P96 Licensing Status

[alexh]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

Even if it could, it would still mean no new drivers could be developed from it, only what already exists legally.

I don't think that is true is it? I thought the licensing was you had to pay to sell a graphics card with a P96 driver?

No one paid when the Radeon and Voodoo drivers were developed... did they?

[Leffmann]

I wonder how many other times Jens Schönfeld has sent veiled threats and tried to scare people into thinking they're breaking the law by making stuff for Amiga.

When I look in the other thread about the RapidRoad I see him talking about compatibility and conformance, but the ulterior motive is obviously that he wants to prevent the Vampire from running on his Amiga Reloaded motherboards, because he wouldn't be able to sell any of his inferior accelerator boards any more.

I've been trying to make people aware of how unethical, unfair and dishonestly he runs his business and works Amiga market, and people always come to his defense and tell me to shut up.

Now that he is getting increasingly desperate trying to push competitors out and control who gets to make and sell Amiga hardware, hopefully people will start waking up and realizing who he really is and how he almost runs his business like a racket.

He has no interest in Amiga or the Amiga community, he only cares about how much money he can squeeze out of it.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by alexh

No one paid when the Radeon and Voodoo drivers were developed... did they?

Those drivers were actually developed by Elbox back then and there was similiar drama over them not paying licensing fees to P96.

A bit different back then as Amiga sales were a bit more lively in 2001 and the P96 devs where still somewhat active in the scene.

[roomeo]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

I wonder how many other times Jens Schönfeld has sent veiled threats and tried to scare people into thinking they're breaking the law by making stuff for Amiga.

When I look in the other thread about the RapidRoad I see him talking about compatibility and conformance, but the ulterior motive is obviously that he wants to prevent the Vampire from running on his Amiga Reloaded motherboards, because he wouldn't be able to sell any of his inferior accelerator boards any more.

I've been trying to make people aware of how unethical, unfair and dishonestly he runs his business and works Amiga market, and people always come to his defense and tell me to shut up.

Now that he is getting increasingly desperate trying to push competitors out and control who gets to make and sell Amiga hardware, hopefully people will start waking up and realizing who he really is and how he almost runs his business like a racket.

He has no interest in Amiga or the Amiga community, he only cares about how much money he can squeeze out of it.

+10

He is also allowed to bash other projects, but when he gets some constructive critisism of his own, it is totaly ignored. I am of course thinking about the RR thread. Jens just calls it "negative comments". The silence speaks more than words. He just dont care. Its all about the $$$..

Oh, the double standards by demanding everyone to play by the rules, and then directly lie to customers about his crippled products.

Hello everyone. I am the original and only programmer of Picasso96, which I licensed
to VillageTronic under that name (chosen by them for obvious reasons) to bundle with
the Picasso gfx boards. VTC never had any rights to the software: it was an initial
version of what later became the CyberGraphics software that supported a lot of
different boards and which I licensed to a multitude of vendors. In later years it
was developed together with Frank Mariak and when I left the Amiga he took over.
Picasso96 was never public domain so I keep wondering what is going on here:
I was aware of people changing the code to adapt for newer hardware for a while
now and never minded since I also like to tinker with old hardware/software as
a hobby. Until someone forwarded this thread to me just now and I wonder how
someone else can claim to have the rights for Picasso96.

Just to be clear: I do not want any money, do encourage people to do with my old software
whatever they want to do with it as long as they do not claim to be the author or
charge money for it. And a credit would be nice, but not necessary.

Also: I still have the old CyberGfx sources here, just looked and found the ones for
S3/Cirrus/Permedia etc. (e.g. Cybervision64, CyberVisionPro) and this is a quite
newer and faster codebase, just saying..

No idea why people are using the years older P96, really, can someone try to explain
this to me and maybe the history that I missed ?

[cmsj]

Originally Posted by ThomasCGX

Just to be clear: I do not want any money, do encourage people to do with my old software
whatever they want to do with it as long as they do not claim to be the author or
charge money for it. And a credit would be nice, but not necessary.

Also: I still have the old CyberGfx sources here, just looked and found the ones for
S3/Cirrus/Permedia etc. (e.g. Cybervision64, CyberVisionPro) and this is a quite
newer and faster codebase, just saying..

Since there is some new activity in the Amiga RTG hardware scene (Vampire accelerator boards and mntmn's FPGA Zorro card), would you be willing to help the community to have some more stability on the driver front?

The problem is that neither P96 or CGX have publicly available DDKs. Would you be prepared to make CGX freely redistributable (note: I'm not asking for open source, although that would be amazing), and publish everything people need to make hardware drivers?

Originally Posted by ThomasCGX

No idea why people are using the years older P96, really, can someone try to explain
this to me and maybe the history that I missed ?

Mainly just because there's the UAEgfx driver, which is open source. Reading/forking that driver is currently the only way that people can create RTG drivers for new (particularly homebrew) hardware.

[kipper2k]

Hi Thomas,

Welcome to EAB, as you can see, there is a lot of bad information out there as to who holds the rights to P96 and certain people/companies are demanding payment in order to use the P96 drivers.

I think a lot of the problem has arisen since the development of the Vampire accelerator and video cards that also use these drivers. There are at least 3 separate entities that i know of that are trying to claim ownership and this is preventing people who are trying to help the Amiga community develop new HW with the fear they will face legal action if they do.

