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Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
06 Mar 2016 12:20


To inform the public
   
AMIGA-OS 3 does support screen with up to 256 colors.
To be able to use more colors on WB you need 3rd party patches like CyberGFX or Picasso96.
   
To use Picasso96 there are several legal alternatives:
a) You write a driver and allow the users to use the legal shareware P96 packet available on Aminet
b) You write the driver and bundle the P96 packet with your application. For this you need the company doing it needs to pay license fee to P96 Authors.
   
   
Apollo-Team did prefer to do the 2nd way.
Apollo-Team has permission to use P96 during development and start phase of the Vampire for FREE from original authors.
For the future we wanted to license P96 from the original authors.
The authors were contacted to discuss license agreements.
   
   
What happened is the following:
a) P96 original authors did NOT answer on emails, and did NOT reply on how much money they want or where to send the money.
   
b) Instead Hyperion contacted us.
Hyperion made it clear that they do NOT own P96, yet.
Hyperion said that they want to buy P96 and they offered us to license P96 from them, now.
   
   
We were in discussion with Hyperion.
We were asking for Hyperions plan for future 68k development.
   
We made the following offer to Hyperion:
A) To provide 68k AMIGA + Vampire accelerators for interested developers
B) To provide ASM coders able and interested to help to maintain the OS3 and P96 for 68K.
C) We offered to fund 68k development of both OS3 and P96.
    Funding this with 10,000 Euro was planned.
   
Hyperion made it clear that 68K development is _NOT_ important for them.
Hyperion made it clear that 68K coding/bugfixing from Apollo team is _NOT_ wanted.
Hyperion made is clear that the money they take, will _NOT_ guaranteed to be fully used for OS3 or P96 development.
 
We understand that Hyperions interest is PPC and not 68K.
We have no problem with this.
Of course we as Apollo-team are only interested in driving 68K development forward.
Therefore our funds and efforts will be fully channeled into ways to improve 68k development.
 
With the current interest of evolved parties AROS seems for us the only option to drive continues development for 68k.
 
While we like AMIGA OS-3, the parties involved in OS 3 show very little interest in developing it.
If this situation will changes, E.g. If the serious development on OS 3 is re-done.
If developers will be invited to help on this - then we will review our options to help and to fund this development.




Lord Aga
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 119
06 Mar 2016 13:06


What the hell... Hyperion is quickly climbing up my "most hated" list.


Teemu Korvenpää

Posts 26
06 Mar 2016 16:54


What about the Cybergraphx's ?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
06 Mar 2016 17:02


Teemu Korvenpää wrote:

  What about the Cybergraphx's ?

 
The current P96-SAGA video drivers are 100% FREE and 100% legal to use.
The driver was developed by Jason McMullan, and its based on the free UAE P96 driver.
 
 


John Heritage

Posts 111
06 Mar 2016 23:37


Silly question - Who owns the license to Amiga OS 3.5 and 3.9 source?  I've reviewed the legal documents Hyperion referred to in their January 2016 "source code leak" web posting, and only see references to 3.1...


Wawa T

Posts 695
07 Mar 2016 00:18


>Jason McMullen

..McMullan

btw today toni fixed loading hunk binaries on aros, it should now be buffered and faster. not yet tested.

btw, if someone is interested to contribute to improve aros for68k in general or vampire in particular:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1075730#post1075730


Olaf Schoenweiss

Posts 690
07 Mar 2016 09:15


3.5 and 3.9 are copyright by Haage & Partner
  parts of it were licensed and that propably are now ownsership of the developers again

the situation around 3.1 is unclear (at least to me)

AmigaInc. still owns it but gave Hyperion a license to use it for their products and then there is also Cloanto having rights. So to me it looks like a legal mess.


Mr-Z EdgeOfPanic

Posts 189
07 Mar 2016 18:39


Does this crappy attitude from Hyperion mean the SAGA driver for OS3.x will not be developed any further from this point on ?


