Submit your best idea for the most realistic path to open source Amiga OS 3.x

[KronusOfChaos]

So Hyperion has the rights to AmigaOS 3.x and 4.x. I now remember seeing a release of WB recently from them or at least an update. I read the following from a Wiki.

On 30 September 2009, Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. reached settlement agreement where Hyperion was granted, "an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize, distribute and market AmigaOS 4.x.

Does the above mean they have the rights to OS 3.x to develop and give others those same rights if they choose?

[matthey]

Originally Posted by KronusOfChaos

So Hyperion has the rights to AmigaOS 3.x and 4.x. I now remember seeing a release of WB recently from them or at least an update. I read the following from a Wiki.

Hyperion may have limited rights based on their contract with Amiga Inc. and the settlement which was made from a lawsuit. I say "may" because there are questionable and non-public transfers of ownership of various intellectual property (IP) through several transactions. Amiga Inc's credibility is near zero with what appears to be past fraudulent activities. Any improper or illegal transfers of IP along the chain of transfers means the ones later in the chain are invalid. The current Amiga Inc. would have been the 5th company (by my count) after C= for any rights to have been transferred and the IP appears to have been divided several times.

Originally Posted by KronusOfChaos

On 30 September 2009, Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. reached settlement agreement where Hyperion was granted, "an exclusive, perpetual, worldwide right to AmigaOS 3.1 in order to use, develop, modify, commercialize, distribute and market AmigaOS 4.x.

Does the above mean they have the rights to OS 3.x to develop and give others those same rights if they choose?

From what is stated, I would say no but I am not a lawyer.

[michaelz]

Originally Posted by matthey

Hyperion may have limited rights based on their contract with Amiga Inc. and the settlement which was made from a lawsuit. I say "may" because there are questionable and non-public transfers of ownership of various intellectual property (IP) through several transactions. Amiga Inc's credibility is near zero with what appears to be past fraudulent activities. Any improper or illegal transfers of IP along the chain of transfers means the ones later in the chain are invalid. The current Amiga Inc. would have been the 5th company (by my count) after C= for any rights to have been transferred and the IP appears to have been divided several times.



From what is stated, I would say no but I am not a lawyer.

Cloanto appears to have the rights for workbench and kickstart for all code up to somewhere in 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS (see the sources about this).

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by michaelz

Cloanto appears to have the rights for workbench and kickstart for all code up to somewhere in 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS (see the sources about this).

That kind of clashes with Hyperion's claim, and this is where the whole thing crumbles.

Also if Cloanto have rights to Workbench and Kickstart and code, what are they doing going around enforcing the Amiga brand, taking down videos on Youtube, etc?

Even if we agree, from the little evidence we have, that Hyperion and Cloanto share somehow rights to the operating system and its parts, and a license to sell it and modify it, it is still unsure who, if any, owns the brand and trademarks related to Amiga as a whole, and from the information being available to us throughout the years, it is not clear or any way implied to me that either of these companies own that, having instead just a license to use the names and trademarks in relation to the licenses they may have (ie name of the OS, use for related promotion etc).

So why does an A1200 case project, just to name one example. have to seek permission to use the Amiga trademark and name? And who did they get this permission from? This is very important, especially if any money has passed through hands, because it's potentially illegal (for whoever "granted" the permission). And even if there was no monetary exchange, who can give permission to use something they don't own to someone else??

[michaelz]

Originally Posted by Akira

That kind of clashes with Hyperion's claim, and this is where the whole thing crumbles.

Also if Cloanto have rights to Workbench and Kickstart and code, what are they doing going around enforcing the Amiga brand, taking down videos on Youtube, etc?

Even if we agree, from the little evidence we have, that Hyperion and Cloanto share somehow rights to the operating system and its parts, and a license to sell it and modify it, it is still unsure who, if any, owns the brand and trademarks related to Amiga as a whole, and from the information being available to us throughout the years, it is not clear or any way implied to me that either of these companies own that, having instead just a license to use the names and trademarks in relation to the licenses they may have (ie name of the OS, use for related promotion etc).

So why does an A1200 case project, just to name one example. have to seek permission to use the Amiga trademark and name? And who did they get this permission from? This is very important, especially if any money has passed through hands, because it's potentially illegal (for whoever "granted" the permission). And even if there was no monetary exchange, who can give permission to use something they don't own to someone else??

Both Hyperion and Cloanto own pieces of the code. Cloanto pre-1993, Hyperion thereafter. The case is simple, Amiga Inc does own the trademarks. This is well documented by the European trademark office for example.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by michaelz

Both Hyperion and Cloanto own pieces of the code. Cloanto pre-1993, Hyperion thereafter. The case is simple, Amiga Inc does own the trademarks. This is well documented by the European trademark office for example.

