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I can't speak for Haynie, but mine has been mostly controlled for ages now.

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I wouldn't really call it "fought in court" - didn't it end up with out-of-court settlement?

Of course the mutual settlement stands as well as a court decision would have, just pointing out it wasn't exactly "tried in justice system" - there's no telling which side would have won, and why.

amigadave,

Thanks David.
But I was referring to Haynie's weird habit of stating one opinion, then affirming a belief in a polar opposite a few sentences later.
Usually this is a sign of mental illness or political aspirations.

Jim,
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Now that's just out of order.

It's one thing to disagree with a person, even have a few jokes, but to start insinuating that Dave Haynie has political aspirations... that's just nasty man, cold.

Andreas_Wolf,
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Petro said all kinds of things that weren't true. They were talking PowerPC then, but doing absolutely nothing about it... maybe that was Petro's cozying up to Phase V to have something to sell.

But in fact, actual PPC development didn't really start until December of 1995, when Stefan Domeyer was in charge and brought Andy Finkel and I into the company in order to actually deliver on this. Which was happening, at least until Escom managed to kill themselves in the PC market.

They had made some accomplishments before that -- the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000T were back in production, and they had hired an outside firm to make the "Walker"... some good ideas in there, some pretty nutso ones as well, but it was a real project in development before we came in -- we where just there for PowerPC. And 1997 wasn't necessarily a real date, either, but it did depend on just how well they financed the software port.

A big part of Andy's plan for PowerPC AmigaOS was a complete Hardware Abstraction Layer. So Phase V could have built their own HAL and run AT's AmigaOS on their hardware. Pretty much any PPC should have been supportable.

Andreas_Wolf,
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I dunno... it was pretty close. The Gateway version of Amiga, Inc. ran from 1997 until sometime in 1999. Bill and fleecy founded their version of Amiga, Inc. that same year, but AmigaDE wasn't announced until sometime in 2000. MorphOS was started in 1999, maybe earlier... a few years before the Amiga, Inc. debacle.

By 1998, the PowerPC was already a fundamentally dead-for-desktop processor, since Apple canned the Mac Clones in August of 1997, so the best you were going to do is get Apple's sloppy seconds. Maybe MorphOS made a little better approach out of this by supporting used Macs, but really, neither was a "way forward", except for hobbyists. "Runs on old Macs" is hardly a business model, or a way to bring in a significant number of new users. That was my definition of "way forward".

And not that AROS does that either. And AROS isn't finished. But it's also something that's not going to die just because some company gets tired of it. And, much like the GNU project did for Linux, AROS has certainly helped out MorphOS, eh?

I don't currently have a problem with either one. I have no personal use for a PPC computer, but if you're happy with an old Mac running MorphOS, more power to ya. At least it's not this "X1000" nonsense, which to me anyway looks like yet another false promise to the Amiga fans.

Andreas_Wolf,
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With that said... there did seem to be "morons on our team", as the old comedy routine goes. I suppose it's possible, maybe even likely, that the documentation, the German translations, or something of that ilk got screwed up in the sale paperwork of Commodore/Amiga to Escom. But that was the end of it all... once Commodore was sold, the liquidation was complete... there was no entity other than Escom that could have retained the rights to the AmigaOS.

boot_wb,
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Damn, the secret is out.... I do intend to Mayor of Mr. D's Pub, one of these days.

When I talk on technical matters, even something like what (in the USA, anyway) might constitute copyright infringement, unless it's a very knowledgeable crowd, I do tend to supply definitions. That was not an accusation... but when I say I believe Ralph, that itself bears no technical merit.

The basis perhaps for all of this seems to be that Petro was randomly handing out snippets or perhaps whole listings of Amiga source code back in the early AT days, when he was still actually in charge. And I don't know German Law, so maybe that was just dandy. In the USA, if I wanted to see the source code, and a guy like Petro, CEO or GM of a company, handed me a listing, I'd hand it back in a femtosecond, unless it was accompanied by a written license agreement.

As CEO or GM, perhaps he has the right to make that agreement, perhaps not, but it certainly has to be vetted by company lawyers, possibly by the board of directors depending on the extent of the code release. That's a major company asset, after all. If Petro just handed you code, and you used it, say, in a product, without a license, Amiga Technologies or Escom could absolutely come after you for copyright violation (they might have to go after Petro, too, as part of that process).

Just sayin'. One reason I like FOSS... much easier rules.

@humantarget

First off I'm quite impressed that you are actually replying here, that takes guts, however there still seems to be missing the crucial component this thread originally called for...

Quote:

But that is an entirely different claim than the one you made earlier, in which you claimed that just seeing aforementioned code constitutes a copyright infringement, which is just plain silly.

