AmigaBill Live Q&A with Mike Battilana

Original source AmigaBill

August 16, 2026.

Interview with Mike Battilana.

Story Link: August 2026 update.

Note: This is a Claude Pro cleaned-up version of an automated (Soundwise.ai) transcription. There will be some mistakes/errors; this is a long one. Produced by Steven Solie. Corrections are most welcome.

Also edited for clarity in some places.

Version: 1.0

All right, I am going to pop this down like this because folks we have a very very very special guest today. He is the well, we'll find out exactly what he is. I call him the the owner of Amiga Corporation. There's been you know a lot of activity lately with Amiga Corporation and Hyperion and all the the legal settlements. And we're gonna have Mike on today to explain everything to us and most importantly Mike's been doing great stuff with Amiga Corporation, Hyperion, and all the legal settlements. And we're going to have Mike on today to explain everything to us.

And most importantly, Mike's been doing great stuff. He was at Kickstart 3, gave a great presentation. I think the Retro Hour is going to post that, or he has posted it. He was also on one of my favorite shows this week in retro. So Mike's been doing the rounds. So the cool thing about this is that it's a live show. So the whole idea here is I want it to be like a live Q&A. But without further ado, I'm going to scroll down here to my guest scenes. And I'd like to welcome Mike Battilana from Amiga Corporation. Mike, welcome to the stream. It's so great to have you on.

Thank you, Bill. This is almost intimidating. Thank you everyone for being here. And I hear you have prepared some questions. I didn't know that. So I didn't see them, just so everyone knows. And this is live, so I can't hide. And to play the devil's advocate, since you speak of legal things and lawyers. I'm always afraid we are going to get a bit of overexposure this month. So I hope we're not drifting into hype and exaggeration and so on because I like to be factual, but I love to be here for clarity, transparency, and for all the questions. But we need to deliver facts. So this is the number one priority, of course.

That makes a lot of sense, Mike, because there's so much confusion. Like, let's just talk about the facts and leave all the speculation. Who cares about the speculation? Like today, hopefully what people get out of today is you can clear up facts so we know what's true. And then obviously, I haven't seen all the questions myself. I mean, people are going to be asking them live. So that's the exciting part. So the thing, obviously, you're not going to be able to, I'm not going gonna say obviously, but you may not be able to answer all the questions because you're not a fortune teller, you can't see the future. So there may be questions that you can answer, that's totally fine. If you can't answer it, totally cool. We'll ask them and if you're not in a place to answer, it's no problem at all. You'll give us the information that you can, right?

I enjoy the conversation and some cold water there. I'm happy about it as well, yes.

Awesome, Mike. So let's just like start off with it. I guess I can let you know like what I understand. Well, I can let you know, I like to talk in simple terms. So I'd like to let you know what I understand in simple terms. And you let me know if we're on the right track here. This is the way I understand it. So you're in charge of Amiga Corporation, and you just signed two agreements, one agreement with Hyperion and one agreement with the new Commodore. That's Christian Simpson's Commodore. The agreement with Hyperion, says that you're essentially you're going to take over all things 68K so hyperion they make amiga os4 they did OS 3.2 which is awesome and they have an upcoming os 3.3 that is coming out they're still going to do that they're still going to deliver 3.3 and they're going to support 3.3 and 3.2 until december 31st 2027 at which point it gets transferred over to you, Amiga Corporation. And Amiga Corporation still has, you know, all like Amiga OS 3.1 and before. And then the deal also says that Hyperion, who also does Amiga OS 4, they can continue. Amiga OS 4. They can continue Amiga OS 4. They can make new versions of Amiga. OS 4 and they can also make it for different CPUs. That's something I have a question about too. Amiga OS 4 runs on a PowerPC. I've got an X1000 and X5000 over there running OS 4. And it says that OS 4 can run on other CPUs besides. PowerPC, any CPUs that exist now and in the future. So, and then that's deal number one. And then agreement number two is that Amiga Corporation, you will license the Amiga name, you can license the Amiga name to Christian Simpson, the new Commodore. So that's the way I understand it.