"Well documented" trademarks are no guarantee of ownership. There is title insurance for a similar reason. If the title were later deemed invalid or found to be fraudulent, the buyer lost his investment. For example, let's say Amiga Inc. was financially insolvent and decided to create a new company to pass on all the valuable assets before declaring bankruptcy (one indicator might be a non quid pro quo transfer). Then the new company changes its name to Amiga Inc. with all the debt gone. This would be fraudulent with the ownership of assets remaining with the first company to be handled by the bankruptcy judge (usually sold) to pay to creditors (and stock holders if any money remains). All subsequent transactions of these assets by the latter Amiga Inc. would then be invalid (buyers would be in a similar situation to someone who has bought stolen goods and would lose their investment). This is why it is especially important to have a good contract/patent lawyer to research transactions, especially with shady companies.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by cv643d

You pay for the installer also, much more convenient to click and install an UAE-setup than doing it by hand.

No it isn't. And besides, creating an installer is easy compared to creating an operating system or an Amiga emulator. Lots of people would be able to make installers if it weren't for the fact that they would risk legal prosecution for it.

[dalek]

If people were to donate to the WinUAE team instead of spending money on "installers" for WinUAE then the community would be much better off. That is where the real work is done for which we should all be grateful.

[Zetr0]

Hiyas AK, thanks for replying

Originally Posted by Akira

I thought they (Olsen) were doing updates to things like Kickstart etc.


Putting aside the fact that their contribution to the scene is next to nil, as idrougge illustrated, their disgusting "legal" attacks on independent sites and people who allegedly violate their "IP" (how far they can actually legally go with these IP claims is yet to be disputed) is what does it for me. That is actually destroying the scene they are feeding off of.

To be fair the scene is bigger today than it was just 5 years ago - I think "destroying the scene" is a bit over the top - perhaps you mean stifling the scene?

Originally Posted by Akira

I will keep using this example: what good is it for the community for Cloanto to take off YouTube a video of the Amiga launch event, as they did? And to what extent are they atually allowed to do that, since what they own is, allegedly, a license to sell Kickstarts?

If they own that video, they have a right to decide how it is disseminated and published -

The problem here is that YouTube monetizes content - when I made a video about how to use a hard drive with a ZX Spectrum +3e environment - UMG Media claimed ownership of my work, it was then instantly monetized and I had to threaten legal action to get my work back .

Originally Posted by Akira

Come on, explain to me what good did this do and tell me why should anyone give money go these people so they go out and about and do this. While you are at it, explain t ome in which way does this video being online hurt this company: [ Show youtube player ]

I don't work, nor am I affiliated with Cloanto my friend, you know that - I have no stake in defending actions nor cheering them on. They claim that they own the video footage in this matter - if they do its theirs to do with as they please - that is the law.

If they do not own it then this is Fraud my misrepresentation and that shit can carry a 5-25 year prison sentence within the UK

Copying it / publishing it - in its entirety is up to the owner - it would be akin to someone taking one of your most tasty music mixes and using that to promote something (adds on youtube) without any agreement with you. I am pretty sure you would be as pissed off about that as I or anyone would be.

However we are covered by fair use - for news, parody and satire surely someone could make a report and include many sections of the video under shared use.

Originally Posted by Akira

What I don't understand is any praise they get: what for? What do they do to contribute? What's the big breakthrough here, because I don't see it.

Again I don't work nor am I affiliated with Cloanto as such I really am not here to defend them, all I can offer is a different point of view and its not one I necessarily share.

From their website - (about 12GB of content)

1.3 - 3.x Amiga Kickstart ROM's
3.1 - 3.x Amiga Workbench Hard Disk Images and Disk Files.
Amiga Forever (pre configured Amiga Emulation)
Scene videos

What Cloanto ask for in reimbursement is up to them, what you or I are willing to pay for, is up to us - should that we meet in the middle - there you have sale transaction.

Truth is for you or I, we don't need or already have the above that Cloanto are offering as such it has no tangible worth to us.

But if I could steal your mind for a bit, what about the newbie wanting to get into the scene or the old Skool Coder looking to pick up where he / she left off - there is now a distributable that they can buy - that is arguably a lot cheaper than investing in real hardware.

