Submitted by Just when you thought the Amiga world was finally getting its act together, finally making things a little less obtuse for outsiders, this happens. So, we have the AmigaOne X1000 coming up, a brand-new PowerPC computer, running the real deal – AmigaOS 4. In the meantime, Commodore USA – the one with the sketchy website – has apparently secured rights to the Amiga hardware brand, and is planning to release Amiga-branded computers running AROS. In the meantime, Hyperion, the Belgium company behind AmigaOS, who is working with A-eon on the AmigaOne X1000, claims this is a clear violation of the settlement between them and Amiga Inc., and has notified its US lawyers.
Commodore USA sent out a press release yesterday in which they state they’ve reached an agreement with Bill McEwen of Amiga, Inc. (one of the two companies named Amiga) in which Commodore USA may use the Amiga hardware brand on computers running AROS, the open source Amiga-inspired operating system.
“We are ecstatic to be partnering with Amiga Inc. in this new, exciting product launch,” states Barry Altman, President and CEO of Commodore USA, “The legacy of the Commodore and Amiga trademark brand, reunited once again after so many years, and our reintroduction of the legendary All-In-One computer keyboard form factor, combined with the twenty-five year anniversary of the introduction of the first Amiga computer by Commodore International, is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
My first thought was – wait, doesn’t this violate the settlement agreement between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, which finally settled all the legal mumbo-jumbo in the Amiga world? It appears Hyperion believes that this is indeed a violation, and as such, they have asked their lawyers in the US to investigate the matter.
“Our American lawyers will take action against this,” Hyperion states, “This is blatant violation of the rights Hyperion Entertainment secured in the settlement agreement with Amiga Inc., Itec and Amino.”
The facts here are that if there’s two companies I would blindly trust in the Amiga world, it’s Hyperion and ACube. These are the only two companies that have kept their promises and delivered actual working products we can buy today. Everyone else – including A-eon (until they ship the X1000) – are fair game.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that my initial distrust of this Commodore USA thing was more than justified. Their website (shoddy doesn’t even begin to describe it), their rebranded products, their unilateral press releases which can’t be confirmed anywhere else but on their site… It all reeks of a massive con. Are their products even shipping, after months of promises?
Unless proven otherwise, I’m assuming for now that Commodore USA is, at best, a hoax, and at worst, a very inept con. They are properly registered as an LLC, though.
Amiga is becoming the Lindsey Lohan of IT – when it shows up in the news you know its going to be scandelous and mostly trashy but you can’t help be read it while waiting to check out at the grocery store.
This is worse than day-time TV.
How big is the Amiga market? It is hard for me to imagine how any of these companies can generate enough revenue to even afford to sue each other.
“How big is the Amiga market? It is hard for me to imagine how any of these companies can generate enough revenue to even afford to sue each other.”
The Amiga community is probably in the range of 15,000 – 20,000. The OS4 market is in the range of 1,000 – 1,500.
Yes, thats what it says now over at the A-EON web site. So it is still time for this story to end in… nothing but hot air. Again. I really wish it wasn’t so.
Talk about rats fighting over a piece of cheese…
No, it’s more like vultures fighting over a pile of bones. The meat already rotted away long ago.
Judging by the vaste number of vultures who want to pick these bones, it should all be made of gold.
Really anytime Amiga gets enough power to rise again, there are vultures everywhere who pollution the market and spread FUD, so people are scared to buy Amiga, or are attracted by these shenaningan mermaids.
Who wants to prevent Amiga to fly again and tries always to destroy its market???
Why the name “Amiga” makes the great sisters of Information technology market to get so scared?
Why there were rich people like Pentti Kouri from Nokia who invested millions of dollars in former Amiga Inc. lead by Bill Mc. Ewen to let them produce no any real Amiga products and then let the Amiga market to fall under the survival line?
Who is only company who makes proprietary all-in-one computers today?
In 2007, when Amigans were looking at PA Semi’s PWRficitent processors for next-gen Amiga, Apple come out of nowhere, bought PA Semi and killed the chip.
Then Intrinsity was working on another PowerPC design, and surprise surprise… Apple bought them too.
Apple really wants PowerPC dead. Or they want Amiga dead…
Time to buy some popcorn for several years of upcoming legal war =)
In the article the author refers to OS4 as the real deal. This is hardly the case. OS4 is no more the real AmigaOS than AROS or MorphOS. They are all equally legitimate, the only difference being that one managed to secure license to use the name through techniques not unlike what CommodoreUSA is using today.
