Hyperion Entertainment Cvba in Sint-Agatha-Berchem (Brussel) was declared bankrupt by the court in Brussel on 27-01-2015. The appointed curator is Bert Dehandschutter. The company number is 466380552. The (main) activity of Hyperion Entertainment Cvba is computer programming, consultancy and related activities.
Hyperion is the company that developers AmigaOS 4.x. I’ve never quite understood how, exactly, the licensing situation was arranged – the owned the right to develop the operating system, but did not own the brands and operating system itself etc. etc. – but let’s just hope this isn’t the end of the road for AmigaOS.
It’s sad indeed.
Hyperion were just the latest in along line of incompetent and arrogant fools whom entered Amigaland to tarnish the legacy of what is the worlds best home computer ever, the Amiga…
Do I feel sorry for them… Nah…
Hyperion never were an actual part nor had anything to do with being a real Amiga owner & user, all they did was tarnish the name & legacy of the Amiga…
It’s the part time tea lady at Hyperion HQ I feel for now that she’s out of a job…
Don’t fret though the next pretender to the throne will be along soon enough like all the vultures before to snaffle up in the latest fire sale whatever they can that has even an inkling of the Amiga name attached to it and pretend to be king for a short while before they too like all who came before are duly served with bankruptcy proceedings…
You’d think they’d learn but Nah… their egos don’t allow for that… 😉
Edited 2015-02-14 02:21 UTC
Those are some pretty bold assertions, do you have any evidence to back that up?
QUOTE: jockm
Those are some pretty bold assertions, do you have any evidence to back that up?
No “assertions” made there bold or otherwise just facts…
Facts that are well known by anyone who’s been with the Amiga for the past 30 years and facts that can be verified by the all the previous court proceedings & legal wranglings with the long history of all the various previous incompetent businesses that destroyed the Amiga as a viable product (including Commodore/ Amiga International), all reported by reputable sources and available in the the publicly available transcripts of those court proceedings…
All things you can easily verify for yourself with a some simple searches on the internet… 😉
Edited 2015-02-15 06:44 UTC
Seems like AROS is the only Amiga-related project not to go entirely belly up.
I thought MorphOS was still around too?
Oh yeah, right. Forgot MorphOS.
MorphOS seems to be going on. It actually seems to be somewhat healthy in regard to survival. Possibly also healthier cooperation with the community; at least it looks like that from the outside.
MorphOS is runned by an independent team of programmers, and they are according to them not getting paid for their work. They do this for other reasons than money. So unless they get tired of it all they will probably keep going.
Out of curiosity, where does the license fee go?
From what they have told me (I’m a beta tester): buying hardware and paying servers mostly. And maybe they are saving up the surplus. Selling one licence a day doesn’t give a lot of money anyway when shared between all.
I do wonder for how long though. Sooner or later the supply of PowerPC Macs is going to run out, breaking down, etc.
If they don’t port some other architecture, then it is only a matter of time. AROS seems like the only option that learned the lesson that tying yourself to a single architecture is a bad idea
I don’t think they have to worry about that for a while. Apple sold millions of units annually between 2004 and 2006 (when they stopped using PPC). And if the hardware was faulty, most of them would have broken down by now. Realistically, they can get another 15-20 years of supply going. The problem is rather that by that time it will be too outdated to be interesting.
The MorphOS Team is very aware of that but they have stated that there is still things to be done with PPC and also that an architecture shift will require a lot of work. So it’s better for the time being to focus on making the OS better.
I agree. I have a Powermac G5 @ 2.7 Ghz and a Powerbook G4 @ 1.67 GHz and they don’t feel slow at all, even considering that it’s 2015 now.
But an ISA shift is planned, eventually.
Every PPC Mac I owned is non operational at this point. Don’t be so confident. And while yes millions were made, but the pool available is much smaller than that.