If Cloanto were offering their Premium product for $20 or $15 you would still have people calming it should be free - in fact Cloanto could be offering it for $5 or $2 and there would still be a cry (although not as loud) to be free -

I am a firm believer of voting with your wallet if you don't like a service or product - simply don't buy it.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

So-- fellow Amigans.. give me your best shot
HOW could this be done.. ?

omg.. just noticed this thread. this has been discussed a million times. and never any action was taken as a result.

besides this software doesnt rightfully belon to the community, no matter how the community be defined. even if the curent owners or licensees could be paid off the theater would start over after different groups would get into disagreement about what to do with the source.

there is an open source equivalent to the genuine amiga system. aros (68k) it works fairly well if you consider that only two people have put greater amount of their work into it and none of the community coders joined in to improve it. only complaints have been voiced, as if from people who want to own something and have they say, but not to lift a finger to actually do anything.

this is the only reasonable, technically maintainable and legally viabble practical option. other than that you can keep talking here for another hundred years.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by matthey

The AROS build system is not friendly.

matthey, i beg you not to spread fud. aros build system is _very_ user friendly. even i have no problem to maintain my local builds on different linux contribs. its just sourcing out the necessary packages, configure and make.

it is very easy to work on the different parts of the source to improve it and be able to check the results in an instant. the usage of metamake and the syntax of the makefiles may be a little orthodox, but i bet it was necessary. there always will be some part of an open community driven project one may not particularly like but can live with it.

It uses GCCisms and macros which make it a pain and it requires a fairly new version of GCC which needs special support and has bugs and for the 68k..

may be and may be it needs sophisticated tools, but it is a complex project to maintain as a whole, not a single library replacement.

i compile aros with gcc4.6.4 and 6.3.0 both work well. i have had just one bug fixed lately. the code generation of 6.3.0 has improved in comparison to 3.x.x and 4.x.x. it may yet not be on the level of 2.9.0 and lack amiga extensions, but head over to 6.x.x 68k toolchain thread (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=85474) in here to inform yourself more. the patches from that project might even be incorporated into aros backend. one just need to do that.

i really have a feeling that the problems of newer compilers with 68k are partly a myth. few days ago i was presented by phx with a testcase he said it failed on 5.x.x. i compiled it with aros 6.3.0 and the result was correct.

other than that aros is ready for clang/llvm. you may remember that deadwood evaluated vasm as option and phx even did some feature improvements based oh his proposals. as result it occured that there was no practiical avantage to use vasm/vbcc at this point.

The AROS code itself introduced some new concepts, APIs and kludges to the AmigaOS (some of questionable value)

aros wont take over just each and every concept of the genuine os and for a reason (monitor files as example). aros extends os3.x functionality, but isnt it what we want? the extensions may or may not be questionable value. you need to conrtibute something and then you can discuss the options to make it better, simple as it is.

and the code did not need to be as efficient when it was on the x86.

almost no amiga people have given any valid feedback to the developers, and no wonder the 68k developers got disencouraged. most aros developers are x64 oriented, nevertheless as they intoduce the smp and are daily breaking the build they respect 68k as a platform and listen and react to my reports. no wonder though that teir interest isnt optimizing 68k issues at this time.

There is also the problem of some code being unfinished and not ready to be optimized yet. GCC compiler code generation for the 68k does seem to be improving finally after many years of sadness but there is still work to be done to get a cross compiler environment working fully. This alone could make a big difference. I am no expert on AROS.

what? i compile amiga-m68k daily. im not sure of what are you talking about.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Note that anyone who has seen AmigaOS sources is tainted and cannot legally develop a clean room reimplementation like AROS.

second that!

[wawa]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

The only issue I've had with AROS is (lack of) drivers. I have a nice little old laptop it would work perfect on except I can't set the video resolution for example. Right now I just run linux hosted AROS on my main laptop, but doing that its just as easy to use native linux stuff so I end up never 'booting' AROS.

for the amiga hardware the respective 68k drivers can be used. for instance for driving my network card i simply take x-surf.device that has been delivered with it. to drive an rtg card there is a picasso96 wrapper. the problem is poseidon, trident prefs is working but not the device drivers, because there is probably a single difference in api.

And AROS source is sort of hidden even though its open source because they don't want anyone who might have seen the copyrighted Amiga source from tainting the AROS source and cause them a legal issue. So it makes working with AROS a little harder as well.

bullshit. another uninformed fud. there is nothing to hide. if you find something report it back.

heres the complete aros source for you to browse:
https://trac.aros.org/trac/browser
you can log anonymously and check it out from svn. the detailed isntructions are on aros page. you can build it yourself in an hour.
the only thing you cannot is anonymously commit to the repository. you need an account. and i think this is selfexplanatory and reasonable, right?

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

It won't give you code integration with AROS.

the code integration with aros is already given in a way that you can run amiga binaries compiled along amiga standard apis (such as mui for example) on aros with usually no problem. if there is a problem it can be fixed in aros. amiga is the reference and a common denominator. using aros extensions is an option.

With an open-source Amiga OS 3, there's a direct competitor with AROS, which will divide what miniscule resources remain in this community even further.

i dont think this is a problem for aros. i rather think that aros people would be indifferent or rather happy if it happened. but it wont. no need to go furter into it.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by wawa

the code integration with aros is already given in a way that you can run amiga binaries compiled along amiga standard apis (such as mui for example) on aros with usually no problem. if there is a problem it can be fixed in aros. amiga is the reference and a common denominator. using aros extensions is an option.