Ian Parsons

Posts 230
07 Mar 2016 19:15


Does Amiga Inc still own any rights in classic Amiga OS or OS4 or did they sell them all to Cloanto/Hyperion/A.N.Other? I remember there being some question about Amiga Inc having rights to use kickstart roms with emulated games they were trying to sell after Cloanto acquired copyrights from them in 2012. Amiga Inc have little use for Amiga OS as they don't make any hardware and probably didn't see 68K hardware ever making a comeback. Following the court battle with Hyperion, Amiga Inc probably gave up on the Amiga operating systems and just kept hold of the Amiga brand for licencing.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
07 Mar 2016 21:01


Mr-Z EdgeOfPanic wrote:

Does this crappy attitude from Hyperion mean the SAGA driver for OS3.x will not be developed any further from this point on ?

You have to be fair here.
And you have to understand peoples motivation.

Hyperion work is developing an OS for PPC computers.
There is nothing wrong with this.

Of course Hyperion makes all their money by selling to PPC owners.
The best for them would be if all classic owners leave their classics and buy PPC hardware - as this would bring them more customer.

Classic owners upgrading their 68K hardware is of course NOT in their interest. They want people to leave 68K.

Its pretty logical, and actually there is nothing wrong with this.

Now to answer your question.
The free SAGA P96 driver is updated everyday.
Its working very good, you might have seen the recent videos?
There were recent videos showing Fullscreen video playback, and running SDL games really smooth and fast.

I assume support for YUV mode will be added and then shown in a few days. This speedup the already relative fast video playback even more.

 


Wawa T

Posts 695
07 Mar 2016 22:24


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

    You have to be fair here.
    And you have to understand peoples motivation.
   
    Hyperion work is developing an OS for PPC computers.
    There is nothing wrong with this.

very well, but if only they and their followers wouldnt try to convince everybody, that their os is the only legitimate amiga successor and therefore needs particular customer support. in form of extra loyalty, additional funds, hardly different from charity, and so on.

Of course Hyperion makes all their money by selling to PPC owners.
    The best for them would be if all classic owners leave their classics and buy PPC hardware - as this would bring them more customer.
   

actually, as it looks like, likely none is today ppc owner, except some amiga entusiasts convinced with it, since these are exclusive os4 and morphos platforms. both built their image as amiga sucessors. particularly the os4 fans are literally being talked into buying ppc hardware, just to discover its even better suited to run a ppc flavour of linux than os4 itself.
 

    Classic owners upgrading their 68K hardware is of course NOT in their interest. They want people to leave 68K.

yeah. been there, experienced that.

    Its pretty logical, and actually there is nothing wrong with this.

therefore os4 crowd and "companies" need to be left by themselves for their own sake. except of few exceptional individuals there is only rather a dull user base, mostly "dreaming" and "hoping" but not ready to conribute anything themselves and the subborn label victims obn the other side. sorry if it sounds harsh, but this is the reality of the situation, pretty obvious if one has observed the scene since few years.


Olaf Schoenweiss

Posts 690
07 Mar 2016 22:59


there are lengthy threads discussing it without finally agreeing... as I understand it there was a settlement that gave Hyperion the right to use 3.1. sources for their development and certain brand names but ownership of the sources and of the brand "Amiga" stayed at Amiga Inc.

OS4 is ownership of Hyperion of course


Wawa T

Posts 695
07 Mar 2016 23:16


Olaf Schoenweiss wrote:

  OS4 is ownership of Hyperion of course
 

  who knows. there have been doubts if they own the source code even for their supposed patches. seems it is distributed among the particular developers, as its been certain for some parts, and they own have the right to distribute binaries as a common package known as "os4". but who knows.


Mr-Z EdgeOfPanic

Posts 189
08 Mar 2016 09:33


@Gunnar

I do understand their motivation that they want people to leave classic Amiga and move to OS4.
They are a company and need to make money and they do not make a lot since the OS4 userbase is very small.