I keep hearing people not with MorphOS say that the MorphOS team is aware of the portability issue and is actively/planning/or vaguely thinking about, but I have yet to see proof of this. In the two email conversations I had with the team all the did was talk about how hard it would be, how their kernel can’t support multiple cores, and implied they had no short of medium term plans.
Of course. But mind you that Apple sold more Macs in 2006 (some 6 million) than every Amiga sold between 1985-1994 (some 5.5 million units in total). And there are still a whole lot of working Amigas out there.
I’m not claiming that there is an endless supply of PPC macs, only that it’s not hard to find working ones, and that is likely not going to change anytime soon. As they are getting older, more and more people are going to sell them (I think we have reached the peak already but still) which will add to the supply.
It’s not ideal by any means. But it’s a good compromise to making your own hardware or spending scarce resources porting to other architectures when there is still things to do with the existing hardware.
The best would be if they had a wealthy company behind them that could pay them all full time to make a lot of magic. But what people seems to keep forgetting is that they don’t have that. A handful of people (compared to Linux’s millions) works on their free time because they want to. This means that progress is so slow that it has to be prioritized sensibly. No wishful thinking can change this fact.
But if it’s new hardware you want, then you will be happy to know that the Team is currently porting MorphOS to Acubes SAM 460 motherboard. You will then get the power of a 10 year old Mac Mini for the price of a 2015 powerhorse motherboard 😉
—
The Team have a policy of not disclosing what they work with until it’s confirmed that it will happen. It’s confirmed that they are planning a shift, but they have, from what I can tell, not started working on it. From what I can tell, it’s not just a matter of hard work (bigfoot told me that rewriting the kernel to run on another CPU will take about a months worth full time coding to do) but also because they are not sure if they should support x86 or ARM. There are serious merits and demerits to both of them. And there are probably a lot of other stuff that worries them. Breaking API compatability, rewriting or abandoning the 68k JIT emulation etc.
And the kernel does actually support multicore. It’s just that MorphOS (Abox) doesn’t without breaking the Amiga API compatibility.
Any many of those are not compatible with MorphOS.
Many computer components, even good quality, go dodgy at 6, 8, or 10 years old. Remember that the entire computer doesn’t have to burst into flames in order to be useless; only a single sub-component of a single component needs to stop working for the entire machine to be ka-put.
True, but a fair good many of them are.
Sure. But my 3 PPC macs with MorphOS are still working nevertheless. I’m not at all saying that they wont break down, only that a lot of them are still working. And they are available cheaply. Which is kinda important when using a hobby OS.
Man .. this makes me weep. I’ve bought a couple of releases off them, updates and dev kits have been outstanding given the size of the company.
Vale Hyperion. <3 <3 <3
The BAFs of the late 90s really gave the Amiga name a bad image, but Hyperion spent years making it worse. Crappy second-rate hardware tied to a buggy OS with the Amiga name around it’s neck like a dead albatross.
Not to mention the abusive characters associated with Hyperion and the years of lies to keep interest in OS4 crawling along.
Goodbye, Hyperion. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass!
“BAF”?
BAF = Blind Amiga Fanatic, the very hard core fan base
and it’s amazing (not so advanced as MorphOS though) but it’s a really great niche OS (It looks better than any other OS on earth, beautiful, fast and simple).
I don’t care about what haters say, most of them don’t even know what Amiga is. I hope Hyperion the best, I want more AmigaOS4 versions and I will keep buying and supporting it.
@ Sergio
How are you going to keep buying it and supporting it when Hyperion are gone ???
I mean short of A-Eon buying or having already bought the rights to OS4 and ploughing money in to continue to develop it I seriously doubt any other company will touch it even if they got it for free…
There simply isn’t a viable market for OS4 for any company to make it worth investing money in, proven all the more by the slight fact Hyperion went under…
Edited 2015-02-14 04:41 UTC
MadFranko,
Bankruptcy doesn’t necessarily imply the company is gone. It can be a voluntary court approved method of getting creditors off your back while you get your finances in order…a last resort so to speak. I’m not terribly familiar with bankruptcy laws (fortunately), but “chapter 11” & 13 are commonly elected kinds of bankruptcies (in US code).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_11_of_the_United_States_Code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy
I don’t know any of the particulars of the case, but I figured it’s worth pointing out that some classifications are designed to recover an entity rather than to outright liquidate it (ie “chapter 7”).
