Quote:

Yes, ACK. The more I think about what he was involved with the more I recall.
eth3com.device

AW search was given quite a speed boost during recent repairs. You can always type in a known nick and get all the information I mentioned above...if you read enough.
topic/nick search
Adam was @ackcontrls

Have fun.

#6

> Cloanto [...] selling OS3.X before it supposedly obtained ownership of Amiga OS
> [...] violated Hyperion's legal right to be the sole entity to develop from OS3.1.
> Cloanto's license [...] did not entitle them to modify those files.

I'm not sure Cloanto was able to "develop from OS3.1" or modify program files without legal source code access. What they did to create 3.X was replacing whole files with newer post-Commodore files they obtained separate licenses for from the respective authors.

> Ben Hermans, acting as his own legal counsel, could file as many motions
> and counter suits as he liked, at little cost, but his time and filing fees.

In no lawsuit in the US did Ben Herman act as Hyperion's legal counsel. Lacking US bar exam he couldn't do so even if he wanted to. The names of Hyperion's lawyers and law firms can be found from the public documents of each lawsuit.

> Amiga Inc. [...] could hardly do any worse than Hyperion has done over
> the last several years.

I think Amiga Inc. could easily have managed to do worse :-)

> we need to stop concerning ourselves with this crap [...]. [...] this is
> a MorphOS forum and we DO need to STFU about OS4.

You may want to lead by example? :-) Besides, this is the "General Discussion" forum "for topics that do not fit into any other forums". As long as admin/moderators do not mind this discussion I see no reason to not continue it. If nobody was interested in it it would die anyway. And nobody is forced to read this thread or even take part in discussion.

> Treavor's latest misstep with Tabor is beginning to make me question
> his judgement.

Beginning? Tabor was announced short of 4 years ago.

> if I've offended anyone, well that was kind of the intention.
> [...] I'm not trying to offend you guys

;-)

> now we are a dysfunctional community

Which "community" would that be?

Quote:

Not to mention wrong fields of practice.

Source

Written while he was still at Monard Law, but obviously still applies.

#6

Obviously a Belgian lawyer is not going to represent himself in a US court, but that doesn't mean he didn't influence his counsel.
And at least a few of you agree with me that AInc could certainly have been worse.
Thanks for the info on ACK.

And by'community'I meant the entire Amiga community, regardless of 'camps'.
It's a total uncivil war.

To further explain my comment about why we need to tone it down, WE look bad when we attack other parts of the community.
I've done it, many of you have done it.
I just reinforces the perception that we are elitists.

@Jim

Quote:

Perception may differ. A sensitive person averse to hearing any criticism, might well see everything having a negative tone as uncivil.
I see a lot of this as venting, more in the line of blowing off steam by expressing frustration and disappointment.

#6

> Mike B. [...] will just have to do the same thing he has been doing for years,
> by going to each individual developer who has contributed to OS4, and obtain
> a license from them for their contributions. I think many of them will work with
> Mike B., give him a chance to see what he can do with the OS, but many of
> them will never work for Hyperion or Ben Hermans again.

Especially those who got burnt by Hyperion may have enough of anything "Amiga" and refuse to give Cloanto a license. And then there are those developers who make no secret of their rooting for Hyperion in the lawsuit. Those might be a problem for Cloanto as well, just for the complete opposite reason.

Just a part of the curse, eh Andreas?

> Mike [...] can license the Amiga name though. And that is a nice change
> of circumstance, we haven't seen that since Commodore USA folded.

Philippe Lang got his "Amiga" trademark license after Commodore USA folded (see comment #611).

> Mike [...] has opened himself up to a countersuit.

That's what happened in March 2018 (see comment #153).

> there was more to the 68K community than the Amiga.

Yes, but nobody (except you) is talking about the "68K community" here :-)

> how many of you think OS4.2 will ever be completed

I think there will be a release called "AmigaOS 4.2". Hyperion director Costel "Cyborg" Mincea already said so a while ago, emphasizing his stance that the version number doesn't allow to draw inferences about feature set.

> even though all Aeon customers are owed a copy

Only X1000/Nemo customers. A-Eon didn't repeat this mistake with the X5000/Cyrus and probably won't with A1222/Tabor.

> Not to disparage Belgians, Mark's one of my favor programmers [...] on
> the planet.

He is Danish. Belgium and Denmark do not even have a common border.

> it was part of a document detailing the development of the Pegasos.

Then I think what you read there referred to the spring and summer 2001 talks about releasing MorphOS as AmigaOS 4, which was *before* BBRV entered the MorphOS scene, AFAIK.

