Hyperion survives being declared bankrupt

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

steeped in secrecy at the moment.

could easily get hold of financial data if need be (it'll cost though! )

http://ukdata.com/company/BE/BE009~4...n=View+Details

[ptyerman]

Financial data won't explain what's going on, who filed the court proceedings or what happens next. That is the secrecy part, as no one is talking.

[klx300r]

time for A-EON to fund more than third party software development for my favourite OS it seems

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

Just noticed this while browsing around.

There is still no information about who filed the claim and apart from a few select statements like this one which could indeed just be smoke and mirrors, everything seems to be steeped in secrecy at the moment.

My, there is quite a lot of useful information in this statement.

First of all, he is simplifying Belgian law: not everybody can file bankruptcy claims, most likely the law allows *debtors* of a company to file a bankruptcy claim in the company's name. When someone who that company owes money to decides that "enough is enough" then they can file a bankruptcy claim to force the company to honour their debts.

Second, if he is correct that this is what happened in this particular case, that means that one of the people/company Hyperion owes money to decided that it was about time to remind them that they had to pay. Since bank-like debt is issued with very precise terms and payment dates it is likely that this is rather that a company Hyperion does business with and buys stuff from was pissed off to not see the checks coming their way for stuff they had sold them.
Being late on one's payment is generally a good indicator of the quality of management as well as a predictor of future success (it's a negative correlation of course).

Third, he is also explicit in affirming that "the company which handles [their] administrative seat" is gloriously incompetent! There is no way in hell that a bankruptcy claim will not be handled with the utmost priority by a competent accounting/administrating partner. The fact that this mistake happened says us a lot about the quality of Hyperion's close partners: they suck rabid rabbits.

All in all, this tells us:

• Hyperion are late in their payments. Late enough that their partners file bankruptcy claims: this is extremely unhealthy.
• Their accounting/administrating partner is incompetent. Which tells us in turn about Hyperion's ability to select quality partners: inexistent.

I say don't count on them too much to save the Amiga.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

My, there is quite a lot of useful information in this statement.

First of all, he is simplifying Belgian law: not everybody can file bankruptcy claims, most likely the law allows *debtors* of a company to file a bankruptcy claim in the company's name. When someone who that company owes money to decides that "enough is enough" then they can file a bankruptcy claim to force the company to honour their debts.

Second, if he is correct that this is what happened in this particular case, that means that one of the people/company Hyperion owes money to decided that it was about time to remind them that they had to pay. Since bank-like debt is issued with very precise terms and payment dates it is likely that this is rather that a company Hyperion does business with and buys stuff from was pissed off to not see the checks coming their way for stuff they had sold them.
Being late on one's payment is generally a good indicator of the quality of management as well as a predictor of future success (it's a negative correlation of course).

Third, he is also explicit in affirming that "the company which handles [their] administrative seat" is gloriously incompetent! There is no way in hell that a bankruptcy claim will not be handled with the utmost priority by a competent accounting/administrating partner. The fact that this mistake happened says us a lot about the quality of Hyperion's close partners: they suck rabid rabbits.

All in all, this tells us:

• Hyperion are late in their payments. Late enough that their partners file bankruptcy claims: this is extremely unhealthy.
• Their accounting/administrating partner is incompetent. Which tells us in turn about Hyperion's ability to select quality partners: inexistent.

I say don't count on them too much to save the Amiga.

They already saved the amiga for the moment, without them, amiga inc. should still have all the amigaos patents and like they were doing nothing with them !
without hyperion : no amigaos 4 and without amigaos 4, no amiga one. Without them no new amiga anymore... For the best and for the worst.
I still believe that aeon doesn't make amigaone just for a hobby, i'm sure they are waiting for something to bring back the amiga on the shelves.
If they succeed to have a good oportunity and good partners, i mean big partners, they will perhaps try.
If it's just a hobby !!! i will never buy one, because the price is too high, for sure.

[ptyerman]

It looks like we will have to wait until mid March to find out if Hyperion can remain solvent, from what I can gather the court hearing is to take place then. Until then Hyperion will be run by the court approved administrator, who will also place a value on any assets belonging to the company. If they are found to be solvent before then it will all just go away I suppose, after any debt is taken care of by payment or promises or other means.
One thing that will come of this which has been withheld until now is, financial data and sales made by Hyperion will become public information released by the court. As of now nobody knows how many copies of OS4 have been sold/distributed and any requests about this information have been ignored/declined for some reason, unless the court withholds this information for some reason, we will find out.