Edited 2015-02-14 05:17 UTC
Don’t know why your point to Wiki links about USA law and quoting USA law (ie “chapter 7) as the insolvency proceedings currently underway regarding Hyperion are taking place in Belgium where USA law doesn’t apply…
The world doesn’t revolve around the USA, outside the USA we do have our own laws and way of doing things… 😉
MadFranko,
Evidently you didn’t read the second link at all, because you would have read that it is about bankruptcies around the world. The US was just an example, I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear. If you find the relevant portions of Belgium specific bankruptcy law translated into English then of course you should post it here.
It’s just that on the face of it, your earlier statement “How are you going to keep buying it and supporting it when Hyperion are gone ???” seems to assume that Hyperion are closing their doors. Do you assert that they are? And if so, then based on what?
Maybe they are shutting down, but without further information we shouldn’t assume it, which is what I was pointing out.
Edited 2015-02-15 16:21 UTC
I have indeed found plenty of documents and articles out there explaining exactly how how Belgian Law works in regard to bankruptcy proceedings (in English I might add), all you have to do is a quick search for them like I did and you too will find them…
Just like you seem to be “assuming” Hyperion will be keeping their doors open I am assuming they will most likely not be doing so. We are free to make assumptions but an assumption does not mean you are “asserting” something… 😉
Maybe they are staying open but we shouldn’t assume that either… 😉
Whoa there, when you said “…proven all the more by the slight fact Hyperion went under…”, I merely thought I should point out that “Bankruptcy doesn’t necessarily imply the company is gone…”, and “Maybe they are shutting down, but without further information we shouldn’t assume it…”.
There’s no need for this to turn into an aggressive argument, and it would be a shame to have a grudge over such a silly thing, so here’s an olive branch, can we just be pals
http://www.photo-dictionary.com/phrase/2981/olive-branch.html
Edited 2015-02-15 23:39 UTC
True I did indeed say that but currently while it’s not yet proven (bad choice of words on my parts) that they have indeed gone under I really do believe they will just as you seem to be leaning towards them not…
Not sure why you think this is “aggressive” as it’s merely me debating with you what appear to be two different opinions on the subject and rest assured I hold no “grudge” over yourself whom I have never met before nor have the slightest idea of who you are…
At the end of the day does it matter to me as an Amiga user if Hyperion are indeed declared bankrupt, made insolvent and OS4.x ceases to be developed by anyone… Nope not one bit…
The only thing that matters to me in this is, it would be at least one less vulture & failed business gone that did nothing but tarnish the legacy & name of the Amiga. That to me would be a very good thing indeed… 🙂
This happens when your ego is bigger than your potential. Back at the time, there were talks between Amiga Inc. and MorphOS guys. Then Hermans stepped in and started his dirty games. Hence another split. IIRC, Hyperion was even in a legal battle with Amiga Inc., which Amiga Inc. lost.
So – curious, what happens next … not that it would be much important for the “future” of the Amiga …
AmigaOS4 and MorphOS are different beasts and they have different potential users.
AmigaOS4 is AmigaOS period. I mean, It has almost the same look and feel of AmigaOS 3.9… that’s great for Amiga users but can be a PITA for Amiga newbies.
MorphOS, however, is a much more generalist OS… It’s Amiga-like sure, but It’s much more friendly for non-Amiga people. For example, I think any Linux user can use MorphOS and feel very comfortable. Not so sure about AmigaOS4 though… AmigaOS4 is “strange” very different to anything else.
IMHO both OSes must co-exist. Losing one of them would be a sad thing.
Very good assessement.
