What, you mean ancient OS3.1?

Already at least three times the OS3.1 source has been used as a starting base for a new branch (OS3.5/3.9, OS4, OS3.1.4, and arguably Walker V42 update), now we will have to reinvent the wheel for a fourth or fifth time?

(Plus another two branches if you count Hyperion's and Cloanto's updated OS3.1 releases).

[ Edited by Minuous 07.02.2019 - 21:48 ]

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No.

@ Minuous

All sources (3.x and 4.x) are already sitting on the hard drives of the developers who can actually do anything with them. Now Cloanto brings all the foundational copyrights and all other necessary IP required to make actual products out of the sources together under one single umbrella.

Hyperion never owned anything other than a limited license to publish, a license that they forcefully acquired through immoral ways to say the least, a license which conditions they later violated in fundamental ways thus probably (almost *certainly* IMHO) rendered it void (read the document linked to by Senex above).

The developers can now have their work published by Cloanto instead, legally this time, and probably even get fair money from sales as well.

You really need to update yourself on Cloanto, the biggest Amiga-supporting company still remaining active since the Commodore days. While many/most companies post-Commodore turned out to be crooks and leeches (Hyperion being the biggest one), Cloanto has never showed anything but good intentions and pure love for the platform. Their work on emulation, preservation and securing longevity of the platform (all aspects of it) since 1997 is very important and should be recognized and appreciated instead of belittled. And them managing to bring all pieces of the scattered post-Commodore Amiga platform together is a monumental achievement that few people thought would be possible but everyone has dreamt about for almost two and a half decades. And they have even invited the community in discussions about the governance, opening up for putting the OS in a non-profit foundation, even Open Source is on the table. How any of this could be considered bad is beyond me. Cloanto seems to be an angel (and the only remaining constant since the Commodore days) that hopefully just solved the Amiga "Gordian knot".

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 07.02.2019 - 14:17 ]

@Intuition:

You mean they are somehow going to acquire source code from H&P and/or Hyperion? How is that going to work!? Neither will sell their source code to Cloanto.

@tmhg:

Wow, was that intended as a joke, I don't know where to begin...!?

Basically all they have done in the last 20 years is sell a free open source emulator, milk users dry for licences for ancient Kickstarts that they had nothing to do with the writing of (the only change they made was adding DRM), shut down the websites that are actually doing the preservation, suing the company that is actually doing development on the OS, etc. They haven't written an Amiga program for decades and see the platform purely as a retro platform to gouge money from naive users.

They put up a paragraph or two about open sourcing it, years ago. Nothing has come of it; they have never open sourced anything in their history. The source of OS3.1 is already leaked, no thanks to them, and they don't have any OS3.1.4/3.5/3.9/4 sources.

[ Edited by Minuous 07.02.2019 - 23:51 ]

>>> There are many people who have the source code to the OS and
>>> if the new owners to the rights don't currently have the source
>>> then it's [...] very much legal for someone to give them a copy.

>> you mean ancient OS3.1?

> No.

Which OS is it that "the new owners to the rights" now own the rights to that is not "ancient OS3.1"?

> All sources (3.x and 4.x) are already sitting on the hard drives
> of the developers who can actually do anything with them.

...with the severe restriction that even if a developer has "all sources" on his hard drive, he can only "do anything" with his very own sources, not those of other developers just because the sources happened to be integrated into the same commercial product. Thus, Cloanto cannot get the sources of AmigaOS 4.x or 3.1.4 from one hand.

> Cloanto, the biggest Amiga-supporting company still
> remaining active since the Commodore days.

Biggest? Or even only? ;-)

> Cloanto has never showed anything but good intentions

See comments #30 and #108 ;-)

> them managing to bring all pieces of the scattered post-
> Commodore Amiga platform together is a monumental
> achievement that few people thought would be possible but
> everyone has dreamt about for almost two and a half decades.

Do they have more "pieces of the scattered post-Commodore Amiga platform" than Escom, Gateway or Amiga Inc. (whatever incarnation) had between "almost two and a half decades" ago and 2011 (when Amiga Inc. started to sell the "pieces" to Cloanto)? If yes, what are those "pieces" the others didn't have? Mind you, Escom had the Commodore trademark in addition.

> Walker V42 update

AmigaOS 3.2 for Walker was V43.

> You mean they are somehow going to acquire source code from H&P
> and/or Hyperion? [...] Neither will sell their source code to Cloanto.

As the actual source code isn't owned by Hyperion, I guess he refers to the individual developers of AmigaOS 4.x and/or 3.1.4 who are free to give/sell their sources to Cloanto.

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Indeed. Hyperion don't own any of the code.

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Don't forget all the reinventing of the wheel in 3.1 itself, even before 3.5. Two different datatype "standards", v41 and v43. Two different large disk standards (NSD/TD64). At least two different graphics systems (CGX/P96 - older ones existed but did not survive). Several different implementations of scsi.device and of FastFileSystem. Half a dozen competing GUI toolkits. WarpOS and PowerUp. RTGMaster and many libraries like it.

Amiga people were never good at sharing or cooperating. The autism has always been strong.