No, no, no. The last part we will have to correct.

Okay. The first part I did get off. So, why don't you correct me on part two there when I talked about the new Commodore.

Should I do it now?

Go for it, yes.

So, okay, what you described is perfect. So what we just agreed with Hyperion is not cast in stone. In order to have a smooth transition and integration of our efforts, we will use all the time we have available, starting now. It doesn't have to start, you know December 31st 2027 and then nobody's ready and even the dates if we agree with Hyperion that it has to be something different it can be sooner later whatever so the priority is to maintain quality and continuity and to not disrupt. And the part about OS4 is just a clarification and confirmation because OS4 was never a dispute. So just to put it into context, this was a contract dispute about the 2009 settlement agreement. There never was an ownership dispute or issue. It was only a contract issue about who could do what, for example on the 68K or on operating system versions outside of OS 4. And this has all been clarified and confirmed. And of course Hyperion can do any CPU with OS 4 it wishes outside of the 68K. The agreement with Commodore instead has to do with the mutual recognition as you know we both come from the same parents in a way actually it can get complicated.

The recent kickstart show I was reminded by a friend Chris that Volkswagen and Porsche actually have also a complicated relationship. So, as you know, Amiga was purchased by Commodore in 1984. And before it was an independent company which people forgot until like the Amiga third anniversary. And then the original California team was celebrated a bit more and we continue to do that, of course. So, there have been a lot of questions and there are a lot of different possible futures about the identity, which is in part in our memories, but in part also about the choices we decide to make about the future.

Is it Commodore Amiga? Is it Amiga only? What do you do with the 8-bit systems? Because in an almost paradoxical turn of events, Amiga bought the Commodore assets, or better, it spun off the Chicken Lips and Commodore logo, you know, after Escom gave that to Tulip. And what remained became an Amiga entity holding also the 8-bit copyrights. And so that went on to Gateway and then to the other Amiga entities, which is where we take over. And so the coexistence agreement, the licensing agreement with Commodore clarifies these aspects.

Of course we recognize that these logos belong to the current Commodore entity now. Amiga has no role in that. However, since we also own some historical assets, you know, all these preservation efforts going on, for example, to preserve documentation, source code, videos, manuals, there's a whole digital company from the 80s, which can be preserved and should be preserved and which is being preserved but what do you do when for example in a manual there's a Commodore logo should you delete it can you keep it so that was part of the clarification Amiga may continue to work on the historical assets and we can continue to use those mags in the historical assets for example.

And Amiga is licensing the 8-bit assets to Commoda to do things like the C64 Ultimate. So these are under license from Amiga. There's no license for Amiga products right now. There's only recognition of the fact that Amiga, of course, also is Amiga and has the Amiga Max, let's say, but there's not a license for those. So anyone asking about when will there be a Commodore-Amiga product that may have to wait a little bit. Right now, the focus is on 8-bit.

I think that was probably one of the top questions. When is there going to be a Commodore. Amiga Ultimate, like a Commodore Amiga Ultimate? Like a Commodore 64 Ultimate. So what you're saying here, there's actually... So you've licensed the Commodore 8-bit ROMs to them so they can make the Commodore 64 Ultimate, which I got one of them, they're awesome. But the Amiga ROMs have not been licensed to the new Commodore yet.

At the moment, there's nothing to announce. And I know there's a lot of excitement about FPGA and also non-FPGA solutions. There are a few cores, more than three at the moment, I think. So people want to see products, of course. The next product that we are going to see will be the A1200 by Retro Games. And that will be the machine, which also is going to have some new features both for the old and for the new. For example, it will have AmigaOS 3.1. It can boot into Workbench. It will have a new retargetable graphics system. It will have a lot of nice features.

That's awesome. I know because you've worked with Retro Games in the past, right? For like the C64, you worked with them and you worked with them for the A500 Mini, right?

That's correct.

So you have a long relationship with them. And I know a lot of folks are super excited about the A1200. I know one of my favorite things about like the A500 Mini and all those systems from retro games is the lack of friction. You can just turn it on and boom, you're going with your Commodore 64, turn on your A500 Mini, you're in an Amiga world right away. It's just easy plug and play. I think that's a really cool feature. So you're saying that the A1200, you can boot right into Workbench. That sounds cool.