Indeed, from a component point of view that's true, but I meant integration of code as in merging parts of code with the AROS counterparts. The API may be the same but the code behind them is almost certain to be totally different, making any freely available 3.1 source little more than a reference of how things were achieved 25 years ago.

i dont think this is a problem for aros. i rather think that aros people would be indifferent or rather happy if it happened. but it wont. no need to go furter into it.

Yeah, quite possibly. I would be of the same mind, but I suspect that if the hypothetical open source 3.1 were to be developed, it would take developers away from other projects, quite possibly AROS-68k.

[EugeneNine]

Originally Posted by wawa

for the amiga hardware the respective 68k drivers can be used. for instance for driving my network card i simply take x-surf.device that has been delivered with it. to drive an rtg card there is a picasso96 wrapper. the problem is poseidon, trident prefs is working but not the device drivers, because there is probably a single difference in api.



bullshit. another uninformed fud. there is nothing to hide. if you find something report it back.

heres the complete aros source for you to browse:
https://trac.aros.org/trac/browser
you can log anonymously and check it out from svn. the detailed isntructions are on aros page. you can build it yourself in an hour.
the only thing you cannot is anonymously commit to the repository. you need an account. and i think this is selfexplanatory and reasonable, right?

So maybe I worded that badly and was going from memory and the old hdd up there is getting quite fragmented. I remember going though a thread on the Aros-exec forum where they didn't want just anyone helping out for fear of having someone who might have seen the leaked Amiga code being involved.

I need to go back and look at it all again. Though its still tricky for me as for me Amiga is 1.3 because thats what I had and used, I never used 3.x so I need to switch over there as well. I actually setup a 3.x under FS-UAE but haven't used it much.

I should be able to run AROS68k under FS-UAE until I can fix my Amiga right?

[Samurai_Crow]

Yes.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Indeed, from a component point of view that's true, but I meant integration of code as in merging parts of code with the AROS counterparts. The API may be the same but the code behind them is almost certain to be totally different, making any freely available 3.1 source little more than a reference of how things were achieved 25 years ago.

the code behind components may be differentbut what else does that mean except it is original? it may be better or worde, for sure its more portable, a good base to be future proof, if that is a requirement. nevertheless aros is built after amiga spezifications also what concerns separate modules interfaces and their interaction, or at least attempts that, even if it might not be perfect in places. you can replace separate components in aros with their amiga counterparts and they will work. for instance third party mui classes work within zune 68k, peter k icon library, or other genuine libs can be used with aros. amiga device drivers are interchangeable.

certainly open sourcing amiga wouldnt make that much difference for aros anymore, its too advanced by now. but there might be some crucial refferences people would still be thankful about. i know at least staf said something like that. it wont happen though, so no matter.

Yeah, quite possibly. I would be of the same mind, but I suspect that if the hypothetical open source 3.1 were to be developed, it would take developers away from other projects, quite possibly AROS-68k.

look. i wouldnt mind if that happened. but it wont. and amiga legacy wont be legally secure to thinker with ever again, after what happened to it. even amiga.inc and hyperion rights in that area may be questionable. id walk around it at a secure distance at all times.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by EugeneNine

didn't want just anyone helping out for fear of having someone who might have seen the leaked Amiga code being involved.

never heard of a such case, but it doesnt mean that aros source is open to everybody including such a person. however they wont someone like that to contribute, and i think it is an exemplary display of good faith. thats a reason thor doesnt want to contribute directly. he has though consulted some matters, even if rather loosely.

I need to go back and look at it all again. Though its still tricky for me as for me Amiga is 1.3 because thats what I had and used,

aros 68k is or attempts to be 1.x-3.x compatible, more than these kickstarts are compatible to each other btw. it should run your 1.3 programs, except they need some not yet implemented features, particularly those of the chipset. toni can tell more about whats missing.
also - there is even an 1.3 skin as far as i remember

I should be able to run AROS68k under FS-UAE until I can fix my Amiga right?

if on windows id recomend winuae. its more precize in its settings and faster, i think. under linux fs-uae will be first choice since winuae under wine may be too slow. i am actually testing aros under fs-uae, within my vm build enviroment, then per drage and drop on winows host under winuae, and then on a real nachine swapping a cf card for a drive.

[EugeneNine]

Yea, I use FS-UAE. I won't use any windows only software, have been burned too many times in the past with that. Even if WinUAE is a little faster its not worth the hassle of using Windows, I got tired of that a long time ago.

I remember FS-UAE defaults to the AROS kickstart so I can easily change back to that and test. I'm not a gamer so most of what I do is under workbench and its games where compatibility issues usually come into play.