Between October [131] and November [132] 2001, Hyperion Entertainment entered into an agreement with Amiga Washington to port the "Classic" Amiga OS 3.1 (or 3.9, according to a possibility laid out in the original plan) from the 68K CPU (as in the original 1985 Amiga) to the increasingly popular PowerPC CPU, which was already used in some newer Amiga expansion boards and in computers by Apple. This was to become Amiga OS 4.0. Mr. Ben Hermans and Mr. Evert Carton both had other full-time jobs (Mr. Ben Hermans as an attorney), and would subcontract the work to external programmers, most notably the Frieden brothers in Germany.
According to the contract [132], the conversion was expected to be fairly simple both in terms of budget ($25,000), specification ("Essentially, OS 3.9 running on the AmigaOne and CyberStorm PPC without using the 68k CPU") and timing ("ready for release in a matter of months"). Mr. Ben Hermans himself illustrated how simple the port was expected to be in a "change some flags and recompile" comment [271]. Everything non-essential was grouped into a different section titled Future Work: "It is clear that the primary concern should be to get OS 4 up and running on both the AmigaOne as well as the CyberStorm PPC cards as soon as possible. After the basic work is done, further updates and goodies may be made available as boing bag upgrades on the road to OS 4.2."
During the development of OS 4, Amiga, Inc. directly attended trade shows and gave demonstrations of its new operating system [291]. OS 4 was, thus, conveyed and perceived as an Amiga (rather than as a Hyperion Entertainment) product.
Once it had received the $25,000, Hyperion Entertainment was supposed to "transfer all Source Code, interest and title in OS 4.0 to Amiga [Washington]" [132], while continuing to pay Amiga Washington royalties for any sales of OS 4.0. Similar terms were confirmed less than two years later with Amiga Delaware [134].
Hyperion Entertainment would later claim to only have received $24,750, i.e. $250 less than the agreed amount, whereas Amiga Washington had claimed to have paid "far more than the prescribed $25,000 payment for that transfer" [243][318]. In other words, "Some five years after that due date had passed, and despite the fact that it has been paid 150% of the amount stipulated in its agreement with Amiga Washington relating to OS 4.0, Hyperion has not delivered the operating system to anyone – not to Amiga Washington and not to Amiga [Delaware], which by 2004 had acquired all right, title and interest in OS 4.0." [243]
In a series of aggressive escalations, what had started as a clerical $250 error even according to Hyperion Entertainment, evolved into a complex lawsuit coordinated by Mr. Ben Hermans acting as an attorney for his own company against his former clients [135], and funded [239] by British oil millionaire [232] Mr. Robert Trevor Dickinson (who would later also become a shareholder of Hyperion Entertainment).
After the death of Dr. Pentti Kouri (main investor and chairman of the board of Amiga, Inc.) in 2009, the Amiga parties, represented by law firm Reed Smith, preferred to settle the matter [138]. This left Hyperion Entertainment with both the payment for the porting job and a royalty-free de facto ownership of AmigaOS 4 (the OS kernel and other components are owned by third parties close to Hyperion Entertainment), rather than a mere license.
Mr. Robert Trevor Dickinson's A-EON Technology Ltd., among others, was rewarded with a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty free licence to use the AmigaOne, AmigaOS and Boing Ball trademarks and trade names granted under sub-license from Hyperion" [244][377]. As British Amiga developer Mr. Stephen Jones wrote in a congratulatory message [315] to Hyperion Entertainment's Mr. Ben Hermans: "Trevor tells me you are good people to have owning the ship now." The "robbery of the AmigaOS" [239] was complete.
At the contractually agreed [132] specifications and costs, the project for the porting of the Amiga operating system to the PowerPC architecture was a credible stopgap effort do deliver a moderately newer operating system to a modest community of Amiga users that was anxious to use something new, while Amiga Washington kept working on Amiga DE (based on the much newer Tao Elate/Intent operating system architecture).
The initial cost estimate (and the amount of the buyback clause) appears to truthfully reflect the higher end of amounts that were common in the Amiga market. To better understand actual sales volumes (as per a variety of 2007-2009 forum posts), once AmigaOS 4 was complete, it was produced in quantities of a few 100 units at a time (probably batches of 500), whereas the unofficial AmigaOne PowerPC-based successor named "Sam" by ACube Systems srl was produced in lots of 50 units at a time. Years later, it seemed hard for some to believe that an operating system could be written or sold for $25,000, but we believe that for the simple port (not a new operating system) that this was meant to be, it was a generous amount that made all parties happy. For other operating systems, for example Linux, ports from one CPU to another (including 68K and PowerPC Amiga systems) were customarily done as a community effort at no charge.
Things became more complex when Hyperion Entertainment was unable to obtain the full 3.9 source code that it was hoping to base some of its work on, and had to limit itself to the version 3.1 code. However, this was not unexpected, as the original porting agreement itself stated that "Changes made after as 3.1... There might be license issues involved with this" [132].
The first 4.0 release was originally planned as a port from one CPU to another, without adding new features (Mr. Fleecy Moss deposition: "The goal of this development was to move the Amiga as from the more antiquated 68k processor and custom chipset to a state of the art, PowerPC ('PPC')-based processor" [133]). Instead, during development, a number of new features were added by Hyperion Entertainment, which delayed the initial release.
On the legal side, during the AmigaOS 4 project, Amiga Washington found itself in need of transferring rights for the "Classic" Amiga OS (which Hyperion Entertainment was basing its work on) to the new Amiga Delaware entity, apparently for the prime reason of protecting this asset from the Thendic/Genesi vs. Amiga [21] litigation, but possibly also in a shift of control between shareholders. Thendic/Genesi were supporting a competing Amiga-inspired operating system, named MorphOS.
The original Amiga-Hyperion Entertainment contract [132] for AmigaOS 4 was from 2001, whereas on March 12, 2004 Amiga Washington stated [22] that on April 24, 2003, it had transferred the Amiga OS to Amiga Delaware (via ITEC LLC). Hyperion Entertainment itself entered a new contract with ITEC LLC [134] on the same date of April 24, 2003, thus accepting and endorsing the Amiga Washington-ITEC agreements.
Mr. Ben Hermans not only was Hyperion Entertainment's founder, managing partner, majority shareholder and juggling attorney and director roles, but as part of a proceeding against Thendic/Genesi to "quash MorphOS" he had also provided legal services to the very clients his own company would later sue, i.e. KMOS aka Amiga Delaware, Amino aka Amiga Washington and ITEC [135]. On March 12, 2004, his partner Mr. Evert Carton also testified in support of Amiga Washington [136].
The Amiga companies terminated the AmigaOS porting agreement with Hyperion Entertainment on November 21, 2006 [118].
As Amiga Delaware turned against Hyperion Entertainment [104], Hyperion Entertainment appeared to express surprise [137] at the sequence of events it had previously accepted [134]: "Subsequent developments in this case have only strengthened the evidence supporting the claim that ITEC engaged in the fraudulent conveyance of Amiga Washington's assets, first from Amiga Washington to ITEC, and then from ITEC to KMOS/Amiga Delaware, and that those acts damaged both Hyperion Entertainment and other creditors here in Washington, where Amiga Washington's assets were located."
At the same time, the Amiga community observed with passion how Hyperion Entertainment's lawyer-owners aggressively exploited the move from Washington to Delaware (which Hyperion Entertainment had previously accepted), using it to further attack the Amiga companies, as if the claim of the missing $250 payment was not sufficient to win or settle the case to Hyperion Entertainment's advantage.