Yes, you can do that. And there's been a lot of attention to detail, like things like latency, or the touch, the feel of the actual keys, and everything is millimeter accurate, so it really feels like the original. And it would be a great machine also for hacking and tinkering, the things you can attach. They will be exciting, I think. It's going to be a great machine at a good price point. And so it will have a bright future. It will be an interesting development. And December is a great season.

Yeah, perfect. You'll make it for Christmas, which is good. That's been a problem with Amiga in the past.

It looks like it. You know, Retro Games have had some challenges also with the A500 Mini which you mentioned. At the time it had the Suez Canal disruption and again there were supply chain issues already then and now this year memory prices exploded so I hope everything will be smooth but it looks like it and either way December in my opinion is much better than June so.

Yeah it's a great it'll be a great christmas present or holiday present for folks and you said it will come with Workbench 3.1 the classic Workbench 3.1.

Yes with some additions there's going to be a app to control some system settings as well RTG which is tied into their graphics stack. So they did their own low level integration with the chip that this hardware has and we can control the overscan in the RTG just like you could on a normal PAL NTSC Amiga. This is also something that hasn't existed as far as I know yet. And yeah, so... And people can have their own, whatever they... how they want to expand it, as well as WHDLoad. There's many nice pre-installed games and... I'm not Retro Games, so I cannot speak for them.

I totally understand, but it's good to hear this information. I'm sure you know about it, but in my Amiga News section, I saw a post from Retro Games saying that they're actually going to have the A1200 at GamesCom in Germany. Have you heard that?

Looks like it, yes. So I will be there two weeks from now and we'll see. I saw a mock-up something last year already, yes.

Based on the post, it sounded like the actual one or a actual working one will be there. Well, I guess we'll see. That's what the post seems like.

So our development environment for the work we did is based on Raspberry Pi, and we have a custom version of their software for that. But I hear that the real thing is absolutely like the original, and that's one of the beautiful things about it.

That's awesome. I can't wait to see it myself. Thanks for the heads up there, Zemish. It's sounding good, everyone, sounding good.

So one more thing about that. So I guess it's going to be more capable, it's a more powerful system than the A500 Mini.

I cannot say anything about the specs because I don't have the official specs. So I suppose yes, but I cannot tell you anything about that.

Okay, cool, cool. No problem. So getting back to all of the legal issues. So I guess folks have always been frustrated because they want to see great things for the Amiga. What do all these new agreements, what do they mean for the Amiga community? What can we be excited about with all these new agreements being worked out?

Well, everything and nothing. The Amiga community has been so great in moving forward in spite of what happened in the past few years. And so one has to be really careful not to do any damage and hurt the grassroots movement, which in part prospered also during Amiga being locked in these ugly situations. So it means, in my opinion, that an up-to-date Amiga OS has the potential to reach all of the licensed platforms. I think an Amiga OS 3 upgrade at some point should be completely free. That's the way to reach everyone. It should replace 3.5, 3.9, 3.1.4. So all of these, and there should be unity also in third party, you know, licensed products. At some point, entities like Retro Games and Amiga Forever, or if you want a common baseline, you should cover all possible licensees, as well as with a free baseline, you should cover all possible licensees, as well as with a free upgrade, all of those who are using something old and prefer to update themselves.

And then this enables future AmigaOS 3 developments with more ease, I think. So in order to replace 3.9 and others, of course course this means integrating some features that are not there and some features that are there now we will have to discuss also with Hyperion how to best keep if not replace but that's the work we have ahead until the end of 2027 right as you said. Clarity also means that people know how to license. I mean, companies, OEMs, they know that they can work on projects.

