Amiga United Ltd

I would like to initiate a discussion, in case this could be valuable to anyone.

What do you think? Could the creation of a company called i.e. Amiga United Ltd be the solution for this community? And I will explain.

What if all the companies that work on AmigaOS 4 Software and Hardware and AmigaOS 3 cooperate under an umbrella company? As I see it all of them have interest for this OS to succeed, right?

So, right now we have:
- Hyperion licensed to develop AmigaOS 4 and AmigaOS 3(???)
- Cloanto/Amiga Inc have all the brand licenses (correct me if I am wrong)
- A-Eon developing Hardware and Enhancer with drivers for the OS
- Trevor Dickinson owner of the ExecSG and HAL
- Acube developing the Sam and Tabor(for A-Eon) hardware
- and at the end the Amiga community.

As you see, each of the above have a separated part in the current situation, and can play a specific role.

What would happen if they all had equal amount of shares of this company, even the community, and the same voting powers. And the earnings are separated equally to all of them. They would be forced to work on solutions, and by that they would not have any interest to compete each other on market and courts?

My proposal is for the first two years (or more), an ex Commodore person, i.e. Dave Haynie (if interested of' course) being the CEO, until all the personal issues are resolved.

I see so much potential on the above, I wanted to discuss it with you.
Think about:
- Cloanto targeting the emulation audience and branding on other products, which would earn extra money for the company. Also, they would be responsible about the reseller network to make sure that the products are always available for the buyers. And finally, they would have the marketing job, to communicate with the world the products
- Hyperion's and A-Eon's developers work on the OS and SDK
- ExecSG team keep working on kernel to bring the awesome new features
- A-Eon's developers work on hardware drivers
- ACube work on building the needed hardware, with:
* Sam460 single thread entry level,
* Tabor dual thread CPU middle level and
* the X5000 as the top machines.
- and the community working on software for the OS (applications, drivers etc)

Is this too good to be true? There is so much ego that makes such an idea utopian, forcing us and them to fail sooner or later?

To add on the above, if those people that hold AmigaOS future in their hands want to target BIG things, noone of them can do it alone. The current situation doesn't help at all.

To hit BIG, they need to think BIG, out of their personal microcosm, and cooperate. That's my opinion.

@walkero
The money is the big question to make a big company.

@Templario
You are right. I guess a lot of money will be saved if court expenses stop and if there is a way to sell more stuff, than only the AmigaOS. Also, if they all work together will have more power to build new stuff expanding the user base and sell more.

I totally agree with the following:
Quote:

@walkero

I would love the idea of one united family.

The only thing standing in its way is that everyone wants to be in control.

And too much has happened in the past.

It makes me wonder why all Hyperion (related) products have disappeared from the Amigakit store for example.

@geennaam

Quote:
Exactly. Too many captains but too few sailors.

You are right guys. Is there more control of having a vote on a democratic decision on how a company of people should proceed?

If they don't wake up, sooner or later they will end up having control on a corpse! What good will that bring to them?

@walkero


This idea of all companies coming together definitely gets my vote!

@walkero

While the idea of a single company makes every sense considering our limited community/market, I'm sure that it would already have happened if it were possible. I'm afraid the individual players believe that, over the years, they have put in too much to just part with it "for the greater good".

The last point in your list - "the community working on software for the OS" - is IMHO the only thing we can do at this point, before the legal situation gets resolved.

@walkero

https://dealroom.net/blog/challenges-during-m-a

Top Reasons Why M&A Deals Fail

01. Lacking a good motive for the acquisition

Big risk, not everyone might have good motives for doing so.

Advatage:

Only clear advantage sort out legal issues, and ownership, no more legal problems.

Mike kills of treat, that treat to his sales of Cloanto Roms, and official AmigaOS on Amiga Forever. Who wonts use old version, when you can get new and better version form Hyperion.

Disadvantage:

Cloanto won’t be able change a license for brand names, if Hyperion becomes part of the same company, this can be bad for Mike.

02. Targeting the wrong company

Emulation business is maybe more economic, and better business model, because does require funding of developers/beta testers, and people doing support, R&D cost time and money, this might actually be large economic loss for Mike, as more of his cash might end up in R&D.

03. Overestimating synergies

Not really doing it for synergies. The problems here is artificially created by obtaining brand names used by Hyperion in product Hyperion has contract right to use, from the former owner of the brands.

04. Overpaying

If Hyperion was sold, I guess its biggest share holder Ben, most likely wont to cover his expenses in the legal system over the years. And Ben does not have the money to buy Cloanto.

05. Exogenous risks

Nitchmarket, not a issue.

Only issue going open source might kill all funding, Mike has talked about it. no one invest in something that is free, becouse there is never going to be a return on investments.

Who buys snow, water, and air? No founding an R&D business dies.

06. Losing the trust of important stakeholders

Not everyone might will like to work for a different company, if plans change.

Communication cross countries, and regular keeping up to date, and keep things on track.

07. Inadequate due diligence

No restructuring wont change anything, complete restructuring, will can result in chaos.

08. Failing to pull out when all evidence says you should

We can ignore this one
Should have been done a long time ago
too late now.

09. Failed Integration

Not big risk, we are not moving that fast.

10. Neglecting number one

Mikes Emulation business does not need Hyperion.

Quote:
Allow me to disagree on that, because I believe there is plenty of area to make changes on the OS to use better an emulated machine.

Just imagine that they decide to work on a VM, with no physical CPU, that runs over JAVA, or whatever, on every OS out there. That's what Android does, isn't it? That's what JAVA does.

So instead of porting AmigaOS to x86, arm, whatever, maybe it would be possible to do a big leap with a VM. Too BIG? Then check qemu, target the best CPU emulated and work to bring AmigaOS 4 on that. Not possible?

I believe that there are so many things they could do, as long as they think BIG, for a better future.

@walkero

Mike does not really write emulators, his emulator is WinUAE written by mostly Tony.

Sure, you can make the illusion that you are running one OS, when you are running 3 different OS, using the same window manager, virtualization is possible and doable, tight integration is not. You end up with something whery bloated. Because you end up with 3 different of everything.

As someone else pointed out AmigaDE used little endian data, so it run slowly on PowerPC, but fast on Intel, can you do better? Well, not unless you had a CPU that support BE and LE, but as I found out they often remove one or the other, to save heat and complexity.

What if wrote language that did not support shifts, and did not support unions, etc, well have to deal with when loading from disk, and you have to deal with if wont talk to the OS and hardware, you don’t get away from it.

@walkero

ah alas this is more a dream scenario nowadays and I fear the only way to move forward is the law suits have to get settled once and for all and with a clear path moving forward. If legally speaking things are still 'grey' rather than black or white then we'll be back to square one from 27 years ago!