> I have heard that directly from the man

Then this is either about a later attempt not known so far, or he participated in the known 2001 talks. Either way, this would be new info which wasn't public so far, AFAIK.

> Do you doubt it happened?

No, when he says it happened I'm inclined to believe it. I just wonder why he never mentioned it in public (or I missed it)?

> At one point most of these parties were still all talking to one another.

Yes, and to my knowledge, the talks between the MorphOS team and Amiga Inc. to have MorphOS released as "AmigaOS 4" ended in summer 2001.

> I'm as unlikely as you to follow that advice. ;-)

The difference is that I'm not complaining about this discussion happening here on MorphZone, you are :-) But of course you are free to keep participating in and by this help keeping alive a discussion which you say should stop.

> This contention was relatively normal with competing 68K platforms,
> but within the same community?

It's *because* the contenders and their respective followers stem from the same community.

> Make you one deal though, I'll let up a little on Mike and Cloanto

Sorry, not interested in any deal ;-)

> It is possible h/w designs refers to Adam Kowalczyk,
> better known perhaps as ACK.

It's not completely impossible, but in my opinion extremely unlikely that Amiga Inc. commissioned (i.e. paid for) ACK's 2005 Powervixxen LT, 2006 Powervixxen TL, 2007 "Entry Level" hardware design and/or 2007 "High-end" hardware design or purchased any of these designs (if really started let alone completed at all) at any point of time.

>>> There's this ongoing myth that you can just recompile code
>>> from one ISA to another.

>> That's not a myth but a fact, assuming the code is in a high-level language,
>> there's a compatible compiler for both ISAs and the ISAs can operate in the
>> same endianness, which is true for m68k and PPC.

> No, that is simply not true. I've ported software across platforms with the
> same ISA and had to overcome all sorts of architectural issues. Across
> ISAs on hardware that bears no resemblance to the original platform?

You are right. I forgot to include the assumption that the code to be recompiled must not be specific to (aka hardware-banging) components that are missing on the target hardware. You might remember that with the help of CGX and AHI, OS3.x runs on the Draco which lacks the Amiga chipset. Hyperion licensed P96 and AHI for OS4, both of which existed long before work on OS4 began, so they didn't have to invent anything new in this regard. Porting P96 to PPC was probably little more than just a recompile, and AHI was already successfully ported to PPC (PowerUP) before.

> Endian issues and available compatible C compilers are not an issue,
> but the fact that OS3.1 was not completely coded in C is.

Hyperion didn't use Commodore's ASM-ridden code but Olaf "Olsen" Barthel's cleaned-up and ported-to-C code that also is the basis of OS3.5, OS3.9 and OS3.1.4. Of course, some small low-level components remained in m68k ASM and had to be rewritten in PPC ASM for OS4, but this was expected. Problem was that Hyperion planned to somehow built OS4's low-level components upon WarpOS source code which turned out to be barely commented ASM hell and thus was scrapped, so had to be redone from scratch.
In summary, I share takemehomegrandma's opinion that regarding the original plan as outlined in the 2001 agreement, the targeted 6-month timeframe was not an unrealistic one.

> The higher end spec is somewhat similar to the X1000,
> but the Aeon system has slightly better specs.

The comparison was somewhat of a mixed bag (see comment #860).

> I've always wondered why our developers supported the Acube SAM460,
> when Acube was intimately linked with Hyperion and OS4.

You may want to re-read a MorphOS team member's statements:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=11037&start=205
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=6805&start=89

> Sure, some of the boards went to industrial use or Linux aplications.
> But the bulk went to OS4 users.

Yes, ACube's medium-term or long-term goal was always to sell mainly boards for industrial use, with the number of boards sold with OS4 representing as small a part as possible. Somehow this didn't work out for ACube.

> So the only reason we didn't support the X1000 was Ben Herman's
> direct involvement with the first iteration of Aeon?

This might have been the main reason back then. If you want to know for sure, you should ask your contacts within the MorphOS team :-)

>> I wasn't aware of anything except the two proposed motherboard designs.

> You were thinking of PowerVixxen and PowerVixxenTL.

I have a feeling the Powervixxens aren't what Jim was thinking of :-)

> AW search was given quite a speed boost during recent repairs. You can
> always type in a known nick and get all the information I mentioned above

Pity that entering a keyword is mandatory since the change.

> WE look bad when we attack other parts of the community.

Yes, however I don't think that reporting on and discussing about a lawsuit affecting "other parts of the community" constitutes an attack.