I was in touch with so many really big billion dollar, that order of magnitude, entities who would like to do something with Amiga but because of their perceived legal litigiousness that some entities you know they gave this image of of cows and litigation and again it was only a contract dispute but it has now been resolved so now there should be absolutely no excuse to not start a project with Amiga even for some big entities which are quite exciting so stability, continuity, new developments and freedom to keep doing your own of course because Amiga is a lot of about hacking about diversity about individuality and it will be a challenge to to incorporate some of that into the mainstream.

There's so much going on for example now with AI projects, there's so many new developments. The other day you saw a dual TCP/IP v4 and v6 stack and there's another tool in the works right here. Even on re-implementations, how you do that at the low level, there's new way of designing the FPGAs and other hardware. So good times ahead, I think. There's clarity and peace. And if we can restore some beauty, that would be a thing. You know, a few years ago at an Amiga event in Germany, I said, even if we can't be big, at least we should be beautiful with grace, like a small bonsai. And maybe we can grow together. And this was important. The clarity we have with these agreements is important. And next steps will be facts, I hope. We have a lot of meetings and discussions planned also over the next few weeks. And maybe we can announce more. But the announcements will come after there are some facts.

Good. I'm a facts guy. I like facts. So all the Amiga licenses are basically under one roof now, Amiga Corporation.

Yes, that's correct.

That's fantastic. Yeah, and you said something that I've been thinking about too, because it's all these years. We had a joke way back in the day in Westchester Amiga User Group. We meet every month and we say, oh, who owns Amiga this month? It was kind of a running joke. And this is back when Commodore, the original Commodore folded. And but you know what? And it's been tossed around and all the legality of Amiga has been challenging. But at the same time, Amiga has still prospered because Amiga is all about the community. Like you said, it's an amazing. Amiga community is the absolute best. I mean, we had like 70 games come out for the Amiga last year. It's unbelievable. Like the Amiga community is so supportive and so vibrant. I think right now it's probably the best it's ever been, in my opinion. Some of the new stuff that's being produced, both hardware and software, like the Amiga lives on no matter what was going on with the legal stuff because the Amiga community just rocks. And we have so many talented people that just they just do it. They just like make it happen. It's unbelievable. So now that these agreements have been clarified, like you said, maybe they won't scare other folks away from getting involved in the Amiga community. Because Amiga is hot right now. It's hot. I know. Go ahead.

Yeah. Sorry. I was a slight delay. Yes. Amiga is hot. And can we keep it hot? We are preparing for Amiga 50 now. Of course you joke about who owns Amiga this month, but over 50 years it's obvious that there's been some generational change. So I don't know if the changes are too many, not enough, or just right but also yours you also mentioned new content being created new games and for example right now it's a challenge to allow these developers to reach all of these content platforms so not only should the be in my opinion the same baseline OS but also standard ways also in a quality agreement with the licensees with the OEMs for that content let's say a new game to be playable in an emulation in a Retro Game system in a system by you know know, Blaze Entertainment or Antstream doing streaming, once you buy a game or you get it on Aminet or whatever, it should be easy to move it across your Amiga devices. So that will be another thing to simplify, I think.

You mentioned, you know, all the other Amiga OSs. You're talking about 3.2 upcoming 3.3 and I give Hyperion credit because I was really excited. I love the new OS's. I love the 3.1.4 update the 3.2. And I'm really, really excited for, for 3.3. When it comes over to Amiga Corporation in, you know, perhaps in 2028, do you, what, do you have plans to continue developing the Amiga, you perhaps in 2028. Do you have plans to continue developing the Amiga OS Workbench 3.3 or 3.4?

I give credit to the developers. When Olaf and Markus contacted me and I were still wearing the Cloanto hat at Amiga 30 Germany, they said, we would like to do something new on top of AmigaOS 3.1, some improvements and so on. That started a very slow process of discussing with Amiga Inc. under Bill McEwen at the time with Hyperion, how it could be done. And then in an ugly turn of events, things unfolded in a disruptive way and which now is resolved, but I think it should have been resolved back then. It might have been resolved back then. We always were erring on the side of caution and waiting until there were agreements.