When companies give outsiders access to their secrets they usually make them sign NDAs, and the reason for this is of course to legally bind them to not use this knowledge outside the scope initially intended (NDAs also usually contain an anti-competetive clause). Without such a document they would have no legal way to stop a person using this knowledge in any way (except verbatim; this is where copyright infringement comes in).

If there was reasonable doubt a person without a currently binding NDA (they all have an expiry date) had used such knowledge verbatim you could at best get a court order for a source review, you can't go around claiming copyright infringement, that would be considered libel.

Anyway, since you say you believe Ralph this should all be considered moot, there's just those three final words missing...


- CISC

humantarget,
Quote:

Escom could offcourse only get that way what did belong to C= before (doh).

The problem was that C= in it's last days had sold distribution/production rights of 3.1 to VillageTronic and that these contracts were unclear on what they really meant.

Was Escom allowed to sell new Amigas with 3.1 ?
Was Escom (or the companies that followed) allowed to sell upgrade kits containing (parts of) 3.1 (that would be 3.5 and 3.9 and even 4.x) ?

Thats what the "stupid german judge" had to decide on (but AFAIK never actually did).

> Petro said all kinds of things that weren't true. They were talking PowerPC then,
> but doing absolutely nothing about it... maybe that was Petro's cozying up to
> Phase V to have something to sell.

Now you're being unfair towards Tyschtschenko here when you make it seem like this "Power Amiga" thing was his pet idea alone. This press release is from November 1995 when Amiga Technologies still had a dual leadership consisting of both Petro Tyschtschenko and Stefan Domeyer. And it seems they had the blessing of their boss Manfred Schmitt, founder and chairman of Escom, who said only 4 days later:

"we have decided to leave the Motorola 68000 range of processors and upgrade the system with the power PC processor next year. The future machines will of course run with Amiga OS. The choice of the Power PC was made for its speed, and also because it is actually the only RISC processor that is currently used in personal computers, which will insure us that needed quantities will be available at attractive prices on a mass market. [...] we will concentrate on improving and porting Amiga OS to other processors. [...] The implementation of the Power PC processor will be a first step in that direction. Later, this processor will replace the 68000 chips in the rest of the Amiga product range. This is possible thanks to the range of versions that Motorola provides, from the 602 up to the 604."
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1995/at951117.txt
http://www.amigareport.com/ar320/feature9.html

> actual PPC development didn't really start until December of 1995, when
> Stefan Domeyer was in charge and brought Andy Finkel and I into the
> company in order to actually deliver on this. Which was happening

I don't think that a one month delay between a declaration of intent and actual development start is that unusual.

> they had hired an outside firm to make the "Walker"

Yes, these were MAZeT for the electronics and KS Design for the housing.

> 1997 wasn't necessarily a real date, either, but it did depend on
> just how well they financed the software port.

Yes, it's not unknown to me that press releases are usually created to represent an (sometimes overly) optimistic stance on the things supposed to come ;-) Yet it was "1997" that was announced in the press release as the target date, that's why I mentioned it.

> The Gateway version of Amiga, Inc. ran from 1997 until sometime in
> 1999. Bill and fleecy founded their version of Amiga, Inc. that same year,
> but AmigaDE wasn't announced until sometime in 2000. MorphOS was
> started in 1999, maybe earlier... a few years before the Amiga, Inc. debacle.

According to Ralph Schmidt, MorphOS development started in 1998, so midway through the Gateway-Amiga era. To quote from what you in this very thread told about that time: "Gateway wanted to basically toss AmigaOS out and replace it with Linux". Even when it was still QNX in 1998 (plans changed to Linux only in 1999), my assessment still stands that MorphOS was the only way forward in terms of "AmigaOS" as we knew it, no matter whether we talk about mid-2000 (when the first public beta of MorphOS was released) like I have done or about 1998 (when MorphOS development started).

> Maybe MorphOS made a little better approach out of this by supporting used Macs,
> but really, neither was a "way forward", except for hobbyists. "Runs on old Macs"
> is hardly a business model, or a way to bring in a significant number of new users

When MorphOS development started in 1998, it was still to take 7 or 8 years for Apple to ditch PowerPC, so I don't know why you're mentioning "old Macs" and "used Macs" when in fact we're talking about the 1998 to 2000 time frame here as that's what my assessment of "only way forward" was in reference to. It's true that Mac support didn't eventually come before 2009, but the original plan (uttered early 2002 by Ralph Schmidt) was to commence work on a Mac port end of 2002, which it seems didn't happen for various reasons.

> not that AROS does that either. And AROS isn't finished. But it's also something
> that's not going to die just because some company gets tired of it.

