> messages [...] that this guy above has to retract his statements

...or provide proof.

> All posts are made by people linked to MorpOS or supporters of the platform.

Not surprising. Or why should people not linked to MorphOS be concerned by accusations regarding the legality of MorphOS?

> All this gives me the impression that one the main reasons of
> existence of MorphOS is to be anti-AmigaOS4 and anti-Hyperion.

Not likely. MorphOS very much predates Hyperion's OS4.

> some people at Hyperion and Amiga Inc. believe the
> C Exec code - developed at H&P I think and on which
> the MorphOS Exec is based - is illegal.

I think this is nonsense on multiple levels:

1. I don't think that anybody at Hyperion or Amiga Inc. considers the C Exec code illegal. Why should they?
2. I don't think the C Exec code was developed at H&P.
3. I don't think the MorphOS Exec is based on anybody else's C Exec code. Do you realize you take Haynie's and Hermans' line here?

> They do believe they have prove for it

I doubt they really believe that.

> Amiga Inc. [...] is the only company to be able to take legal action.

According to the settlement agreement Hyperion is able to take legal action as well.

> it should be possible to move and leave the past behind.

Yes, but reiterating the old claim that MorphOS uses stolen AmigaOS source code is quite the contrary to leaving the past behind, don't you think?

> one party asking the other party to retract their stance

I think you're confusing stance with public statement here. You can have a stance about something without ever uttering it anywhere (in public). Likewise, you can make public statements that don't present your true stance on the matter.

> Even if Amiga Inc. would once come out of it's shelter and start to
> sue I don't think there is much to worry about; given their track record
> of past court case that is :-)

I don't think so. A litigation is always consuming resources, even if the other party's accusations are completely unfounded. Just see Hyperion's statements on how the court case against Amiga Inc. slowed down development of OS4.

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.09.2011 - 07:46 ]

|||




[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.09.2011 - 07:38 ]

> he has in past years occasionally made this allegation, IIRC never
> clearly and openly explaining his basis for it [...]
> Hazydave then finally explained himself clearly (he says Andy Finkel
> said Andy Finkel saw some of Andy Finkel's own code and comments
> from classic Amiga OS "Exec" in assembly language in "C Exec" in C
> by Phase 5 which employed Ralph Schmidt who would go on years later
> to found MorphOS). [...] it was decent of hazydave to finally explain himself
> clearly and publicly.

I think that's basically the same story he told in 2001 already:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7824&forum=3&start=1

@fats

I think difference is that Evert Carton dropped his empty threats against AROS while Dave Haynioe continues to play his broken record.

Dave Haynie being PCB layout guy at some ex-toy company doesnt make him any special.

[ Edited by itix 28.04.2011 - 14:35 ]

> I think this just says when the transaction of the Amiga patents and title
> occurred, the contract didn't make reference to OS 3.1.

Yes. To quote the web page where this document is originally linked from:

"a German appeals court (Oberlandesgericht Celle, judgment 13 U 97/97), after a review that included the contracts between the "Commodore-Amiga Group" and ESCOM AG, and while recognizing that for example patents were transferred between Commodore-Amiga and ESCOM, also concluded that there was no indication that any copyrights for the Amiga operating system itself had been transferred to ESCOM."

> Now did the lawyers in 1997 just FORGET to put that in there,
> or was there a REASON they didn't put that in there?

I guess you mean 1995 here, not 1997. Taking into account that Hembach acted as the bankruptcy trustee during both the transaction from Commodore to Escom (1995) and the transaction from Escom to Gateway (1997), and further regarding the fact that he was the one who in 1998 (after the Celle court findings) drafted and signed those nifty $1 contracts in order to subsequently repair the mess for Gateway, we *may* conclude that the omission of the rights to AmigaOS in the contract between Commodore and Escom was just an oversight. If someone can come up with a plausible conspiracy theory I may change my opinion though ;-) What's not making things easier however is that nobody can ask Hembach anymore since he passed away in August 1999.