Amiga OS is the Real Deal. It is the legally contracted port of the Original Amiga OS. AROS is an Open Source copy and reimplementation of the Original Amiga OS and APIs. Morphos is some hacker’s attempt with pirated code to rebuit Amiga OS in his image.
BS. What “pirated” code does Morphos have?
Morphos is entirely different from AmigaOS/AROS. It is just have Amiga compatible environment(ABOX) as one of sandboxes managed by microkernel.
ABox is an emulation sandbox featuring a PPC native AmigaOS API clone that is binary compatible with both 68k Amiga applications and both PowerUP and WarpOS formats of Amiga PPC executables. ABox is based in part on AROS Research Operating System.
Edited 2010-09-01 16:30 UTC
Presumably you have some evidence to back up this allegation, right?
What’s that, you don’t?
Heh didn’t think so.
Lies, damn lies, and Commodore USA’s claims.
How accurate is the report linked to regarding the Hyperion and Amiga Inc. settlement agreement?
I asked because I just reread that older story and it appears from that that Hyperion have the exclusive rights to version 3.1, 4 and 5 of the Amiga OS and putting that on any hardware platform.
They also appear to have the rights to use the “AmigaOS” brand and the bouncing ball logo.
There is no mention in that story of the “Amiga” brand. So did they agree the exclusive rights to that or not? Sounds like (unless theres been some misreporting on the Hyperion agreement, or I’ve mis-read something (likely)) that Hyperion have made a big mistake and Commodore have beaten them to the punch!
Still these stories are better than watching Eastenders, and are more entertaining than who Apple/Microsoft/Google are sueing/being sued by this week.
Frankly, anything is better than watching Eastenders.
It does seem terribly sad that whenever there is a breakthrough in the Amiga world, there is always a lawyer waiting on the other side.
A bit like Easterders really – whenever anything good seems about to happen, somebody gets murdered/cheated on/swindled/slapped by Peggy/whatever!
ok. so what we have here is some character in florida running a furniture company out his house. he contracts with chinese manufacturers to stick his label on them, print cardboard boxes with his logo, and voila.
and now he’s using the same playbook with ‘commodore USA’ calling himself a CEO and taking chinese OEM PCs, sticking a label on them, and calling them commodores. oh, and taking trademarks and graphics from people without their permission — presumably so they can contact him later. if they care. because he doesn’t. he’s conned some poor schmo from australia who is a regular on one of the amiga enthusiast boards to be his ‘CTO’ after the guy kept emailing him. and the poor guy actually thinks he’s part of something legit.
bill mcewen must be desperate for money. i can’t imagine that even he would get in bed with an operation like this. and that’s assuming the ‘press release’ was actually truthful. which, given the history of ‘commodore USA,’ isn’t a given.
oh, and if anyone wants to see the corporate headquarters of barry’s furniture and computing empire, try this link from http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5250+NE… .
yeah. CEO. return of commodore. enjoy your chinese white-box goods folks. that sticker is gonna let barry pay his mortgage this month.
— eliyahu
Sounds familiar… is he brother to the guys who were selling the Mac clones?
Edited 2010-09-01 16:34 UTC
They’ve been posting on both AmigaWorld and aros-exec, amongst others, and they say they’re shipping products (and hiring amigans as staff!)
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?start=0&topic_id=5…
The agreement between Amiga Inc. (I think the new one, e.g. the renamed one) and Hyperion is about right to use the trademarks AmigaOS and (I believe) also AmigaOne, but definitely not Amiga itself. The agreement also gives Hyperion right to AmigaOS 3.x in order to develop AmigaOS 4.x and newer versions.
I more or less expected this to happen when the settlement was published.
Hmm… what does “associated trademarks” mean? Hmm… at least the boing ball is included inthere, but does it also mean “Amiga”? Since the boing ball and “AmigaONE” are considered part of “associated trademarks” in regard to “AmigaOS”, wouldn’t “Amiga” be a part of that too?
Oh, I’m confused…
The old Amiga slogan seems doomed to correctness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxfrWnLI-dc
Just so all are aware there are already two Aros platforms. IMICA Silent Atom based and high performance AresOne.
http://www.vesalia.de/e_aresone2010.htm
http://www.imica.net/