Would you be willing to release th sources to put an end to all the bickering and help the community benefit, i am sure that this would be a great event for the Amiga community if possible

Originally Posted by ThomasCGX

Hello everyone. I am the original and only programmer of Picasso96, which I licensed
to VillageTronic under that name (chosen by them for obvious reasons) to bundle with
the Picasso gfx boards. VTC never had any rights to the software: it was an initial
version of what later became the CyberGraphics software that supported a lot of
different boards and which I licensed to a multitude of vendors. In later years it
was developed together with Frank Mariak and when I left the Amiga he took over.
Picasso96 was never public domain so I keep wondering what is going on here:
I was aware of people changing the code to adapt for newer hardware for a while
now and never minded since I also like to tinker with old hardware/software as
a hobby. Until someone forwarded this thread to me just now and I wonder how
someone else can claim to have the rights for Picasso96.

Just to be clear: I do not want any money, do encourage people to do with my old software
whatever they want to do with it as long as they do not claim to be the author or
charge money for it. And a credit would be nice, but not necessary.

Also: I still have the old CyberGfx sources here, just looked and found the ones for
S3/Cirrus/Permedia etc. (e.g. Cybervision64, CyberVisionPro) and this is a quite
newer and faster codebase, just saying..

No idea why people are using the years older P96, really, can someone try to explain
this to me and maybe the history that I missed ?

[MastaTabs]

Hi Thomas,

PicassoII Software != Picasso96

P96 has an PII software emulation library but thats all.

As far as I know you have written the original Workbench Emulation for the PII(+) but not the underlying hardware driver library.

[Lord Aga]

It was high time we pushed everything out in the open. The license/rights vultures were becoming unbearable.

@ThomasCGX
If you set up a P96 donation page I am sure many Amigans will express their gratitude in that way too. Positive approach is always welcome.

>As far as I know you have written the original Workbench Emulation for the PII(+) but not the underlying hardware driver library.

wrong, I did everything, the bringup of the chips, acceleration drivers and Workbench 'emulation' for VillageTronic, before that there were versions for Xperts Viona and Domino gfx boards

oh, and the drivers for VillageTronic were definitely named Picasso96, by them, if I search long enough I should find the original contracts somewhere here. It's true that later unofficial P96 drivers came up which I always thought were just hobbyists tinkering with the code

btw, just remembered another thing from back in the day: the name 'Picasso' is trademarked and cannot be used for commercial purposes, VTC ran into that issue
and had to license the name themselves. I very much doubt that whoever is claiming
to 'own' Picasso96 now pays the royalties for the name. And they can afford lawyers..

[grond]

Originally Posted by ThomasCGX

It's true that later unofficial P96 drivers came up which I always thought were just hobbyists tinkering with the code

And those hobbyists by any chance were Tobias Abt and Alexander Kneers who are now allegedly offering the whole package for sale? How could they get your code?

found part of the Picasso source and sorry to say: I did remember incorrectly: it was 93
if I read this correctly, not 96. Sorry about that. So now I have no idea what this
'Picasso96' actually is, probably someone disasm'ed the original since it was easier
to do than CGX and built upon this ?

[gulliver]

@ThomasCGX

Thank you for coming here and present your views on the matter.

Please upload your sources and binaries so that we could make them publicly available for everyone as you intend to.

Thank you also for your generosity in letting us, simple Amiga hobbist persue our passion.

I think simply making them available is actually for the best but do have to contact Frank Mariak
for these CGX sources first. And we lost contact over a decade ago so I do not have contact info.

[Locutus]

I dont want to be a negative poster here, but at least posting a screenshot of the source archive's contents or such would help with proving that your statement is true.

Otherwise its to easy to nay say.

[MastaTabs]

Originally Posted by ThomasCGX

found part of the Picasso source and sorry to say: I did remember incorrectly: it was 93
if I read this correctly, not 96. Sorry about that. So now I have no idea what this
'Picasso96' actually is, probably someone disasm'ed the original since it was easier
to do than CGX and built upon this ?

I don't think they disassembled your system.
Theirs was formerly called Graffity and VT didn't want to use CGFX since they claimed that you and Frank used their IP for CGFX... old story, doesn't get any better over the years (I think we agree that Hubert was an 'interessting' guy.)

They made a deal with VT and renamed their system to P96.

BTW. VT had a lawsuit with the Picasso family later on but I don't really know how that was settled.

[Overflow]

I see Frank Mariak listed as Core MorphOS developer team, so I assume there should be plenty of people with his contact details...?

http://www.morphos.de/team

[ptyerman]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

I wonder how many other times Jens Schönfeld has sent veiled threats and tried to scare people into thinking they're breaking the law by making stuff for Amiga.

When I look in the other thread about the RapidRoad I see him talking about compatibility and conformance, but the ulterior motive is obviously that he wants to prevent the Vampire from running on his Amiga Reloaded motherboards, because he wouldn't be able to sell any of his inferior accelerator boards any more.

I've been trying to make people aware of how unethical, unfair and dishonestly he runs his business and works Amiga market, and people always come to his defense and tell me to shut up.

Now that he is getting increasingly desperate trying to push competitors out and control who gets to make and sell Amiga hardware, hopefully people will start waking up and realizing who he really is and how he almost runs his business like a racket.

He has no interest in Amiga or the Amiga community, he only cares about how much money he can squeeze out of it.

No idea mate but if it is him I'm done with his stuff after this! In fact the products I have from there will go in the bin and I will source out some alternatives.