> should OS 3.1 be naturally included as patent rights, whether
> or not it is expressly named?

Probably not. Else Hembach wouldn't have considered his $1 contracts necessary in 1998.

> I think there were later legal attempts by entities seeking the OS
> rights to fix this situation, and I don't know about those.

Yes, see link there:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7824&start=27
(it's where the court judgement you linked to is originally linked from)

So, to sum it up, we have Dave Haynie quoting hearsay evidence from Andy Finkel related to a project Ralph Schmidt worked on before MorphOS.
In a US court, without adding qualifiers, Dave's statements would be considered libel.

I wouldn't call that libel. For me it's just pure bullshit. I completely agree with Itix's opinion.

Bullshit can be libel if it hurts your reputation or costs you sales. The real question is why Dave's still spouting this crap almost ten years later. "My friend say this..."Not admissible in even the most biased courts.

[ Edited by Jim 29.04.2011 - 15:59 ]

> Dave's still spouting this crap over ten years later.

November 2001 was less than ten years ago. At least I'm not aware that Haynie uttered those accusations prior to this.

|||

[ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.09.2011 - 07:34 ]

> You're saying Hembach was 1) the bankruptcy trustee for Commodore-Amiga,
> and 2) subsequently the bankruptcy trustee for Escom

Yes, exactly.

> and 3) at the time of the three $1 transactions from Commodore-Amiga to
> Escom he was *concurrently* the trustee for *both* bankrupt companies?

While he *acted* as the trustee for both companies in 1998, I'm not sure if he did legitimately so considering that Commodore-Amiga (and probably Escom as well) had already been liquidated (and thus ceased to exist) before. So the questions to be asked are: 1. Can someone act on behalf of a non-existing company which he had been the trustee of back when it still existed? 2. Can a non-existing company transfer assets to another (existing or non-existing) company?
The notary public in 1998 acknowledged Hembach as attorney for both CBM and Commodore-Amiga, based on their May 1995 contract with Escom, and as attorney for Escom, based on Hembach's July 1996 constitution as Escom's trustee.

> I looked at the three $1 transactions and I didn't see it there either
> (however I may have overlooked it!). Did you see it in there?

Quite to my surprise I don't. They mention "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 1.3" and "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 2.04" but quite shockingly nothing about "3.0" or "3.1". I really don't know what to make of this. Nicely spotted. Now what are the implications?

> one reason that Commodore-Amiga might not have transferred the 3.1
> and prior Amiga OSs to Escom is because the rights to those may possibly
> have been partially encumbered to third parties, say through licensing or
> IP claims by contributors. Candidly, I don't know though exactly who such
> parties might be. Villagetronic? The narrator.device people?

Interesting thought.

"Commodore discontinued licensing the Amiga's speech software from SoftVoice, Inc., so (officially) beginning with this release, the "Say" program, DEVS:narrator.device, and LIBS:translator.library were no longer included on the Workbench disks. According to Matt Sealey, the guys who designed translator and narrator had a spat with Commodore, much like William Hawes did (ARexx), so Commodore had to withdraw it from the OS distribution."
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_21.html

"Michael C. Battilana of Cloanto notes that: '[...] In the early 1990s we had also done some operating system improvements, e.g. to printer drivers and DataTypes, among others. This resulted in our code being included in the 3.1 release. So, technically (and legally), we are co-authors of 3.1.'"
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_amigaforever.html

"Cloanto Italia srl, being [...] a co-author of the operating system, obtained multiple licenses over different versions and components of these original ROM and operating system files [...]. This licensing process began before the initial publication of Amiga Forever in 1997 (the first operating system distribution licenses date back to before the 1994 Commodore liquidation, by which time Cloanto already was both a co-author and a license holder)"
http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-122

"William Hawes is no longer involved in development of Amiga programs because of quarrels in the past with Commodore about the licensing of ARexx"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx#History

IIRC Commodore included ARexx in AmigaOS 3 without Hawes' permission. That might indeed have been an issue for the sale of the rights to software containing this component.