I hope we can heal and find reconciliation when needed. We are in touch, I'm in touch and my colleagues are in touch with some of the developers already now as we speak. developers already know as we speak. There have been some untrue, you know, when there's a propaganda in a tense situation, also in these echo chambers of online forums, things get distorted easily. And if you don't talk to the actual people and hear what they have to say, what their point of view is, it can continue that way. So I feel, I know that there is some healing needed.

Absolutely we are not going to wait until the end of 2027 to answer your question, to pick up or continue that. I mean, there are contractual obligations and these are one thing but they're also human aspects which I hope well they already started and will continue so I hope that there can be a transition and a collaboration that is as constructive as possible also fulfilling some of the wishes that could not be fulfilled by many developers themselves like reaching a broader audience and not having these accusations of is it legal or not. So now, for example, on that there's total gravity.

And if you have the possibility of doing a free upgrade, which we would do without hesitation, that also is going to reach a broader audience. And of course, if there will be a boxed version, the resellers, the few Amiga resellers that still exist, they have to keep their margin, but we don't want to profit on something with the upgrades where the developers didn't want any money, for example. And likewise, if we can broaden the platform by applying that to our existing agreement so that the base becomes even broader for the content developers, I mean games and so on, it can only be win-win-win, I think.

It's the satisfaction of seeing your work on more systems and the ability as a game developer or as an application developer to have a simpler system where you know it will work and and yeah we are working on on some tools also to to have it easier to install some dependencies but that's now that's in development

You know I think I'd like for me I'm a big lack of friction guy I like I like things to be as easy as possible so I got for example I know some folks whoops sorry there Mike I know some folks uh will come to me and they ask me like oh I've always been interested in Amiga or I used to have one you know back when I was a kid I want to get back into it and how do I get into it and I was and I'm like man it's kind of tricky because you can I download this cool emulator but then you have to go find the ROMs and you know one of the things I would point them to is is Amiga forever by Cloanto that means a great package do you and you you are client oh but you were saying that that's changing now can you just tell me a little bit about where Cloanto sits with the new Amiga Corporation?

Well, they're independent companies. I started in the 80s as a software developer with Cloanto and that allowed us to have a good relationship with Amiga companies. And so we had our software was bundled with every Amiga sold. And so we had good years as well as very bad years when everything collapsed. My pleasure and my mistake, who knows, I will never know, was that in the mid-90s, when Cloanto already had diversified out of necessity into B2B because for software developers it wasn't easy at all to keep doing Amiga software. For hardware developers maybe it was a bit easier to replace what no longer was there from the Commodore companies.

So we diversified into B2B and currency solutions and boring software for Windows. But it was also an emerging period for emulation. Also an ugly period for emulation because emulation was by some console companies being associated to piracy. And you saw police raids and other ugly things happening. So we used our existing good relationship with the Amiga entities to do an official and legal emulation. And in a way this helped emulation prosper also in our Amiga world, I think.

Then we got closer again to the estate of the late Dr. Pentti Kouri, who passed away in 2009. You may remember that year when also Hyperion and Amiga settled. Where Amiga was in a very difficult situation after Dr. Kouri passed away. He was the main financing source behind Amiga and his estate. Then kept the majority. And they were tired of these legal attacks. They flared up again in 2018 and they were tired. And that pushed us closer. We offered our help. At the time I was still with Cloanto doing also Amiga things. We offered our help and that brought us closer leading to the 2019 acquisition which became the new Amiga Corporation.

So for a while I've been wearing two hats in the way also I'm presenting myself in the Amiga, the way also I'm presenting myself here or at Amiga events maybe.

However, now I need to reposition that, not saying reneging our Amiga past as Cloanto, but Amiga is totally independent. It has its own developers, its own tools, its own completely independent IP, of course, separate ownership, separate revenue streams. They operate at arm's length. Cloanto is now only a licensee, as it used to be in 1997, for Amiga Forever and C64 Forever. And I will confess to you that in very difficult times, like in the 2000s, this was an eternal debate even for Cloanto. Why are we giving so much attention to this to these Amiga things when we are more profitable with a B2B site and when these are now difficult times.

