P96 Licensing Status
 

Well.... https://mobile.twitter.com/mntmn/sta...47412744474624

That's something al right.

Whoever that is, I am sure that I will never buy anything from them ever.

The Amiga "community" alright.... What's new

What do the message and responses say?

online ocr and yandex translation:

can only think of one - remind me of the barbra streisand effect ..., does it, maybe.

After the author of this threat is fully revealed, I hope the community pulls its consequences on the basis of these facts - and kicks the money-making-machine of this dude, where it belongs.

#1) discussion on a1k - use yandex translate, works good here.
I already can read Jens and IComp

Sounds like bollocks to me, why would anyone announce their intention to take over a product, thus enabling someone to sneak in and buy it from under them?

I am not sure how to read this, logic wise. A private Individual appears to be talking to the P96 authors in an attempt to take sole custody of the rights for P96. The original owners have previously stated that they did not want payment or mind people using the drivers for whatever reason. Gunnar did approach them to try to get licensing for the drivers and offered payment for them. It now appears this Individual is attempting to try to buy the rights. This will affect a lot of older and new hardware if the license if rigourously defended by a new owner.

It will also have the knock on affect to drive developers to design new drivers that cannot be construed as being created from the P96. May be this Individual will identify himself and let people know his plans? (The email is not a fake btw)

cannot think like that silly moron - but imagine all your investment may go down the hill, and you try to get as much back as possbible, maybe killing potential competitors this way.
I think this might be the intention of such a dude.


#1) over at a1k, you could also read about CyberGFX 68k as an alternative.
Matze, when it did translate well, was sending a card to the author of CyberGfx already.

They didn't announce it publicly, this was an email sent to mntmn, creator of the zorro FPGA graphics card. It's from Jens, and he's saying that he is the Amiga market and everyone has to give him money or he will make their life difficult.

I'm sure Jens has invested a lot of money in the Amiga, but it's extremely sad to see him attempt to control, or scare away, every bit of homebrew hardware that comes out these days (Vampire, mntmn's card, hell even a little USB-PS2 mouse adapter on another thread here).

nice statement by Matze a1k:

Both of these statements above are your own interpretations. As you donot understand enough german it is not your fault but still it is inresponsible to post this without mentioning the vague character of them.

Log in to this this German read for all to be revealed. google translate or yandex translate will give a good enough translation to see what is going on

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=55203

You're welcome to provide your own translation/summary as well :)

(mine is the result of a conversation with mntmn on IRC)

What an incredible soap opera this has become.

As a temporary solution, just put the drivers on P2P networks and remove links to them from product websites or forums.
Good luck removing anything from P2P...

Quoting from http://aminet.net/package/driver/video/Picasso96:

"No distribution restrictions as long as the the archive is complete
and none of the files within is changed."

This means that even if the current archive is removed from Aminet, anyone is entitled to continue distributing it.

I would encourage multiple people to post the SHA1 sum of the current archive, for future verification of other sources. Here is my result:

39ef141050f88bd900653ae4702a93feee844b31 Picasso96.lha

I have uploaded the file to archive.org and it can be downloaded from https://archive.org/download/Picasso96/Picasso96.lha (they also have a page with basic metadata about the file at https://archive.org/details/Picasso96 )

Should it be removed from Aminet, the source of the redistribution permission will also disappear, so if anyone needs this in the future, see https://web.archive.org/web/20160304...ideo/Picasso96

dont forget the unofficial Picasso96 2.1e.

SHA1: 99A4E8676B1F835021D359B315403D43DD75655B - Picasso96-2_1.e.zip (size: 716610)

I noticed that the twitter message was deleted, which sucks. So for anyone who still wants to read it:

https://locutus.puscii.nl/files/P96_WTF.jpg

slightly off topic, but those translations from german to english/norwegian are really tiresome to read.

Surely, the old P96 archive with its original license scheme can still be used and distributed even if someone else buys its rights?

Absolutely. Plus the old licensing scheme has not been enforced for 20 years. Do you see ATI paying the license when they sell (sold) Radeon PCI cards which had Amiga drivers? Nope

Sell your new Amiga gfx card product with a full hardware reference manual, but no driver. Include enough information for anyone to develop a driver.

Then let "the community" develop a driver for it ;)

Job done.

Even if it could, it would still mean no new drivers could be developed from it, only what already exists legally.
The new FPGA boards that are out and coming out would not be permitted to use P96 without being held hostage, neither would any new graphics board.
It would mean the end of P96 anyway as the relevant folk are already looking into CyberGFX as a alternative in case this happens.