>> Dave's still spouting this crap over ten years later.

>November 2001 was less than ten years ago. At least I'm not aware that Haynie uttered those accusations prior to this.
'
OK, changed 'over' to 'almost'.

Also, i still regret bringing IP issues into this.
No recent negative comments have been issued by Hyperion or Amiga Inc. executives.
As there is no valid party left to challenge their rights, its a subject I should have left alone.

|||



[ Edited by Velcro_SP 31.08.2011 - 08:51 ]

Quote:

His following post is more important, this is what he's really talking about:

HazyDave:
Quote:

I replied with the following where I've tried to give my interpretation of the situation.

Minator:
Quote:

I once asked did they use any AmigaOS code and was given a clear no. I've no reason to doubt this.

The point he's making is about "IP pollution". Has anyone working on MorphOS seen the AmigaOS source? If so, then there is a potential problem.
It's not about if someone has copy-pasted code. It's if they've ever even seen the AmigaOS code. If so, under what conditions was it seen? Was any code produced referencing it and did any of this make it into MorphOS?

It's much more complex than it first appears and it's certainly a valid question.

While some people are writing off Dave as some old dude, it's clear to me he's one of the smartest people who ever worked on the Amiga and given the clarity of the comments he makes, still is. Quite why he is so negative towards MorphOS I don't know, but I suspect it's all a misunderstanding, a very old misunderstanding.

However, I think this can be finally cleared up by answering the questions he posed:
I believe the first part has been answered. What about the second?

Quote:

> His following post is more important

Yes, that's why CISC referred to it in comment #14 and I linked to it in comment #33.

> I believe the first part has been answered. What about the second?

CISC in comment #14 says he thinks that those questions are addressed on the web page cheesegrate linked to in comment #3.

minator,
Quote:

That was not what I was saying. What I was saying is that Dave is irrelevant to the current Amiga community, he is not a stakeholder anymore in it. As a consequence, his stance should not allow to tear open some old wounds.

greets,
Staf.

Fats,


Yes, dismissing Dave would not be what Staf intended at all (that would be more like something I would suggest). More to the point, I think what he's stated is rather important. Dave's no longer a player in our communities. So his comments, valid or invalid, are no reason to bring up another old controversy. It only serves to further the distance between us and other Amiga stakeholders.

@ASiegel

You are mostly right frankly. If OS programs we're talking, the form does not matter. Hell, what's the bloody form of Ubuntu?? Is it KDE or GNOME? On just NONE?

The funny thing is (and I thank you for that notion), that OSes have no particular form, UI managers can be substituted easily, even in the Windows case, to some extent. So the form in question is something pretty much void. Hence it is nearly impossible in the quoted EU-IP Directive definition sense, to dirty-wise rev-enginer an OS

But that's only because regular computer programs were kept in mind while writing this Directive. Thus the directive became ultimately OS-agnostic.

Which on the other hand makes me even a bigger fan of US patent-based regulations. ANd when you say many (most I suppose) programmers prefer not to patent stuff... You know MOST Pharma also does not like that lengthy patents for drugs. Why? Because they're generic pharma, they produce only drugs which are not protected. They invent nothing, only manufacture 100-th breed of aspirin and spend 90% of the budget on marketing. So they're not the least close to what is called INNOVATION.

Same goes to programmers. Most programmers worldwide which are simply just too stupid to come up with something original. This is why they want to be capable of basing their work on someone else's work. But if you have a new business venture, that is, start-up, your thinking optics changes. You want no large software company to just rip off your portal, app or other software stuff, because the innovation is your highest and ONLY value, not the sales force thugs or millions for marketing.

So summarizing this, in every business there are always two options, majority is against the protection, because what they do is slave-immitation of innovative competition so that it can be sold for lower margins (see all those crappy retard iPhone closes for these years). And the minority wants to protect their invention, in order to push this all shit forward anyhow.

