@BigD

Quote:

the bankruptcy of Hyperion due to lack of revenue as we all wait for the delayed Tabor!

I thought that the Tabor was ready to ship, and the only delay was Hyperion itself not wanting to release AmigaOS 4.1 for it. I presumed that this was for internal political reasons between Hyperion and A-EON? I.e., that this was another thing that Hyperion had deliberately inflicted upon itself.


@bison

Quote:

So the news here, for me, is that Itec is still a going concern.

Itec has always been a going concern, they are a holding entity for assets of the Kouri Estate (i.e. of the late billionaire Pentti Kouri). Hyperion's mistake was to include them in the March 2018 lawsuit and hope that they would ignore or be willing to settle, being uninterested as they were in 2009 in all things Amiga. Now instead I sense that they want to see Hyperion disappear once and for all. The sweet taste of revenge?

Quote:

I assumed that all of these companies except Gateway (acquired by Acer) and Amiga Inc DE were defunct.

None of them are defunct.

Gateway is irrelevant, as it had no Amiga assets by the time it was sold to Acer (even the patents had expired). Whoever brings up Acer in an Amiga context probably has the dubious goal of wanting to muddy the waters.

Amiga Washington is "somewhat dead", in that it cannot engage in business. But it can wind down and defend itself in lawsuits. See the final two paragraphs in this section.

Amiga Delaware just had a surprising comeback after paying more than half a million $ in back taxes. That is the one company that I thought was dead. Call me surprised: I was wrong, and we have to thank Hyperion for suing it and forcing it to resurrect itself to respond.

Quote:

My question: what Amiga assets do they have that were not transferred to KMOS?

This is actually irrelevant (they probably have no Amiga assets). Itec simply had to file a response because it is a large company with lots of other (non-Amiga) assets, and Hyperion decided to sue them. Hyperion was probably betting on them and maybe Amino and/or Amiga not even caring or being able to respond, therefore allowing Hyperion to foreclose on the Collateral, instead that bet backfired.

Now all these Amiga companies, which Hyperion sued because they were "Amiga parties" in the Settlement Agreement of 2009, have raised a series of massive counterclaims of their own against Hyperion. If even a fraction of these are found to be true, Hyperion would lose the 2009 settlement agreement, and the state of OS4 would revert back to the previous development agreements between Hyperion and Amino/Amiga. Which were clearer in defining what Hyperion may or may not do (AmigaOS 4 for PowerPC, etc.)

Last edited by aria on 10-Nov-2018 at 12:28 AM.

@bison

Quote:

Amiga Inc. is making the claim that the agreement only covers AmigaOS 4 and future versions, i.e., AmigaOS 4.x, AmigaOS 5, etc.

This is not only a claim by Amiga, Inc. Rather, it was the intention and interpretation of the parties even according to Hyperion's very own 2009 Press Release, where Hyperion was, as usual, "pleased to announce" that:

Within the framework of the settlement agreement Hyperion is granted an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize, distribute and market AmigaOS 4.x (and subsequent versions of AmigaOS including without limitation AmigaOS 5)...

Last edited by aria on 10-Nov-2018 at 03:06 AM.

@BigD

Well, I have a theory about where "the amiga parties" gets money from.

I suspect that if everything goes according to intentions, the 2009 agreement will become void, leaving "the Amiga parties" with all rights to all Amiga, and Hyperion out of the picture all together. The Hyperion people have pissed off even their closest allies, nobody wants to work with them, not even AEON. As someone posted not so long ago "it is now personal". With Hyperion out of the way, nothing stands in the way of "Amiga parties" granting AEON/AmigaKit right to take over all development of OS4, and in cooperation with Cloanto, OS3/68k.

Last edited by kolla on 10-Nov-2018 at 09:01 AM.

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@kolla

Would it be the same guys working on it just not through hyperion as most of the work is contracted out I believe anyway.

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@aria

Quote:

I thought that the Tabor was ready to ship, and the only delay was Hyperion itself not wanting to release AmigaOS 4.1 for it. I presumed that this was for internal political reasons between Hyperion and A-EON? I.e., that this was another thing that Hyperion had deliberately inflicted upon itself.

Not exactly. There is still no audio driver and more importantly Trevor mentioned at AmiWest 2018 that the delays on bringing the h/w to market resulted in obsolescence of some parts.
These parts now had/have to be replaced.
This, in turn, means that there has not even been a production run obviously.

Beyond that, if you were to take Costel Mincea at his word, he has expressed in no uncertain terms that the only income that Tabor brings to Hyperion comes in terms of licenses. Ergo, not releasing said product does not benefit the company.
If you're referring to how Ben feels? We know better than to guess.

Source

#6

Last edited by number6 on 10-Nov-2018 at 12:53 PM.

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@number6

Surely Hyperion receive a license fee for every Tabor sold? As per the network driver there's probably both a Hyperion and A-EON competing versions of the audio driver!

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@aria

Quote:

Gateway is irrelevant, as it had no Amiga assets by the time it was sold to Acer (even the patents had expired). Whoever brings up Acer in an Amiga context probably has the dubious goal of wanting to muddy the waters.

This got me interested in reviewing wiki wars over Gateway content.

You might recall when I quoted the wiki:
Quote:

Gateway purchased the Amiga assets from Escom in 1997 and since 2000, this Amiga intellectual property has been licensed to Amiga, Inc.

Which got changed immediately thereafter to:
Quote:

Gateway purchased the remaining Commodore and Amiga assets from Escom in 1997.[6] It licensed the patents to Amiga, Inc. in 1998, retaining ownership over them until their eventual expiration. The trademarks and copyrights were sold by Gateway to Amiga in the same year.

atm, all references to anything Amiga are gone.
same source link I used prior

I must agree there are parties still trying to muddy the waters.