I did see the video's and love those, that convinced me Vampire is they way forward for my classic Amiga(s).
I just want a fast 68K Amiga :)



Mikester RX7

Posts 9
08 Mar 2016 13:54


Who profits when an Amiga OS 3.x license is sold?  If Hyperion has no way to profit on 3.x I can understand their motives.  If they could profit on 3.x I believe they have a stupid business model because their biggest potential user base (by far) is 3.x.

If they cannot profit on 3.x I think they should, if possible, work on back porting 4.x enhancements to 68K and release a 4.x update for 68K.

In my opinion the move to PowerPC is a failure.  The release and continued enhancement of Apollo and the other FPGA hardware will probably halt any growth of the PowerPC user base. 

The only thing anchoring them to PowerPC would be A-Eon, and if they have invested in Hyperion as rumored then I guess it all makes sense.



Olaf Schoenweiss

Posts 690
08 Mar 2016 15:53


they are long behind time plans regarding supporting X5000 and also Tabor is open (that needs still a lot of work propably). I do not see Hyperion moving to 68k or backporting 4.X to 3.X. They officially not even support existing customers using the "classic" version, I read on eab that Toni obviously is not amused about this lack of support. It even seems that they have improvements ready for "classic" that would improve running it in UAE but makes no sense on real hardware so they do not publish it. Yes of course there are much more 68k users than NG users combined and if they would support 68k they would sell more licenses but they are obviously not interested so we should let it by that. They go their way whereever this goes and we our.

I also do not see that FPGA harms PPC sales, at least not much. 68k community is not interested in PPC.


John Heritage

Posts 111
08 Mar 2016 19:33


Based on the response after yours - it sounds like Hyperion is playing the game that they think 68K users will eventually go to OS 4.x..  which is definitely not true for me, especially with hardware like this awesome Apollo core..


Johannes Schäfer

Posts 47
08 Mar 2016 21:05


Mikester RX7 wrote:

  Who profits when an Amiga OS 3.x license is sold?  If Hyperion has no way to profit on 3.x I can understand their motives.  If they could profit on 3.x I believe they have a stupid business model because their biggest potential user base (by far) is 3.x.
 
 

 
  Cloanto profits with selling Amiga OS 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 and 3.x.
 
  From the Cloanto website:
  "By popular demand, a "Classic Support" scenario was explicitly outlined in a Coexistence Agreement between Amiga, Inc. and Cloanto, for use also outside of emulated Amiga systems. This was complemented by additional acquisitions and licenses."
 
  Cloanto has improved AmigaOS 3.1 (and the Kickstart 3.x) with several bugfixing, e.g. support for harddisks with more than 4GB. They have licensed and bundeled improvements made in OS3.5 and 3.9 for distribution for their emulation system WINUAE. They have the most improved AmigaOS_for_68K. I think Cloanto is the contact for 68K.
 
  I think that Cloanto has the license to improve AmigaOS3.1, because they already did it and they are selling it to the (68K) classic market.
 
  The last word about what could be possible can only answer Cloanto.


Gregthe Canuck

Posts 274
08 Mar 2016 23:50


@Mikester RX7:  "In my opinion the move to PowerPC is a failure"
 
At the time it looked like a good move. 68K was dead. PowerPC ecosystem was good and Amiga OS and Morph OS already had a history of working with PowerPC accelerators.
 
PowerPC is slowly failing out from underneath them. And that's too bad.
 
Even PA Semi had a pretty cool roadmap until Apple came along. Heck I had even started discussions with PA Semi but we won't go there.
 

Now Apollo core is the shiny new thing. :)


Kymon Zonias

Posts 4
09 Mar 2016 00:02


@BigGun

You have a PM over at AW.net.
Please read, thx

Greetz
z!Erec

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