Now times improved and we kept subsidizing, let's say, our Amiga work with our B2B site. Still now Amiga is more of a consumer thing and we keep doing B2B side. Still now, Amiga is more of a consumer thing, and we keep doing B2B, now pivoting a little bit to the AI side of the tools we develop. I think under Eat Your Own Dog Food, the company, one company could maybe use the tools to help Amiga, but the two should continue to be separate. So I obviously have some expertise in business solutions and software now, but my passion, my love is in the Amiga things.

That's why in spite of all the adversities in the 90s and in the 2000s we kept doing Amiga even through the legal challenge that came later so I joked also last week at the Kickstart event you know that my wife says I should get a real job but she always said that anyway because she doesn't consider software real job so it's not about me. Yes so the two companies are independent to answer your question and i think the copyrights that Cloanto held and it helped them only to do the proper things with the good relationship it had it it was able to hold them for a while, they've now moved on to Amiga, and that's where they should be, in my opinion.

So Amiga has 100% of everything as far as their ownership is concerned.

Got it. So Amiga has all the ROMs, like the Kickstart ROMs we used to get from Amiga Forever are now with Amiga Corporation.

Like they were with Amiga Inc. before, yes. And briefly with Cloanto during a transition phase. This is not over.

Excellent, excellent. My wife sometimes tells me, well, no, I don't tell myself. I tell myself sometimes I should get a real job. I know the feeling. She's supportive and all, but sometimes I'm like, because I'm in the arts so it's a little bit it's a little bit crazy but that okay so that answers a lot of questions for me I mean I have a lot of questions for you I could I could go on and on I'm very interested you know it'd be cool you know because well I want to get to the audience questions but you know it'd be like really like again I'm a guy who likes things like super, super easy. It'd be really cool if there was like a website where people could download the ROMs, you know, like, like, let's just say you downloaded like your favorite emulator and then boom, you could just download the ROMs really easily. Obviously, you know, paying for them, whatever, boom, download them and then you're emulating. I just, I love things that are easy. For people to get into, like getting the A1200. I'm going to recommend that system to a lot of people who want to get into Amiga. Get the A1200, turn it on, and boom, they're in Amiga. I love easy.

Because a lot of people come to me in the past, and they're like, I want to emulate an Amiga, and I'm like, oh, man, there's some friction there. Now it sounds like it's going to be a bit smoother, potentially.

We get there. So iOS and Android. And this has to integrate, however, with a way to access your content. I don't want to say, you know, I like offline, I like anonymity. I'm not saying that now people should have an account in order to manage their content. But there should be ways. If you have an Android tablet, an iOS phone or whatever, you want to play your Amiga games there and you bought them once shouldn't they synchronize in some way maybe it's just a possibility but if you like it easy I like it easy as well so. And right now you cannot even.

So I had a conversation with Apple multiple times we sat in a room with the top people who are familiar with these issues Apple and now the EU regulations helped ease a bit of that but Apple had a problem with emulation it had a problem with open source and so I don't know if you remember the case with the VLC media player which had to be removed because the the it was under the GPL2 and one of the contributors complained, which is all that it takes because Apple requires a fee in order to use the developer tools. And that by itself is incompatible with using with the GPL2 license. So at least that was an interpretation. If somebody brings it up, it can get ugly. So, and then they have a problem, third thing, with adding your own content. You know, you can add PDF or MP3s, but you cannot easily add your games. So we have to deal with these issues when we are into the Apple ecosystem. And some of these have been dealt with and some of these will continue to be a priority. It's a bit easier on Android. And I hope we are getting there with a quality solution.

Outstanding, outstanding. So, like I said, I could keep talking to you for a long time, Mike, but I want to get to the questions because there's a lot of good questions and I appreciate you being here live. I'm going to start with my main man, Voxletrotz. Again, I know if you can't answer some of these questions, Mike, totally fine. I'm just going to ask him and see. He said, there seemed to be a mention of a free version of Amiga OS, like 3.10 or something like that in the press releases. Can we assume that they will be free for folks who have bought Amiga Forever or free to the public?