@pavlor

Any clue what's been going on over there from your observance?

#6

Last edited by number6 on 10-Nov-2018 at 02:08 PM.

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@number6

Checking diffs, removal of the Amiga content was part of not Amiga related bigger change (diff by Pi314m; rationale: now less like an Advertisement). Judging by other edits of said editor, he has no connection to the world of Amiga (general computing related interests).

Change from older wording to newer wording was in February 2015 by editor calling himself "Amiga1985" (diff), this user did only few edits in 9 years: contributions (mostly Amiga corporate related).

@BigD

Presumably that's future tense.

Either way, I'm sure the arrangement must have been a contracting fee plus royalties.

The issue is Hyperion always underestimates the requirements, fails to deliver and then takes legal action.

@thread

missed this one from October 21

#6

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@thread

Mmm, Amigakit going to sell something with this name?

@aria

Just interesting to note that the twitter account source offered (CBM & Amiga Soapbox) is now reading:

Quote:

Caution: This account is temporarily restricted You’re seeing this warning because there has been some unusual activity from this account.

Source

#6

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@spud101

Probably related to this:
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2018-08-00061-EN.html

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@Senex

I am baffled by all these motherboard projects, are they just because it is fun and easy to do today?

I just wonder how I can make use of it. We need components. I would love to buy a modern A4000 motherboard and build my own tower A4000 based on modern hardware. But how likely is that to happen, and in the end, maybe it would be better to port the software to run natively on already available hardware instead, like AROS on RPi.

Just trying to understand why this is happening and not that...

@hth313

http://www.diagrom.com/index.php/2016/04/05/what-is-diagrom/

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@kolla

Quote:

http://www.diagrom.com/index.php/2016/04/05/what-is-diagrom/

ROMs that go in an Amiga. How long until Hyperion sue them?

@bison

"Is Amiga Inc still a viable business entity by any measure? If not, it would be nice if AROS would enable anonymous read-only access to their source code repository."

It's only existent in paper. In other words, it is still officially existent for certain paperwork. Amiga Inc. is essentially in a state of limbo due to the legal issues, creditors involved in all the years of Amiga Inc. lawsuits when Bill McEwen. In other words, it can not be 100% shut down and no longer existent until all legal issues are over.

In a sense, even Commodore Electronics, Ltd. and Commodore Business Machines still for legal purposes existed well past 1995. While it is functionally dead, it still existed and perhaps may still exist to this very day.

Corporations are legal entities that can be completely dead and bought up 100 years after they are officially and thoroughly dead and resurrected provide that party wants to pick up latent liabilities and take care of that mess and also in the process recover ownership of assets like trademarks and other assets and essentially revive it.

In that sense, it's a mess.

@simplex

Quote:

@SHADES Quote: "SO, as I see it, they (Cloanto) have an issue with Hyperioon being the "only" owner to AmigaOS 3.1 and source code, they have zero interest in 4x though." That's not how I read it. Cloanto wouldn't have a problem with Hyperion being the "only" owner to AmigaOS 3.1 if Hyperion actually owned it. Cloanto has actual rights to AmigaOS 3.1: perpetual and exclusive. They paid for these rights. Hyperion has no rights to AmigaOS 3.1, except to use in developing the 4.x series. In particular, Hyperion has no right to distribute Kickstart 3.1, but that's precisely what they've started doing. It's as if I were to have made an agreement with Amiga, Inc. back when they were still around that I could use the source code for AmigaOS 4.x to develop AmigaOS 5.x, and now that I've noticed Amiga, Inc. isn't around anymore I've decided to start selling copies of Amiga OS 4.1 without asking Hyperion for permission, nor paying them any royalties. In layman's terms, the complaint alleges that Hyperion has engaged in software piracy, AKA theft, and asks for due punishment.

The biggest problem is the word "rights" have been misused even by the courts and not properly distinguished by the proper words.

Rights belongs to those who OWNS the intellectual property. Licenses CONFERS "PRIVILEGES" not rights. That is the biggest and messiest problem when words have been so loosely.

@hth313

You wrote:
"by hth313 on 26-Oct-2018 14:59:05

@K-L

An almost nonexistent company (for years) suddenly paying off a half a million dollars tax debt is something more than "just paying their debts".

It is a significant amount of money, especially given the (what must be) minuscule sales related to Amiga in recent years. I wonder who is behind all this and what the plan is. It cannot just be paying the debts, there are surely more money into it related to the ongoing legal issues and also to cover for some future plan."


Or it is because Amiga Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cloanto because they bought Amiga Inc. and hence the trademarks and whatever else. Well... something I must say. It may had to go through this in part for whatever legal issues that must be made required it to be resuscitated for the matters at hand.

It's something.

OR

iTec did this for the legal matters at hand. It's a complex matter. As the biggest shareholder and essentially the remaining owner with Bill mcEwen more or less out of the scene and iTec.... wasn't that associated with the estate of Kouri and is a VC financing company so what is in this will be a bit more interesting by the day.

Last edited by Wildstar128 on 01-Feb-2019 at 12:31 PM.

Quote:

Wildstar128 wrote: The biggest problem is the word "rights" have been misused even by the courts and not properly distinguished by the proper words. Rights belongs to those who OWNS the intellectual property. Licenses CONFERS "PRIVILEGES" not rights. That is the biggest and messiest problem when words have been so loosely.

Interesting.

I am not lawyer (not even on the Internet) so I won't pretend to be one. However the Wikipedia article on Software licenses says...
Quote:

Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights...

...followed by a chart showing the "Software licenses and rights granted" to users of some different license types.

But hey, Wikipedia, right?

I'm also having trouble finding examples of IP licenses conferring privileges to the licensee. Seems the legal definition of 'privilege' is different to popular usage...