takemehomegrandma wrote:
@ Andreas_Wolf

Of course nobody (also true for the individual developers) can get all IP rights from one hand. But having been persistently working towards making this possible during the last many, many years, is going to result in one of Cloanto's biggest achievements ever! OS4 has stalled in limbo, unpaid disgruntled "Boing Ball" developers have either paused, halted or they went home and took their ball with them. Major announced and promised developments never got finished, and key stuff like their flagship file system suddenly went MIA. OS3 "Checkmark" developers has let their work be published by Hyperion (even with an abomination "Boing Ball" logo), but at the same time they have been kind of careful about it, keeping their distance in a way, not even accepting financial rewards from sales for example. I think they have been monitoring the situation to see how things are being played out, not wanting to upset anyone more than necessary, keeping doors to alternative futures open.

And why not (a good idea even?), considering Cloanto's open quest for the community to suggest a plausible future path for the governance of Amiga:
https://amigaworld.net//modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=42002&forum=2

Hyperion seems to have reached the end of the line. Just like H&P once did. And Cloanto has a track record in circumventing stalled publishers (H&P) by approaching IP-owning individual developers directly, which "Workbench 3.X" (~OS3.9+ ATM IMHO) is an example of. Not saying it *will* happen with neither "3.1.4" nor "4.x", but it certainly is a possibility. It's a bit up to the developers as well, I suppose. Letting their efforts die off, or having it playing a part in an Amiga future? Maybe even the flagship file system might return to OS4 in an updated version, who knows?

The post-commodore trend has been that the IP over the years has become more and more scattered, a development that is now (thanks to Cloanto) going in the opposite direction. "Commodore"? Well, who knows, but as I said in comment #565 I think the name "C-A Acquisition Corp" is food for imagination. A name that suggest a certain particular purpose; literally to acquire the C-A.


The above image (~2 weeks old?) shows Paul Andrews from Retro Games, Mike Battilana from Cloanto, and David Pleasance, who was the Managing Director of CBM UK Ltd from 1993 - 1995, having been with Commodore UK since 1983. Without doubt, they are talking about new Commodore hardware (with or without the brand, nudge nudge "C-A Acquisition Corp").

Things can happen. And Cloanto has a track record of enabling stuff like this. The PPC enabled Amiga Forever, who in a single package could emulate everything from 1.0 68k to 4.1 PPC, quickly became the OS4 best-seller, before Hyperion killed it by violating yet some agreements and starting their trade mark wars.

P.S.
"The Walker" never became a product, thus "3.2" was ever merely a work in progress. "3.1.4" is in a way an extension of that work, and if those additions to 3.1 doesn't reward a .1 version bump in itself (historically, the evolution of the .1 steps has been even less), then maybe a selective merger of "3.1.4" and "Workbench 3.X" would? The important thing is to get away from the three-placeholder-version scheme that has always been an abomination.