So made up yourself which crowd you feel is yours.

DD

As for your statements concerning pharmaceutical market - the truth is more complicated. How would you call a company that's patenting a new, innovative drug that's practically the same as the product of competitors, but has a (minimally) altered particle? No problems to patent it for a long time (except you need an awfull lot of money for clinical trials, but the risk that your congener fails there is somewhat lower than in the case of its precursor). And the sums we're talking about here are so huge that small, innovative company (or some university) that may sometime discover a fantastic drug (yes, that happens) can only wait and beg "the big ones" to invest their money and sponsor the further trials/production. Unfortunately, if they consider that your "new, fantastic drug" has no mareting potential, you can stick it deep in your... drawer. OK, you might have some luck if you develop an "orphan drug", but in other case... :(. IT is completely different in this matter, here even a microscopic company with a good idea may become a giant in no time (and I believe I don't have to post some good examples here).

Also don't underestimate the role of generic companies. If it wasn't for them the innovative ones would sell their innovative (or not-so-innovative-but-nevertheless-patented) drugs for ages without need to develop new ones.

Anyway, where were we? Ahh, Dave Haynie, yes.

DiskDoctor,
Quote:

Just take a look at the patents M$, Apple,Nokia etc etc are sueing eachother for. How many are really an invetion ? Or atleast somewhat orginal ?

By the standards of the US-patent-office I could could apply for "scratch balls with left hand gesture" and given a good lawyer I would get away with it.....

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

This is a pretty accurate description of the history of this whole thing, at least as far as I know it. Andy and I were consulting on software and hardware development, respectively, at Amiga Technologies at the time. Phase V was trying really hard to get involved with AT, including offering to license a C Exec, and perhaps other pieces, of the AmigaOS. Andy did a code review, and what came out of that was largely the reason AT did not enter into any agreements with Phase V.

And do keep in mind, the AmigaOS was a bit of a mess at the time. Some modules could only be built in Greenhills C on a Sun workstation. The first major software project done at AT was to get everything to build correctly under Lattice on an Amiga. And there were definite plans to build a HAL (done right, this not only eliminates system difference issues in the OS, but endian concerns as well) and a PowerPC port.

I have no first-hand knowledge of ANY of the Phase V code going into MorphOS. The copyright issues certainly still apply -- if anyone studied, say, the Amiga Exec source code, then went and built their own clone, that would still violate copyrights. But I don't know that to be true either, and Ralph says it's not, so I'm more than happy to take him at his word.

I'm not sure what information Gary Peake was privvy to while at Amiga, Inc. He was about the only guy there I'd trust anyway. But he might simply have been repeating stuff that Bill McEwan or fleecy moss said.

Honestly, I was frustrated with nearly every "Amiga" effort after Amiga Technologies/ESCOM bit the dust. PIOS/Metabox tried and failed to get the rights to use AmigaOS, and as a result, got in bed with Apple, and that ulitmately killed the PIOS One project. Gateway wanted to basically toss AmigaOS out and replace it with Linux; Amiga, Inc. wanted to toss AmigaOS out and replace it with Tao-OS. And MorphOS was fragmenting an already weak community by offering an Amiga clone. But hey, anything you can cling to I guess -- the AmigaOS and all spinoffs have been largely irrelevant for a good decade now, at least on the scale of computer industry things.

JJ,
Quote:

Windows is fine on the desktop, though yeah, it's lost a little ground.. something like 90% of the desktop these days. Linux powers lots of embedded systems: TiVos and other set top boxes, GPS systems, Android and WebOS smartphones and tablets (and soon, every HP PC as well, as an option), Google's forthcoming ChromeOS, most routers and internet switches, etc. And servers -- much of the web. And "big iron"... custom highly parallel database engines, most supercomputers, etc. It's even common to see uCLinux on things as small as an ARM7 or Cortex A3.

Change "Linux" to "some kind of UNIX" and you get to add in everything Apple does, as well. That's 5% of the desktop and another 16% of smartphones, as well as tablets and iPods.

