OS4 License Agreement Terminated 20-December-06

It seems that the licence agreement between Eyetech, Hyperion and Amiga Inc. was terminated on 20-12-06.

Source:-
http://www.amiga.com/about/history/?t=os

@Jurassicc

That certainly makes things more interesting, and might be what the legal hoopla is all about.

@Billsey

It's all posturing. The following comments are based on my reading between the lines of "official" statements and may be completely wrong, but this scenario seems plausible:

Some years ago (early in the OS4 development project), Hyperion was looking at a huge investment to complete OS4 and "asked" Amiga for some funds towards it. Amiga Inc gave them some funds but probably consider those funds to be the "buyback" that was described in their contract.

Hyperion and their developers put a lot of time, energy and money into the subsequent development of OS4. Hyperion probably considers that it wasn't a "buyback" because the work wasn't finished, and anyway, any "buyback" in 2003 (?) only bought the work that had been done until then. Amiga Inc, of course, considers that the "buyback" also paid for all future work.

The filing of a lawsuit means that the "discussions between lawyers" failed to resolve the issue and they are now going to court.

******************

Leaving aside the legal aspects of the case, one must ask: "What is at stake?". It would seem that the only things of value are the OS4 source code and any associated licence fees. It seems reasonable, then, to assume that Amiga Inc, despite their claims that OS5 is being worked on, need the OS4 source code in order to build the new OS5.

Remember that Haage and Partner refused to hand over the source code to OS3.9 after their contract to produce OS4 was terminated. That refusal stands, but they have been unable to do anything with the source code since.

I hope that the situation is not repeated (not least because I have some of my own work invested in the OS4 project).

Hi tonyw,


Are they allowed to cancel the contract with Eyetech too??

On what grounds?