Just one thing: according to some cross platform programmers MorphOS and AROS are much closer API wise to AmigaOS 3.X than AmigaOS 4. For some reason Hyperion has changed some crusial parts which makes that OS more difficult to program for if you are used to AmigaOS 3 API.
Some people claim it’s because Hyperion wanted to make cross platform programming difficult and force people to choose side. But this is an unconfirmed rumour.
Very interesting. I’m not an Amiga developer so I don’t know if that’s true or not.
I’m just talking from an Amiga user point-of-view.
BTW I think OS4 is more obscure than MorphOS and AROS at every level. What you said makes sense to me.
BTW, if it’s a SAM 460 you are using then you want to know that the next update of MorphOS will support it
Well, there seems to be post of Hyperion on Amigaworld.net, clarifying few things:
The quote a famous writer: “the news of our demise is greatly exaggerated”
This is the result of an unfortunate administrative mishap by a third party and is in the process of being addressed/cleared up.
This may take a while as everything takes a while in Belgium whilst it comes to administrative and judicial matters.
Those dancing on our grave, sorry guys, no party here
Hyperion Entertainment Directors
That doesn’t clearify much. All they are saying is “sh*t happened. Don’t bother us”. The homepage listing the insolvency seems legit and it really isn’t something that just happens. Plus, they where declared insolvent 2 weeks ago. Shouldn’t such an “error” have been handled by now as such information seriously hurt any business.
Maybe this whole thing is just a big understanding but I’m not convinced yet.
All I know is that if it was me I would go into overdrive, post on every forum, write a statement on my homepage and an open letter to the community. Not _one_ post on _one_ forum saying vague stuff.
The awfulness of the PR machine of Hyperion is nothing short of astounding.
No, some errors cannot be handle in 2 weeks. Think about a situation like this: you contract someone to sell stuff for you, and give them XXXX amount of merchandise; they instead declare bankruptcy themselves and disappear, leaving you with neither the goods nor the money. If the amount of goods and money were large enough, that could force you into insolvency yourself, and the time needed to “fix” the problem isn’t a matter of days, but perhaps months to years as you have to deal with the bankruptcy courts both for your own company as well as making a claim on anything left by the other company (if anything). Not saying that’s what occurred here, just giving an example that clearly shows how going insolvent can be not your own fault, but an error by a third party, and not be cleared up in a short period.
Their business model was kind of… a bad joke. There is nothing compelling in AmigaOS nowadays, so little chance for ‘big market’. They might rely on nostalgy but… not with forcing users to buy custom, underpowered yet overpriced machines, required to run that niche OS! In order to run AmigaOS, one needs a PowerPC “Amiga”. I can’t understand that PowerPC madness in Amiga world. Why not use easily available x86 hardware? Apple wannabes? Even Apple ditched PPC a decade ago.
Edited 2015-02-14 11:05 UTC
Or – even better – ARM hardware (Raspberry Pi 2, BeagleBone etc.).
Zbigniew,
Not a bad idea, however they’d have to reverse engineer & manage the closed hardware bits that come on each of these platforms. Doable, but it significantly reduces developer productivity.
As a side note, as cool as I think ARM computers are, intel is catching up to their efficiency faster than they are catching up to intel’s performance. Of course this is primary because intel has more resources than anyone else to throw at advanced fabs rather than because x86 is superior, but it’s still an advantage that can’t be overlooked.
Edited 2015-02-14 14:15 UTC
Only at the very beginning; this has to be done only once.
See? Such powerful company as Intel has to catch up to someone’s other efficiency. A point for ARM.
Yes, I’m aware of this – still I like the competition (we, users, can only profit out of this), and I like that ARM chips don’t need any cooling fans (and not even radiators). Intel chips may be more powerful – but maybe the latest ARM offerings are just “good enough” for many purposes, then we can wait a little for that even more powerful ones?
On the other hand: ARM’s assembler has around 100 instructions, but present Intel processors – more than 1000(!). Horrible.
