amiga-news.de - Trevor Dickinson has already acquired co-ownership of AmigaOS 4 in 2019

12.Apr.2024
Passione Amiga & Amiga Documents (ANF) Trevor Dickinson has already acquired co-ownership of AmigaOS 4 in 2019
Amiga Documents, the documentation of the recent Amiga company history, which has been continuously expanded by an anonymous author for 15 years, has been supplemented by a completely new section: The article Hyperion Entertainment's Silent Puppeteer attempts to prove that Robert Trevor Dickinson of A-EON has been financing the legal disputes with which Ben Hermans (Hyperion) has been trying to secure ever more extensive rights to AmigaOS for a decade and a half.

Three new internal documents are made public for the first time: First the license agreement of March 2019 between Dickinson and Hyperion, in which the A-EON owner licenses ExecSG, which he already acquired in February 2017 according to the agreement, to Hyperion - for a price of 10 euros per copy of AmigaOS 4 sold. The price was determined as a share of the standard [AmigaOS 4] license fees of 60 euros and will be automatically corrected accordingly should Hyperion's pricing for AmigaOS 4 change.

In a second contract between Hyperion and Dickinson from August 2019, the latter acquires "co-ownership" of all components of AmigaOS 4 owned by Hyperion for EUR 47,500. He is also to be granted access to all source code immediately upon receipt of payment. However, Dickinson can only use his newly acquired rights if Hyperion ceases to exist or ends its business activities with regard to AmigaOS 4 - bankruptcy or liquidation are cited as examples.

(Editor's note: It is unclear to us which rights Dickinson actually acquired in August 2019. Hyperion only has a license to distribute the compiled binaries for the vast majority of AmigaOS 4 components. The only component known to us that is actually owned by Hyperion is the GUI toolkit "Reaction", which was acquired in May 2019.)

A secret agreement dated December 2010 between Ben Hermans, Robert Trevor Dickinson and the former A-EON financier Anthony Moorley is now also public. It appears to confirm the allegations of embezzlement that Dickinson has been making for a long time, most recently also publicly: Ben Hermans undertakes here to repay money that he owes A-EON - including (quote) "amounts that have been removed by him from the bank accounts of A-EON Technology without authority" - and to withdraw from the company.

Editor's note: In addition to publishing these new documents, the original article primarily attempts to prove Dickinson's long-standing financial support for Hyperion, especially during the two major court cases. The text was written by Nicola Morocutti and was originally published in the Italian print magazine Passione Amiga. Morocutti, who worked full-time for Mike Battilana in 2007/2008, formulates some of his statements here as if he were still employed by Hyperion's opponent and makes several unsubstantiated claims. We have therefore refrained from summarizing his statements on this topic, even though they correspond in several respects with the information we have received.

We have asked the parties involved for statements and will submit them later if necessary. (cg) (Translation: cg)

[News message: 12. Apr. 2024, 22:40] [Comments: 1 - 13. Apr. 2024, 14:58]
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