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I wouldn't say since birth. While Commodore was still around it was all about advocacy. Anyone who lives through that era knows that extreme advocacy was not limited to Amiga or Commodore products. C64 owners knew their computer was the best since it was the best selling. Apple II owners knew their computer was best because it was "not a toy". IBM PC computers knew theirs to be the best because IBM was Big Blue. Atari ST knew theirs to be the best because of the due to the MIDI built in. It goes on and on.

Commodore bankrupted and the interwebs was born. That advocacy transferred online. Communities formed in various ways, attempts by companies to revive the "Amiga" were being made. Some real, some bad jokes, and some outright scams. People starting making up their mind what was "teh reals" and what wasn't. Mini camps started forming. People would argue what was a "real Amiga" or not. Some of it in hindsight was pretty silly or stupid, but usually completely harmless.

The problem came a little later. MorphOS started early and had negotiations with McBill's Amiga Inc to become OS4. Those fell through and MorphOS forged on independently. MorphOS was largely seen as a curiosity in these days as there were other similar (though simpler) projects like pOS. It wasn't until McBill contracted Hyperion (a small time game company) to port OS3.1 to PPC and call it OS4 did the ugliness begin.

Pretty soon this game company's laywer started making statements like "MorphOS is based on stolen code", it was "illegal" and he was going to sue the developers. Suddenly there was no simple harmless advocacy, people took red or blue sides on if MorphOS was an illegal pirate product. The red side were the aggressors, the blue side were defending themselves.

That's how it started. It simply got worse with actual lawsuits between companies (not MorphOS though). A certain Belgium lawyer poisoned the well. OS4 is essentially dead with only 3rd parties providing updates, so the war is essentially dead. However, the history helped create the differing paths. People who want to stay niche with "the name" largely stay on the red side. People who want to distance themselves from the name and forge a new path on industry standard hardware, largely go blue.

[ Edited by redrumloa 28.05.2020 - 14:20 ]