True. I was talking about a point in time 11 years ago. To get an impression on the state of AROS back then, here's the AROS status update from the same day the first public beta of MorphOS was released, even containing a short note to the MorphOS developers at the end:

http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv/000801.shtml

> AROS has certainly helped out MorphOS, eh?

Yes, definitely. Nobody's denying that, quite to the contrary:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:morphos-team.net+aros

> if you're happy with an old Mac running MorphOS, more power to ya.

I am, thanks.


Edit: changed MAZeT website to archived one

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 07.03.2023 - 20:10 ]

Hi CISC,

Quote:

Silly it may be but Dave's quite right. That's exactly how the law treats it.

I work at an IP vendor and we get this sort of thing all the time. Some people sometimes get access to 3rd party code but they then have to be *very* careful what they do and what projects they work on.

humantarget
Damn, the secret is out.... I do intend to Mayor of Mr. D's Pub, one of these days. ,

Sorry Dave, I usually don't troll.
Glad to see the "I believe Ralph" comments after the long hashed "What Andy says he saw" story.

Did you ever consider that you anti-MorphOS bias might be based in previous work for competing endeavors?

After all "MorphOS is slow", but it is faster than OPS4 and you've made positive statements about that product.

And the
Maybe MorphOS made a little better approach out of this by supporting used Macs, but really, neither was a "way forward", except for hobbyists. "Runs on old Macs" is hardly a business model
is more insightful then you realize. I think the development team stopped pushing this as a business enterprise several years ago. Now they're just improving and expanding the original product to appeal to the hobbyist base.



[ Edited by Jim 05.06.2011 - 02:05 ]

Quote:

It really is not, if that was the case there would never be the need for an NDA.

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That is just because they want to make sure there will never ever be any reasonable doubt as to whether code has been tainted or not, it is not a direct legal concern, but rather an indirect one.


- CISC

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An NDA does not change the license that code is held in. With regards to source code, an NDA gives you some level of access to code without giving you permission to share your access with anyone else.

Let's say you gave out an NDA to a new MorphOS developer over MorphOS code. That new MorphOS developer would now have access to the MorphOS source code, but the NDA does not give them permission to alter the license. If the new developer released a competing product based on MorphOS code then you'd legally be able to stop them, regardless of the existence of an NDA.

In summary, an NDA is irrelevant when it comes to licensing, they are separate concepts.

Quote:

Wasn't that my point exactly?

NDAs are about knowledge, copyright is about produced content. NDAs exist because you can freely apply knowledge without breaking any copyright (though there is a third domain called patents which try to curtail that).


- CISC

Quote:

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Thanks itix ... i would love to see this attitude (which i totally share), on others fora as well

ps- or even as a TAG/signature ... if i have your permission of course.

@Framiga

You have my permission to quote my posting or use parts as a tag/signature

Thank you!

@humantarget

Dave,

I read your insinuations on the recent AmigaWorld thread that MorphOS is based on stolen sources. I read the same in the 2003 Moobunny thread that you commented on.

After several years of these allegations, you don't have any evidence. Your basis for making this claim is that Andy Finkel once told you in a personal conversation that he saw some code supposedly from Phase 5 that had comments similar to his comments. That does not even come close to hearsay.

This thread is 6 pages long now and you've posted 10 times, changing the subject to reflect negatively on MorphOS performance. Don't you agree that it's time you put your hands up and admit that you have nothing to back up your claims ?

If Andy Finkel wants to come forward and say something to the contrary, then let him do so.



Edit: correction about Moobunny link

[ Edited by koan 07.06.2011 - 21:38 ]

> the 2003 Moobunny thread that you posted the link for.

Actually, I posted that link. He just quoted me on it ;-)

@Andreas

Thank you for your correction.

You know Andreas, koan has a point. Dave hasn't really addressed Harry's point and you haven't been holding his feet to the fire like you would with the rest us.

So Dave, how about it? Any proof other than several year old hearsay?

> You know Andreas, koan has a point.

I never denied that but merely told him that it's been me who posted said MooBunny link here in this thread.

> Dave hasn't really addressed Harry's point and you haven't been
> holding his feet to the fire like you would with the rest us.

I'm really just an onlooker to this "stolen source code" affair and can't be arsed to put myself on the line here ;-)

>I'm really just an onlooker to this "stolen source code" affair and can't be arsed to put myself on the line here

That's curiously conservative of you.

Dave's not likely to respond to me.
And apparently koan's post hasn't drawn a response.
But he was responding to your posts, even if he wasn't directly addressing the thread topic.

> That's curiously conservative of you.

Really? What would you've expected me to do or write then?