[ Edited by KennyR 07.02.2019 - 20:24 ]

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Hyperion is the leech here. They are nothing more than a publisher that has time and time again acted in bad faith towards its developers, customers and partner companies. They are currently selling an (alleged) obviously entirely pirate product. Even its core product (OS4) will be found to be illegitimate due to blatant violations of the settlement agreement. Now that Amiga Inc is once again made whole, I see Cloanto Amiga easily winning their court case against Hyperion. Hyperion is a bad actor in this space. I don't see how anyone can defend them at this point. Selling a blatantly pirate product is OK, because it is Hyperion? :smh:

Cloanto is a good actor. Some years back I bought a digital "value edition" Amiga Forever on sale for something like $1.99. Less than $2 for all legal licensed ROMs and OS images. The Amiga Forever physical edition are perfect for people outside of the Kommunity that want a turnkey solution. Just because it isn't a product you may want yourself, doesn't make them a bad actor. Cloanto is on the up and up and have always been on the up and up. That is exceedingly rare in this space, and will be the first such owner of Amiga Inc since probably Commodore themselves. Yes, even Escom had their issues.

-Edit-
This is even leaving out the fact that Cloanto is now the white knight who saved Amiga Inc from insolvency. It is clearly them who paid the half million dollars to bring the company current, and who knows how much else to purchase it outright. We could be having new Amiga hardware products in the future.

[ Edited by redrumloa 08.02.2019 - 11:43 ]

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Agreed.

@minus

Regardless if its a free emulator, they packaged it all into the nice product with legit ROMS/images that it comes with. They are not just "selling an emulator you can download". If it was that easy, why dont you package something up like they are and sell it?



[ Edited by TheMagicM 08.02.2019 - 16:43 ]

> Amiga Inc is once again made whole [...]. [...] Cloanto [...] will be the first such owner of
> Amiga Inc since probably Commodore themselves. [...] Cloanto [...] paid the half million
> dollars to bring the company current, and who knows how much else to purchase it outright.

Cloanto or C-A Acquisition Corp. did not purchase Amiga Inc.

> We could be having new Amiga hardware products in the future.

Cloanto hasn't been known as a hardware company so far.

Amiga IP is like the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings. Whoever gets control of it, no matter how benevolent and well-meaning their intentions to begin with, will eventually become just as bad as Amiga Inc ever were and rise as their shadow.

Hyperion though, have long outstayed their welcome. They've existed 21 years, which is more than half my entire lifespan. They failed at profiting by porting games to Linux, Amiga and Mac. AmigaOS4, as a product, failed. They should have quit then, but no, they just kept digging their grave deeper.

While hardly supportive of the community even at their peak (fostering division was one of their marketing ploys), all they do now - all they can do now - is mooch off the community pay off their debts. It's destructive, at a time Amiga retro could have been blossoming. It's time they finally checked out.

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Hold off on that. The rumours I'm hearing say they did - for $500k. We shall see soon enough.

>> Cloanto or C-A Acquisition Corp. did not purchase Amiga Inc.

> Hold off on that. The rumours I'm hearing say they did - for $500k.

Why should Cloanto now purchase Amiga IP from a company they purchased months before, meaning they now purchased what they were already owning anyway? McEwen signed the IP purchase agreement on behalf of Amiga Inc., not Battilana.

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Legit? All the games included are pirate versions, complete with cracktros, LOL
As to why I don't do the same, the main reason is a moral aversion to profiting off other people's work that they intended to give away for free, obviously "white knight" Cloanto has a much shiftier set of morals.

Wether a game has a crackto or not has 0 meaning to being licenced or not....

But are the cracktros properly licensed?

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cart before horse.
afaik, there is still no proof of who put up the 1/2 million to restore Amiga Inc. to the status of good standing that, in turn, has allowed what followed to take place. Right?

#6

The now-defunct Amiga games website, Back2roots, had legal permission from the software companies to distribute Amiga games. Most of them had cracktros.

(And it was annoying, because it meant they wouldn't install with WHDLoad.)

As long as Cloanto don't stand in the way of such legal sites ever appearing again, then things will be good. We know Hyperion would. They're dicks like that.

> As long as Cloanto don't stand in the way of such legal sites
> ever appearing again, then things will be good.

As long as such legal sites don't offer any Cloanto IP without Cloanto's consent (which would mean the site isn't really legal), Cloanto can't do anything about it anyway, even if they wanted to (for whatever reason).

> We know Hyperion would.

No, I certainly don't. Why should Hyperion stand in the way of sites legally offering old games for free download? Sounds like completely made-up nonsense to me. There have been many such sites (past and present) and I don't remember even one incident with them involving Hyperion.

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Try it with their version of Quake 2. As GPL, you can request the source, and the binaries are legal to own by anyone who has the source.

You will get neither the source nor the binaries out of them, and if you try hosting them you'll be threatened.

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"This experimental port is based on Hyperion's Quake2 sourcecode"

http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=game/fps/quake2.lha

The source code is available directly from Capehill's own site.

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That is neither Hyperion's binary nor its sourcecode.