EDIT:
Most of this information is taken from the numerous posts over at Amigaworld.net, although there is posted news of this all over the net, the thread over there seems to be the most informative and worth a read.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by BarryB

Glad I never bought into OS 4.1 now if it's true!

Why so? If AOS4 was discontinued tomorrow, I'd still have a copy at home that still works great (so long as the rickety A1-XE holds together). It's not like the OS stops working when Hyperion disappear. Hell, even Windows XP still works on one of my machines. And look at OS3, that had its last major release in 2000 and its last official update in 2002, but people still happily use it - and still buy it, possibly including your good self. The end of development doesn't mean so much, especially for a niche hobby OS like AOS, MOS or AROS since they are far less reliant on frequent updates for fixing security risks.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

Financial data won't explain what's going on, who filed the court proceedings or what happens next. That is the secrecy part, as no one is talking.

I'm more interested to see how they've faired since their inception (1999?). Would give some kind of idea with regards popularity of OS4 over the years.

[Michael Sykes]

It had to happen.
It was only a matter of time...

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Why so? If AOS4 was discontinued tomorrow, I'd still have a copy at home that still works great (so long as the rickety A1-XE holds together). It's not like the OS stops working when Hyperion disappear. Hell, even Windows XP still works on one of my machines. And look at OS3, that had its last major release in 2000 and its last official update in 2002, but people still happily use it - and still buy it, possibly including your good self. The end of development doesn't mean so much, especially for a niche hobby OS like AOS, MOS or AROS since they are far less reliant on frequent updates for fixing security risks.

That's not the point, the point is it now looks to be a quick cash grab before they go under. I'm not sure my meagre £30 would save them anyway, so I'll keep it my pocket for now!

[clebin]

Originally Posted by turrican3

They already saved the amiga for the moment, without them, amiga inc. should still have all the amigaos patents and like they were doing nothing with them ! without hyperion : no amigaos 4 and without amigaos 4, no amiga one.

I disagree, sorry. Amiga Inc did do something significant with the patents - they licensed them to a developer so the OS could continue.

Without Hyperion, MorphOS would have become the licensed Amiga OS 4 instead and we'd have had one less Amiga 'camp' and no bitter turf war. It's impossible to calculate the damage of that split.

Chris

[DDNI]

Damage? Maybe the competetive drive between the camps kept development moving?

[jbenam]

Are there any stats on how many people are using AmigaOS 4.x daily?

IMHO, Hyperion hasn't saved the Amiga, since keeping it on PowerPC pretty much killed any chance of a comeback - ARM is where cheap and powerful is, and AOS4.x should've made the switch long ago if it wanted to stay relevant.

Just think of the possibilities - right now RiscOS is seeing a resurgence thanks to Pi users. AOS4.x could've been in its place.

Someone will think "but PowerPC!". Honestly, PowerPC has nothing to do with Amiga anyway. They went for it since there was the need for a powerful processor and x86 wasn't a possibility for obvious reasons (who would've ever bought one for their Amigas back in the 90s? ), but it was an huge hack-job and it's nothing the Amiga community should be still clutching onto.

If the rule here is "no x86 allowed" then ARM is good enough for AmigaOS5.0 (which won't happen since 4.x most certainly didn't sell huge numbers).

[Amiga1992]

Does this mean they will stop busting the balls of people actually wanting to use real 68k Amigas and emulators?

[imigger]

thats good news now we can hack that crap out of it yeahhaaaa teach tehm to try and go all out for high end customers when there wasnt very many of them around lol , im so glad.

[B14ck W01f]

This topic is getting really interesting, so let me give my 2 cents worth:

When the topic of PPC keeps getting bring up, I always remember what Toni said about it:

PPC "Amigas" should have never existed. Amiga is dead and it should rest in peace (and kept as a nice hobby system like any other 80-90s computer) but no, it is kept in life support instead when its soul has been long gone/brain has been totally damaged and mutated (you can make your choice between brain/soul)

I agree with him 100%. As far as I know, there is always nothing but hiccups when some new hardware is announced, but nothing ever comes out of it (just look at UltimatePPC, for instance). As for the actual AmigaOS 4, why does it take so long for Hyperion to actually release a new version of the operating system, let alone an update for it. PPC Amigas are a joke, and it's only a matter of time before they all crash and burn.