There will be free upgrades. So this is a bit speculative, but the idea that I expressed and I already expressed it before this settlement agreement. So it shouldn't come as a surprise if you look at some of the old speeches, for example. There should be free upgrades in order to replace a properly licensed 3.5, 3.9, 3.1.4 or whatever. But also there should be no technical reason to still prefer one or the other so we need to look at the reasons why some people still prefer 3.9 something is it TCP/IP is it something else for example or is it just because in the perception of the people and we all like it simple 3.9 is just a number that is higher than 3.1.4. I mean, I understand it, you understand it, but normal people don't understand that 3.1.4 is newer than 3.9. So the next one, in my opinion, the next one should be, and we have this conversation, 3.10, or we can do a year numbering like Ubuntu or Apple do, you know, 3.26 or 3.27. And I think that's a way we can discuss and use in the future.

Well, you answered his next question because he was asking about the numbering system and how you can number the new versions to make it a little more understanding, a little more clear. Yeah, so that makes sense. I think doing the year could be a really good idea because I know when Mac, we're talking about Mac, when they did OS 10 everyone just called it OS X and then it got kind of dicey because everyone just called OS X but even though there were new versions it was you know.

We did that too I mean I'm trying to have this 3.x in Amiga Forever but that too is something that needs to be replaced to I should have listed it apologies so I should have mentioned it first apologies. So I should have mentioned it first as a confusing element to criticize our own work a bit. So it added to the confusion and this should be replaced. You couldn't do it in the early 2000s. A numbering scheme like this wouldn't have worked because you may remember how Microsoft tried to do it with 95 and 98, it still worked like two digits, but then it broke in 2000 and so on. They had to change in my opinion. But now that we are stable, solid, recognizable 20 range, you already can do it again in my opinion. It will continue to work for the next 75 years.

And there'll still be some, you'll still have to differentiate it from Amiga OS 4 or OS 5. If they come out with that, people might not understand. Wait, Amiga OS 5, does it work on my, you know, my Amiga 1200? Why not? I mean, we understand it, but new people may not.

No, you're right. And we need to, and it's not only, you know, the external version number. and we need to and it's not only you know the the external version number we are also inching closer to v50 which is the internal version number of OS4 so there will be new new ways to to to tell the internal libraries and features at once we get to v49 and so yes there's both internal and external version identities, let's call them, that could be confusing but let's step backwards maybe we should sit we should all sit at a table and see if there's a way to avoid some of that fragmentation. So I hope that we can sit together also with Hyperion and with the other stakeholders as you know Trevor owns the kernel for example.

He owns what kernel? Trevor owns what kernel?

Trevor owns the OS4 kernel. He has a license with Hyperion where he's in control of the kernel. And so Hyperion alone also needs Amiga and needs Trevor and maybe we can all sit together and make plans for a future that is less fragmented than it otherwise might be. But the focus right now, the practical focus and what Amiga can do is 3.x on 68K and I'm actually happy that Amiga cannot do everything because it helps keep focus. So we are not going to worry right now about OS 4, even though we have already some points of contact with Amiga OS 3 and OS 4 APIs. There are some overlaps, so you have to talk. For example, we implemented some flags in the RTG subsystem that in theory are OS4 flags, you know, and get bitmap attribute I see here. We have BNA is RTG. This is an OS4 feature and we implemented this now in OS3. So we need to continue talking also about ReAction. Are both to have ReAction are they both going to be aligned with each other it's not easy it was difficult also for Hyperion I think to keep the OS3 and OS4 parts aligned where they overlapped it's it's energy consuming and I think we we. And I think we may regret at some point the cost of having a high quality bar on a niche OS project. I mean, it is a bit crazy. What we're doing is a bit crazy. It would be easy to just think about the past and just license the past and archive it. No archiving and making accessible is again it's another order of magnitude of work that people underestimate. Working with so many people and institutions for this to not be forgotten. There's so many projects also on the preservation side but okay sorry back to your questions actually to to the people's questions.

