Amiga, Inc. has terminated the contract with Hyperion and Eyetech on 20th December, and has sued Hyperion for copyright infringement on 26th April. Discussion about this trademark suit can be read on AmigaWorld; maybe the community can clear up what is going on here, because I lost track long ago. Update: A detailed description [.pdf] of the suit has appeared. Amiga Inc. is accusing Hyperion of trademark infringement, but also of breach of the agreement the companies signed among one another. According to Amiga Inc., the agreement said that Hyperion would exercise its 'best efforts' to release AmigaOS 4 by March 1st, 2002. They obviously failed that date (AOS4 was released 24th December 2006), and hence Amiga Inc. says the contract was broken. Exhibits included.
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Member since:2005-07-06
I doubt it's quite as simple as they make it out to be. For one, I seem to recall the Frieden brothers (aka Hyperion) mentioning that they still hadn't been payed for their work, years after this contract expired. Basically it seems like they were finishing OS4 out of good faith and passion for the Amiga, while Amiga Inc was just floundering around with their AmigaDE project and creating all sorts of licensing issues in attempts to get more royalties.
At least one good thing will hopefully come of this court case: we'll finally get to hear the complete and honest truth, from both sides of the fence.
Edited 2007-05-01 07:26 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
the frieden brothers isnt hyperion- they are contracted by hyperion. they did have to work on several side projects though, to finance the damn thing and keep development going.
another thing that seems a bit strange, is that ben hermans who own hyperion supposedly is a lawyer and therefor should be well aware of contracts and legal issues.
/stone
Member since:
2005-10-29
I hate to tell you DevL, but it seems quite the opposite now!! After reading these accusations.
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I dont know about you, but 4 years longer than the contracted time IMO is totally unexceptable! I wouldn't have call it just "some time".
As I stated in a previous post, it seems to me reading the court documents that Amiga tried in their best abilities to insure the Amiga OS was moving a(4 year)lot sooner. Who knows where the Amiga OS would be now if Hyperion had released on time and then Amiga might have continued on with a number of other good versions after that.
Amiga stated that they had been working on AmigaOS 5 for two years now. Imagine what could have been if the AmigaOS 4.0 resources and the Amiga OS 5 resources were able to be combined. Where might the Amiga OS be now? Who knows!!! Hyperion stopped any chance of this from happening didn't they.