That was true but it’s not quite true anymore. Samsung has spendt more on Fabs than Intel has for the last few years and they’re reportedly already in production at 14nm finfet.
Intel used to be a year or two ahead in manufacturing, now it’s maybe a few months.
AROS is running on Raspberry-PI, native. Latest ARM hardware is well supported in Linux. Some GPU drivers come as blobs, but AROS uses Gallium3D drivers anyway.
However I agree with your point. Amiga world has so tiny resources to support multiple hardware architectures at the same time. So x86 is the only viable solution.
Edited 2015-02-14 15:52 UTC
Because supporting x86 would lead to piracy killing the Amiga platform… Yes that’s what Mr. Hyperion claimed. He also claimed (though wrapped in bullshit) that the possibility to run Windows meant there would be no AOS software development…
So instead their users have to have both a expensive dongle to run AOS4 and a Windows/OS X machine to actually do things – genius!
Maybe piracy will make them fail. But supporting an architecture that with each new day decreases in size, is far from smart.
To any rational person that is obviously true. 50% piracy with a target of (let’s say) 1M users is better than 0% piracy targeting 10k users.
Hyperion’s reasoning on piracy reminds me one of our former prime ministers who claimed he had been using his mom’s bank account (he had no his own account) to prevent any attempts to corrupt him.
Edited 2015-02-14 22:06 UTC
I haven’t heard this one, but was it by any chance KaczyÅ„ski?
Well, it is not about the PowerPC madness in the Amiga world, but about not having any other chances 🙂
When was Hyperion contracted, the contract allowed them to use AmigaOS brand (not even Amiga as a standalone name) for the PPC HW. Then the lawsuit happened between the Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, and Hyperion won, so they can continue to develop AmigaOS, but only for the PPC.
But generally, I found bot Hyperion’s and MorpOS guys initial arguments quite weak – their opinion was, that if AmigaOS/MorphOs would run on general PC, noone would use them seriously. My claim is quite opposite – I am not willing to buy expensive PowerPC machine to run just AmigaOS.
Well, not sure what drive A-eon owners to produce such HW, buy SW titles, update them, I believe it is not a vital business, but sponsored activity of the company owner … well, just my guess 🙂
I just got this reply from the curator:
“The company announced to start an opposition procedure according to the Belgian Bankruptcy Act. In that case the Court can take a decision to annul the first Court decision which means it is like no insolvency proceeding has even been pronounced.”
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=783990&postcount=55
This article made me think back fondly on the Amigas I owned in the early nineties, which to this day, I believe to be the best computer systems ever invented. I got my feet wet with an Amiga 500 which I expanded six ways from Sunday via the many cool expansion kits available. I also had an Amiga 2000 similarly expanded. If Commodore hadn’t have been so poorly managed, I doubt Apple would be anything but a distant memory today.
So what will happen now to the copyrights? I’m particularly interested in how this affects various Amiga emulators which couldn’t use original ROMs because they were copyrighted.
Hyperion doesn’t own the rights to the ROMs. That the property of Amiga Inc. As long as Amiga Inc. and Cloanto is still going you will still be able to buy Amiga ROMs legit.
It has zero affect on the Amiga Kickstart ROMS and never has had anything to do with them on the first place…
Hyperion hold no copyright to the original Kickstarts ROMS and I don’t believe they have ever claimed to either…
There is only one company in Amigaland whom makes it difficult for emulator users to easily get hold of Amiga Kickstart ROM images and that is Cloanto…
Despite the fact they only licence a distribution agreement for certain Kickstart ROMS but they don’t own them let alone hold copyright over them…
At the end of the day all the claims made by the vulture companies whom infect Amigaland and grip desperately on to any Amiga IP they can to the detriment of Amiga users means nothing in reality…
A fact born out by the number of people out there running an Amiga emulator whom strangely enough haven’t been sued en mass by the likes of Cloanto… 😉