This is a VERY interesting reading about Amiga Inc legal status.

It may be possible that Amiga Inc. NEVER owned exclusive rights to Classic Amiga OS (sic!)

It also shows how much intended legal mess surrounds Amiga Inc itself and its related companies/investors.

If these Amiga Inc. people do not own Classic Amiga OS rights, I would vote to make them open source ASAP.

EXTERNAL LINK 
What do you think?

Cheers

What would happen legally with the sources if they can be proved to have been left owned by a non-existant company for so long? Public domain, open sourced, or even left in a legal void?

I also think that the situation needs to be reviewed by a German speaker and as much information as possible be extracted from the German court archives.
But even if one knows that the information is correct, how does one go about doing something like this? Starting a lawsuit as an individual against several companies does not sound very attractive to me.

I have this looked at by a legal friend of mine and might come back on this later.
But i doubt any legal claims can be seen at some form of Void for the kickstart.
Who made OS 3.9, since i think they still might hold rights.

Anyhow, all that is purely speculation, and it doesn't make the situation easier at all - neither does it give any party the right to open source AmigaOs. It means in best (or worst?) case that Amiga Os 4 is not fully licensed, but as long as the *true* owner (then the liquidator) doesn't go to court, it won't change anything.

If the assumed situation is correct, then still licenses need to be obtained for AmigaOs, just from a different party.

To stress that again, it *does not* make AmigaOs open source - this is just wishful thinking.

Anyhow, this is all just speculation.

So long,
Thomas

I suppose if anyone has the original legal notices with the original Amiga 500 boxes or Amiga 1000 boxes, it may shed some clues.

It doesn't help in the end.

So long,
Thomas

You are correct it doesn't help... If I had the resourses and expertise to take them on I would have.  Since 2003-2004 (in my eyes) they are nothing, of course the courts would beg to differ. They are a shell of something. LoL!!!

Why speculate about that when you can know the truth? I've given any curious minds all they need to get the truth in my last post.

The questions we need are:
1. Who do I need to speak to to get the court case documents?
...and when the right person has been found...
2. Can you send me a copy of the court case documents?

Any other questions beyond that are pointless at this moment in time because you'll never get any useful result from asking them.

I expect this topic will die a slow death now as why would an Amigan be practical when they can bikeshed... oh well...

Thus, I don't quite understand why that changes anything or what the purpose of the discussion is. It is academic.

If you want to proceed this way, hire a lawyer and spend the next five years in battle. I've better use for my time (and money). For example, it might be outright cheaper just to pay for a licence from Amiga Inc would they be willing to sell one. Even if that licence isn't worth more than just shutting them quiet. If the "real" owner of AmigaOs hasn't tried to sue them until then, you'd expect that this person or organization will shut quiet in the future. And if this person should try to sue you in future, you would still have the time to bring Amiga Inc. to court.

I know, this probably doesn't sound right in the sense of justice (i.e. as paying a thief), but it still solves the problem.

So long,
Thomas

This depends on the charge, murder still gets you send off in most cases. ;)

For us it is interesting you have access to the source of the OS legal, but it isn't vital.
For AROS who has been bitten before in the past by this in the past can have more interest in this then us.
But i myself can't say anything more then that it is interesting.

But who is gonna take this action, since we can sit here contemplating what if's but that doesn't solve the fact that we don't know the truth in this case.

For Natami, I don't think it is necessary. Amiga owners should have a kickstart somewhere. If not, supply a program that writes an image to disk and use that. Then provide replacement modules on top of the bootrom, modules developed independently. As said, one can replace most kickstart modules (with the exception of expansion and probably exec).

Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:

For us it is interesting you have access to the source of the OS legal, but it isn't vital.

You only need the source to get information on the internal wirings, but that information does not require a license. It can be obtained by a clean-room approach, i.e. person A with the sources provides information, but not the source code to person B, which implements a replacement.

It is a cumbersome task, but the only one I consider realistic.

Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:

For AROS who has been bitten before in the past by this in the past can have more interest in this then us.   But i myself can't say anything more then that it is interesting.     But who is gonna take this action, since we can sit here contemplating what if's but that doesn't solve the fact that we don't know the truth in this case.

Look, nobody is going to court likely - I doubt anyone is willing to take the risk. What remains is to start from the given binaries (kickstart 3.1) and try to get it working. I suppose an A2000 ROM should do it as it contains the "least" hardware dependencies (no scsi.device etc, etc). As for how to do the patchwork, here I am. I don't have enough time to do the implementation, and given the clean-room approach, I shouldn't neither be the one who does it to avoid trouble, but I can certainly answer questions to interested parties.

So long,
Thomas

My own motivation is this, knowing the truth about who owns classic AmigaOS makes the future clearer, and that future may include open-source. Now before you start on a campaign to correct me, yes of course there is no guarantee that the owners will release AmigaOS this way, but it has been known for commercial projects to turn into open-source ones. Take Blender for example, that started out as a commercial app, then an offer was made to the community to pay to have it open-sourced, and this came to pass. It's in no way guaranteed to happen this way with AmigaOS but it's a hell of a lot more likely to happen if we know the true owners don't you agree?

At the end of the day, it's about knowing the truth. You might not want to spend your time pursuing it but others do, there's no need to knock people who want the truth.

Seeing as (predictably) Amigans would rather argue than help themselves, I've just sent the following e-mail to the only e-mail address I could find on the Bahamas Supreme Court website, I'll let y'all know if I get a response:

"Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you today to request some advice. I wish to obtain any publicly available documents surrounding a couple of court cases conducted in The Supreme Court of the Bahamas around the years 1994 and 1995.

I have contacted you personally about this matter as yours was the only e-mail address listed on the Supreme Court website and I honestly wasn't sure which department I needed to ask, I apologise in advance if it is one of your colleagues I should have asked for help from.

Please can you advise me on what information I need to know to request the court case documents, and whom I need to forward this information to (name, job title and e-mail address if possible).

Thank you in advance for your advice, I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thomas Clarke"

Interestingly, the e-mail address I used was first set up when I tried to find out what rights Acer had to the Amiga brand (wasn't composing those e-mails on my N900 though! ; )). : )