Sure, I just brought AmigaOS 4.1 ages ago, long before the FE was released, but that is because I like using foreign operating systems.

[Nekoniaow]

Originally Posted by turrican3

They already saved the amiga for the moment, without them, amiga inc. should still have all the amigaos patents and like they were doing nothing with them !
without hyperion : no amigaos 4 and without amigaos 4, no amiga one. Without them no new amiga anymore... For the best and for the worst.
I still believe that aeon doesn't make amigaone just for a hobby, i'm sure they are waiting for something to bring back the amiga on the shelves.
If they succeed to have a good oportunity and good partners, i mean big partners, they will perhaps try.
If it's just a hobby !!! i will never buy one, because the price is too high, for sure.

They didn't save anything. They acquired the rights to write and sell AmigaOS and that's it. Whether this will save the Amiga is still to be demonstrated.
(And it's also to be demonstrated that the Amiga can be saved, or if it makes any sense at all to save it. Whatever "saving" the Amiga means.)

The evidence I quoted indicates they are managed by people who are late payers and have shitty partners. This is not a recipe for success. Assuming that they will succeed in writing good code and "saving the Amiga" is just speculation: where is the evidence that AmigaOS new releases are helping the community? Where are the sales numbers? Etc.

It's good to have faith. It's better to have evidence.

The fact they own the rights to AmigaOS does not:
- guarantee they are good coders
- make them good managers
- guarantee they have a solid vision and a long term plan

You are free to *believe* they have all these qualities, I'll believe it when I see it.

Originally Posted by BarryB

That's not the point, the point is it now looks to be a quick cash grab before they go under. I'm not sure my meagre £30 would save them anyway, so I'll keep it my pocket for now!

Cash grab?
Hyperion won't see any of your money, if they go down then your 30GBP will go to people they bought stuff from but never paid.
If the product is good then you should buy, this money won't go in Hyperion's pocket that's for sure.

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

This topic is getting really interesting, so let me give my 2 cents worth:

When the topic of PPC keeps getting bring up, I always remember what Toni said about it:

[wise words]

I agree with him 100%. As far as I know, there is always nothing but hiccups when some new hardware is announced, but nothing ever comes out of it (just look at UltimatePPC, for instance). As for the actual AmigaOS 4, why does it take so long for Hyperion to actually release a new version of the operating system, let alone an update for it. PPC Amigas are a joke, and it's only a matter of time before they all crash and burn.

Sure, I just brought AmigaOS 4.1 ages ago, long before the FE was released, but that is because I like using foreign operating systems.

I'm with you too.

I like my Amigas as they were when Commodore went belly up. If I want speed, a modern operating system and convenience I use my Mac and I get way more out of it than any accelerated Amiga could dream of offering.

When I want Amiga fun, I use the old models as they were. They were fun then and still are but I see no interest in zombifying them with zillions of expansions.
Coding an Amiga is fun, playing an Amiga game on an Amiga is fun, hell, playing new games on an Amiga is fun, but for modern tasks I use modern hardware.

Now if someone released a new Amiga with hardware as lean as what Apple offers (not in terms of perfs but in terms of practical packaging), an OS as flexible as Linux and as usable as OS X then I would be interested but that's not going to be done by Hyperion nor AmigaInc in any realistic way.

[ptyerman]

PPC is the great weight hanging over AmigaOS, it needs to change course, and fast. Raspberry PI has just hit 5 million units sold, ARM is where AmigaOS needs to go. As already stated Risc OS is making quite a comeback because of ARM boards, I think AmigaOS would sell quite a few copies for the ARM architecture.
And "please no", lets not put any Apple or Linux similarities in to AmigaOS. If you want Apple or Linux, then use those platforms.

[BarryB]

Originally Posted by Nekoniaow

Cash grab?
Hyperion won't see any of your money, if they go down then your 30GBP will go to people they bought stuff from but never paid.
If the product is good then you should buy, this money won't go in Hyperion's pocket that's for sure.

This could have been decided ages ago, get 4.1 FE out the door as quick as possible to get some cash in, plus, who's going to support/fix it when OS bugs or driver bugs are found? Rely on the community again to fix someone else's mess?

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by clebin

Without Hyperion, MorphOS would have become the licensed Amiga OS 4 instead and we'd have had one less Amiga 'camp' and no bitter turf war.

That would have been the ideal outcome.