Quote:

Really, my mistake then, since Mark at one point mentioned his country of origin. I think he mentioned it due to my mistaken belief that he was of German origin. I stand corrected. Of course, he's a South African now.

OS4.2? Yeah, they'll probably use that number, but I doubt the feature list will be as extensive as previously claimed.

OS5? Who knows. The future of anything Amiga related is so unpredictable.

Mike might even win his lawsuit.

We might even see some development with the Power version of MorphOS after the X64 version is released.
Again, who knows.

I sure don't. I try to keep questions and inquiries to a minimum. Over the last few years I've come to enjoy these 'Surprise! We're introducing this moments.

As to the 68K market in general, you guys always were a little standoffish.
That Tut image looked great. But it was hard to sell a multi-media system to a 68K user that just wanted to run multiple terminals with text programs.

As I was using VGA during the period you all were using AGA, and we were using a more secure micro kernel OS, I have to admit that I mainly regarded the Amiga and the Atari ST as machine geared to gamers that could also be used for general computing.
It wasn't the Amiga that influenced me to encourage my boss to adopt a GUI, it was a Windows 3.0 beta from IBM.

And as I've said, I was never that impressed with MOS.

But the Amiga does feature my favorite ISA of all time.
And it obviously influenced the X86 MPC initiative (which Tandy and other PC producers embraced).

One thing that we all do have in common. We got our asses handed to us, but a late comer to multi-media that eventually gained a larger market share.

I still feel a little sore every time I use an X64 system, but then they have steadily improved.

Thanks for the correction. I wouldn't want to offend Mark by making a statement that was that incorrect.
I'm really fond of the guy (as well as the other developers I've communicated with).
All good people, but Mark is kind of a hero of mine.

He's done a lot of heavy lifting over the last few years (not to disparage the contributions of everyone else).

Maybe I should explore Cloanto's background a little more, but right now I'm just judging the likely outcomes based on the existing legal documentation and trying to remain objective.

There seems to be a lot of overwrought sentiment being posted here. Many of you still holding some fairly old statements about the legality of MorphOS, that he hasn't repeated in years.
He's also never challenged us.

And ask yourself. Do you really think Ralph and Frank didn't see OS3.1 source code before MorphOS was created?
Sure, the framework of the 3.1 API is fully documented, and MorphOS contains no OS3.1 code.
But by current standards, it wasn't exactly a clean environment.

What I, as a more generalized hobbyist am baffled by is how this situation has remained so litigious 35 years after the OS was released.

It's like Microsoft pursuing people still using MS-DOS or Windows 3.1.
Although I'll admit I have thought about buying a copy of ArcaOS.

Sorry, I'm rambling.
My main point, stated much earlier on, is I never want to offend Mark (or Frank or Michal).
Graphics hardware has always held a special place in my attention.
Going right back to the little bit if code I wrote for the ET4000, to the first accelerated cards (which were pretty unimpressive), to today's powerhouse designs.

To all, take care.
Post what you will.
I'll try to minimize posting my opinions, if not STFU myself.

Oh, btw, Bill was also apparently made inquiries into Amiga DE.

Don't know if he's mentioned that either.

But one thing is obvious, he is one of those people you mentioned that has become frustrated with anything Amiga related.

He really did consider that three e5500/e6500 systems we ended up outlining, but I can't help but feel that he just didn't want to reenter this market, move back to PPC after moving to ARM or deal with the personal attacks or melodramaanymore.

Quote:

Funny, that was also my first complaint. heh.

btw, I don't believe the earlier info about ACK (Livewire) was on AW. You should be able to read the stories on the other notations I made with some obvious keyword input.

New PowerPC Products for the Amiga 1200

#6

Did any of this stuff actually reach production?

All 100% vapor-ware (not even DPaint schematics ;) ).

Quote:

Nothing that I've been posting about reached production stage, no.

Actually most of this appears on a thread that Red is well acquainted with.

Help compile giant list of Amiga hardware vapor

In desperate need of updating, but frankly we all became numb just thinking about that prospect.

#6

Sadly it isn't limited to Amiga. Yesterday I saw a Commodore 64 thread on AmigaWorld hijacked by a Hausser-style "Don't buy this, it's based on crappy Linux, wait for this REAL hardware!!!" nonsense. And like Hausser's preferred vapor, it's unlikely most of it would ever reach any of scale production.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that Amiga and Commodore fanboys never get to reboot their retro scene while other systems (like Sinclair and Amstrad) do, because they're a bunch of intolerant unlikeable assholes who don't deserve shit?