Quote:

Cloanto owns the copyright to the OS which has been used to build OS4. They will most certainly own the trademark soon as well.

There is currently a war going on between Hyperion and Cloanto. When that is over, and when the dust settles, a new situation will become visible.

Some (much?) of the IP on top of 3.1 that constitutes "OS4" is probably owned by unpaid developers, let's call them "those who currently take care of the operating system" (Hyperion is merely a Publisher). Olaf Barthel recently explained his view that "the Amiga as a hobby, and as something to care for, went wrong, and this cannot and should not stand" (AmigaInc & Hyperion nightmare). He suggests approaching "those who currently take care of the operating system" and present a future plan, a future they can buy into and accept. On a very long term, his vision for a sustainable long time perspective is Open Source.

Cloanto has approached developers directly before. Establishing copyright licenses directly with individual developers was how they managed to circumvent the legal/license nightmare situation concerning H&P's 3.9 and scavage what is now their Workbench 3.X product (their take on 3.9+).

I think this is what he is hoping for. But for OS4 this time.

AeonKit?! They don't fit the picture. They are not involved. They are merely someone pushing poor performance HW based on a dead-end CPU that noone can afford, they are a parenthesis, not anything "future".

You will find Olaf "Olsen" Barthel's opinions expressed in the interesting Interview: Timothy De Groote - Director Hyperion Entertainment CVBA thread.