Brussels, January 5, 2016
Hyperion Entertainment wishes a happy New Year 2016 everybody!
The days between last Christmas and New Year were actually clouded by the sad fact that the source code of AmigaOS 3.1 and additional content dating back to 1994 was published and widely spread without permission of the rights-holder. Note that no code of AmigaOS 4.x was released or distributed.
Hyperion Entertainment holds an exclusive, world-wide, perpetual source-code license to the intellectual property of AmigaOS 3.1 and additional content as documented in the publicly available settlement agreement between Hyperion Entertainment and Amiga, Inc. which has taken the form of a stipulated judgement.
Based on this license AmigaOS 4.x development was started in 2001 by Hyperion Entertainment using the AmigaOS 3.1 code as a basis and as the direct successor of what Commodore left behind in 1994. AmigaOS 4.x is an actively developed product on sale and still incorporates a substantial amount of AmigaOS 3.1 code.
While this would be already more than enough of a reason to care about the unauthorised disclosure and distribution, it is also the very same settlement agreement which made all of this possible in the first place, which contractually requires Hyperion to enforce and protect any intellectual property rights associated with AmigaOS including the AmigaOS 3.1 source-code.
This entails that Hyperion Entertainment will examine all possible legal action against any unauthorised source of or use of this material it is aware of. All of this leads up to the reason why we "make such a fuss" about code which is more than 20 years old by now. While the original leak seems to stem from someone outside of the active community, it is even more sad to see quite some of the remaining active users happily participate in distributing this unauthorised copy, compromising years of development work and all possible future versions of AmigaOS and therefore biting the hand that feeds them against all common sense and in blatant violation of copyright.
Having said that, our most special thanks go to all loyal customers, user groups, dealers, partners and all others who showed and continue to show their support to us. You are the reason why AmigaOS still exists, why it remains under active development and why we care.
Thank you,
on behalf of Hyperion Entertainment, all associated developers, translators and testers.
Hyperion Entertainment CVBA
Tervurenlaan 34
1040 Brussels
Belgium
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