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Cloanto does not singularly hold the authority to make AmigaOS open source. As you well know, the ownership and legal rights to AmigaOS have been entangled in intricate legal matters, particularly following the involvement of Hyperion Entertainment and the settlement agreement under Amiga Inc. Mike, as part of the new Amiga company, is in a legal position that potentially allows for such a transition. However, decisions around making AmigaOS open source are not solely at his discretion but are influenced by a web of legal agreements and considerations. "At the end of December 2015, Austrian self-proclaimed "hacktivist" Mr. Bernhard R. Fischer gave a speech titled "The Ultimate Amiga 500 Talk" [236] at the 32th Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. At about the same time as the speech, during which Mr. Bernhard R. Fischer cited his own past as a "cracker" and "spreader", the proprietary source code of Amiga OS 3.1 was leaked to that same event's file sharing network, and immediately became public [237]. Analysis of this leaked source code revealed how Cloanto had contributed to the Amiga operating system as far back as 1993 [230], leading to some speculation on whether it could use this status in relation to the complex legal proceedings between Hyperion Entertainment and the Amiga parties, and in the context of an open source scenario.
Between 2016 and 2017, Cloanto added some details about "possible futures involving open source, a nonprofit and/or foundation, and other long-term preservation scenarios" to its cloanto.org page [238]. In what seemed like a response to this, Hyperion Entertainment director Mr. Timothy De Groote stated that "We cannot legally support this. Once it is open source, this is an irreversible decision that is beyond the scope of our license under the Amiga Inc. Settlement Agreement." [240]." For a more detailed understanding, please read the Amiga Documents https://sites.google.com/site/amigadocuments/ |