga could just offer to settle any outstanding difference, anyway).

The Agreement say "ready for release" not release. be very careful here.
The buyback uses "completion"

Last edited by Spectre660 on 27-May-2007 at 11:56 PM.

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

@Tigger

Quote:

And given that it appears Olaf has removed the BCPL from OS 3.1 before Hyperion received the sources, I think it silly we are still talking about what was a very small percentage of the code to begin with.

Actually, the BCPL was gone long before Olaf took over the sources.

For OS 2.x, it was rewritten in C and assembler --- check the Wikipedia article.

But even more convincingly, you can find a comment in this FAQ which says:
Quote:

"I was in charge of the disk drivers and AmigaDOS at Commodore from 1988 until the end. I did major rewrites on the floppy drivers, rewrote AmigaDOS in C/ASM (from BCPL/ASM), etc.

So we pretty much know that the BCPL was all gone by 1994. Of course, its legacy lingers in the form of BPTR type pointers --- but as far as anyone here can tell, no BCPL code remained as of 1994.

Having now read all the latest court documents, and my god there is some major bomb shells there! I've radically revised my opinion about Amiga Inc & the court battle:

After Amiga Inc #1 sold AmigaOS/etc to Itec on 23rd April 2003, Itec then tried to execute the $25,000 "buy back" from Hyperion for OS4.0 . What Hyperion states, and appears to be true, is that this $25k only allows Itec/AmigaInc to request the source code; according to Evert Carton's testimony, Bill McEwan did not actually request the source code (at least formally) until 22nd September 2005!

This explains why Hyperion could happily enter into an agreement on 7th April 2004 with KMOS (who bought OS 4.0 from Itec on 10th Oct 2003) to port OS4.0 to the IBM Artic reference platform. The explanation is clearly that Hyperion's disagreement with Amiga Inc did not (formally) arise until 22nd September 2005 (i.e. nearly 2.5 years later). Also, by this date Amiga Inc clearly felt that OS4.0 (update #3) was good enough for their purposes.

These additional motives make it clear that Amiga Inc really *is* interested in OS4.0 as a living product. More specifically, they are interested in it as an OS for PDA-like devices. The Ars Technica review of the microA1 even coincidentally says "I have used PDAs that have similar CPU and RAM capacities as my AmigaOne and they do not provide the same speed and functionality that is already available in OS4. OS4 feels like a full desktop, yet has the resource requirements of a handheld".

Not to mention that (on some unknown date/year) McEwan chats to the Frieden brothers about mini-laptop (think Nokia 770) & other potential PPC hardware. It seems I was wrong that the ACK deal was a last-minute thing - they obviously had him & other options in discussion for a while. (Although why the hell they chose ACK I cannot imagine, unless he was the only one who would make a deal without their ownership of OS4 secure - unlike ACube.) McEwan also chats with Olaf in 2006 about resurrecting the Amiga again. And also with someone from ACube about the Sam440 *and* their (frozen?) port of OS4 for the G4 Mac Mini aka "Moana" (drool).



But I also now think Hyperion is correct that OS4.0 was feature completed (as specified by their contract) in December 2004 - read the Ars Technica review for a reminder of OS4's functionality. True, they did not publically state it was feature complete (but why should it since the contract should not have been public either?). Even Olaf's opinion seems to match, since in an email to Bill McEwan he says "it all came together as late as 2004/2005. That's some slippage, but well within industry standards ... And you have to consider that we did this mostly in our spare time, with practically no budget". So Hyperion obviously (& sensibly) felt that despite being contractually feature-complete, OS4.0 was still not yet good enough to deserve *too* much publicity.

It also makes sense that Hyperion should keep demanding money from Amiga Inc (for unpaid debts), and yet not release OS4.0 source code to them (as the debts+$25k was paid too long after they think OS4.0 was completed). But it is possible that Hyperion mislead Amiga Inc into thinking that the paying of these debts would mean that AI would get OS4, which might explain why they are so upset now (even though those debts should have been paid anyway).

Overall I think that Hyperion has the upper-hand slightly, but BOTH sides are making some really outlandish claims (damn their lawyers). And now I couldn't care WHO wins this court battle - I just wish that it is won SOON! Then maybe we can get an Amiga mini-laptop...

P.S. Do *not* use Adobe Reader 8 to read these PDFs - it's memory usage sky-rockets, and 'kills' Windows with swap access (on my 1GB machine). I've just switched back to FoxItReader, and it's far better.

Last edited by ChrisH on 28-May-2007 at 12:20 AM.

_________________

@Spectre660

Quote:

The Agreement say "ready for release" not release. be very careful here.

Heed your own advice. It says "completed", not "ready for release".

Now, considering the IT'S DONE headline for the December 25th story, combined with the many "When it's done" up to that date, Hyperion will have a hard time arguing that OS4 was "completed", yet not "done".

And given that Hyperion argues they not only completed it in 2004, but did so in the form of releasing an update to the pre-release, they will also have a hard time explaining why they did not, apparently, act accordingly and paid their post-release obligations to third party developers.


Honestly, I can't see any of Hyperion's defenses holding up.

The "we were never paid in full" or "the money paid was for something else" stuff is ludicrous, because they sure acted as if they had been paid for the buyback. And it's not like Amiga said "you won't get any more money!" --- according to the docs, every time Hyperion said "Your buyback won't be completed until you tender another $x", Amiga promptly transferred $x.
The "it's a buy-in, not a buy-back clause" thing is just as silly --- the agreement uses the terms "acquire" and "transfer", that's not a description of sharing the cake, that's a description of getting the cake.
Similarly, the "they did not give us the source" thing might buy them a little leeway on the rather late delivery --- but a little leeway won't make up for a large delay; And any claims for further compensation are instantly killed by the April 2003 contract with Itec --- at which point Hyperion agreed to sell OS4 for $25k, despite knowing what sources they could or could not get.
Objecting to the transfer of the contract is not going to work, either, because they acknowledged and accepted that transfer for many years.
Which really only leaves the "you were insolvent" line of defense, which is also somewhat undermined by contrasting behaviour at a later time. Sadly, IMHO this is the best chance of them all, and it's a pretty poor one.

That's not to say that I expect Amiga Inc to win, in any meaningful way. I just expect Hyperion to lose.

Quote:

umisef wrote: Actually, the BCPL was gone long before Olaf took over the sources. For OS 2.x, it was rewritten in C and assembler --- check the Wikipedia article.

You and Joanna both got me at the same time. I took the bait about dos.library and ran with it, though Randall had fixed this issue long ago. Thanks Bernd.
-Bill

_________________
We played the first thing that came to our heads, it just happened to be the best song in the world.