Contrary to some news items posted on certain websites, Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is not in a state of bankruptcy. Due to an unfortunate set of cirucmstances, the company was temporally listed as “bankrupt” despite the fact that the conditions for bankruptcy were never met and that in the eyes of the law, the company was never bankrupt.
Development of AmigaOS 4 (which recently culminated in the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition) is and has been ongoing albeit that some resources had to be directed away to support the upcoming hardware of A-EON Technology.
Good to have this mishap cleared up.
“The company is in the process of reorganizing itself by opening up its shareholdership and appointing a new exective director. More details on that will follow when all legal formalities are behind us.”
So they got now money to support new hardware and the company is “reorganized” and someone new is put on top… so Hyperion was completely down and someone new put some money in…
I love AmigaOS but Hyperion is doing a terrible job – they should finally join forces with MorphOS and AROS. Maybe together the System can survive.
They should open source AmigaOS under a BSD or GPL license and focus on hardware sales. Keeping the OS proprietary isn’t doing their development any favors.
AROS is the Amiga-API in open source. MorphOS is an other closed source variant. All three are more or less compatible, but drifting slowly apart instead of joining…
Hyperion has just a license for a closed source project – so they could only open some of their new development. But even this new stuff is mostly just licensed from other programmers. This whole project is a legal nightmare.
Edited 2015-04-15 03:31 UTC
I kind of find that situation funny. Because a lot of AmigaOS 4 users are keen on both boosting the fact that it’s based on the original 3.1 source (unlike MorphOS and AROS, making them less worthy somehow) and at the same time cry out that it should be open sourced.
It’s exactly because it _IS_ based on AmigaOS 3.1 that they can’t open source it. It’s owned first by Amiga Inc. and now by Cloanto, so any code that is based on the original can’t be open sourced unless the owners agrees. Which they won’t. So being based on the original source is in this case not a blessing at all.
That will not happen. Too much history. And the systems are too different and too alike at the same time. They would never agree on what to keep and what to discard.
The systems are surviving as it is because the only ones left using them are using them knowing very well about it’s limitations. They/we use it because it’s fun and not because it has feature A or B that others lack. Amiga will not take over the world, but it will not shrink anymore either.
I checked records (staatsblad, etc).
Seems they were declared bankrupt the 29th of january, but the bankruptcy was then later withdrawn on the 10th of april.
I’m glad that they aren’t dead in the water. I’m looking forward to my final release CD arriving in the post (..any day now!).
I’m also glad that they’ve not as the other commenter suggested merged with AROS and MorphOS. I like my AmigaOS/Workbench pure. Whilst I think MorphOS is cute and fun, I really enjoy Hyperions gig. I don’t care too much about outside factors, just the software and it’s great in my eyes. They get my money.
Good one guys! To me, this is very welcome news! <3 <3 <3
Curious to the new hardware .. does this mean that SMP support is coming and working? That’s a bit exciting if so!
Well, it’s still early days in the development, but the internal testing they describe in the blog sounds quite promising: http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=1184
Anyway, I’m also glad they’re getting back on their feet, and hopefully this situation hasn’t caused them too much harm – they might not be bankrupt, but I doubt very much they can easily afford this sort of messing around.
Edited 2015-04-15 09:03 UTC
It has been in the “early days of development” ever since they first announced it, more than 5 years ago. Most things that the blog claims it has been done has also been claimed to have been done all the way back in 2013.
The project has clearly stalled. But with the reorganization of Hyperion this might change and that is what I’m hoping for.
As an X1000 owner I was somewhat disturbed by the original news, Glad to hear they are still working on the next release. Looking forward to multicore support if they get it working
Are they in any way relevant in the grand scheme of things?
No.
But who among us today (people or companies) are?