Of course, you could counter with "some kind of Windows" and include XBox, a smaller number of smartphones, embedded systems like GPS as well, some ATMs, and most HD-DVD players (such as they are). Windows is certainly popular on smaller servers, too.

My point was that Linux is very, very big... even if it's not "in yer face" the way Windows is.

ASiegel,
Quote:

Oh, snap!

Yeah, I was foolish enough to do some work for Merlancia for a short time -- yet another foolish attempt to re-launch some kind of Amiga system (Merlancia did actually make a cash deal with Amiga, Inc., and did start development of a lower cost PPC system). If you payed close attention, you'll also recall that I was the one who actually outed Merlancia as a complete fraud, once I started.

As for PIOS/Metabox, not sure what you're after there. We wanted AmigaOS, but had no legal way to deliver it, so we didn't deliver it. We became the German distributer for the BeBox, launched a line of MacOS compatibles, worked toward delivering a CHRP system, rather than a plain old Mac Clone (well, we developed the CPU cards, the motherboards and MacOS license came from UMAX). When Apple stopped the MacOS licensing, that ended the CHRP project (PIOS One).

No, that wasn't terribly useful to Amiga fans. But at the time, at least it was real. Tell me, what has been all that useful to Amiga fans? 17 years of false promises? Old-fashioned OSs that only run on a dead CPU architecture... on SOCs made for routers or old abandoned Macs? I mean, ok, MorphOS moved a bit faster, but Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion took longer to deliver AmigaOS 4.x than it took to write AmigaOS from scratch, plus 1.2 and at least 1.3. And for what... to run on a computer system that really doesn't exist, and wouldn't grow the community if it even did?

If you're wondering why I stopped trying to re-create the Amiga and just went on to other projects, that's pretty much it. I did not see any point in another false promise to the Amiga community.

ausPPC,
Quote:

I don't know much about MorphOS, honestly. I know it was sold as a replacement for AmigaOS. I'm convinced it's not, but not in a good way. Can anyone explain this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmWIqqRR-g

I mean, what happened to Intuition, or whatever the equivalent in MorphOS ought to be? AmigaOS fundamentally doesn't lock up when overloaded, doesn't stutter in audio even when overloaded, doesn't get a jittery mouse, etc. I might expect those web browser windows to redraw slowly if the system were overloaded in CPU, but Intuition should always run at a higher priority, along with the whole UI event chain.

Even on Amiga-like OSs. Metabox's CaOS wasn't an AmigaOS clone... it wasn't API compatible or anything. It was similar enough to port over AmigaOS code without too much work (we hired a number of Amiga developers to do just that in the late 90s, which helped keep things like Voyager alive just a little longer). In those days, it took about 90% of a 90MHz Phoenix (Metabox 1000) to play an MP3... no FPU in that sucker. And still, I could move Windows around, browse the web, etc. without glitching audio even slightly... sure, the non-realtime stuff like the web display would be crazy slow.

Anyway, I'm not absolutely convinced that MorphOS has nothing to do with AmigaOS. There is no possible good answer for why it's so slow, compared to something like MacOS. In fact, I would have loved to see the same demo, on the Mac under MacOS running UAE. Betcha it also embarrasses MorphOS.

I used to have a Mac in my lab, back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was basically just a display device for a $50,000 logic analyzer... the Mac communicated through SCSI to the analyzer, drew pretty pictures, etc. One day I was working on the Mac/analyzer, when I noticed Chris Green, our graphics wizard (these days working at Valve Software, game credits here: http://www.giantbomb.com/chris-green/72-5032/), looking over my shoulder. He said "I'm trying to figure out why it's so slow", referring to the Mac's graphics display.

And that was old MacOS, before Quartz (which uses a PDF-derived rendering model). But also at 25MHz... run this at 1.5GHz, maybe even use a GPU (though MacOS has been pretty bad at that), and yeah, it'll go faster. So what's the deal with MorphOS?