We will, you basically answered this one already. I don't know if there's anything you want to add but CaptainJohnArcher he wants to know when there's going to be a new Amiga and he's you know the next one's the a 1200 uh and any any more details in on the talkings with the new Commodore and uh what I learned today is that uh they don't they have the license for the 8-bit stuff but they don't have an Amiga license yet. Is there anything else you'd like to add to that?

Well, I said there's nothing we can't announce. And we had a great team-building experience, if I may say so, early May. And we spent three days together together our team and their team and we didn't only discuss this contract we then signed we also discussed many many possible future possibilities. I think we brainstormed about much more than the questions that came up so far and maybe some you have but I think this what we are doing is some first steps some necessary first steps and a good coexistence is often leads to something else so I will meet them again later this month. So obviously at GamesCom, everybody's there. And they have a booth, by the way. There will be... I can't say where, because maybe it's a surprise next to where they are. I don't know if this has already transpired, but I think it will be a funny placement.

It'd be funny if they're right there next to the A1200. That'd be funny. Who knows? That'd be funny. Who knows? I wish I could go. Gamescom looks awesome. But okay, that's cool. Thanks, Mike. No, I've just always been thinking it's something that's been crossing my mind. I'm a big fan of the C64 Ultimate. And I think they, again, I think they took away a lot of friction. I know all the elements of the Commodore 64 Ultimate already existed. But the way they packaged it and put it all together and made it easy for people just to buy it all in one gulp, I thought it was awesome. I think it's a great product. So everyone's already thinking, what could they do with Amiga? Because it's easier with the Commodore 64. The Commodore 64 is like an easier machine to do that with. And like I said, those pieces, the cases, the Ultimate Commodore 64, and the keycaps, they all existed already. But now, like with Amiga, Amiga is a much more – Amiga is not one computer. Amiga is actually like many computers. It's hard.

So, luckily, yes, of course, the Hitbit OS is easier easier to deal with and Gideon's work was almost perfect already. So it was in a way maybe low hanging fruit tops. So on the Amiga, it would require a bit more operating system work. And of course, the hardware is more complex also to implement. You know, there's also this big debate. Should it be FPGA? Should it be something else under the hood? The purists often claim that maybe they're right, but FPGA is the way to go because it's the perfect emulation, but it's not. Our way of emulating the Amiga and FPGA is not a low-level exact replica of the Amiga. It is true, our reinterpretation. So if an ARM-based emulation is cycle-exact and you cannot distinguish it, which one is really real? You should put them side by side and maybe like we used to do in the 90s when people were skeptical about emulation. So yes, I think an Amiga based systems is a bit more complex. I think we are getting there also with our RTG work, because all of these devices, once you attach them to a TV, I think you want more than NTSC. So right now our RTG handles up to 8K. Of course, in 8K, the icons are very, very small. But we have to solve some issues like divisions by zero just because 8K is so much for Amiga. But it's fun. It's fun. It's crazy and fun. And we'll get there.

Amiga and 8K. I don't know. That's nuts. I'm just going to keep... We have so many questions. I'm just going to keep pushing along. I like to ask follow-ups nuts. I'm just going to keep, we have so many questions. I'm just going to keep pushing along. I like to ask follow-ups, but I keep pushing along. Jake the dog, who's holding things down in chat, copying the questions and putting them into my Discord. I appreciate that, Jake. He's got a question.

Are there any projects that you want to pursue over the past several years that's been blocked, but now you can pursue thanks to the new agreements?

Yes. Yes. So it was really sad. I can make an example without naming them. A very, very large public company. I was there with the CEO, who was a long time Amiga user. And, you know, I'm quite often in the Bay Area, in the US. My sister lives there in Palo Alto. And there's a lot of people who were had success in the work they did. And they are former Amiga users. And so one gentleman layed out some ideas for a product, high volume product. And he said we cannot touch it until this situation.

So yes, it's just, you know, also some people who helped us in the recent challenging years, they did not want to be named or mentioned in the context of this ugliness that came up in the recent years. And even for me, these haven't been easy years, I will remember them for my children, not for the impossible disputes that even I know. I don't know how we got there to the point of solving them now, but I'm very grateful that in some way we overcame them. So yes, the answer is yes. There are many, you know, not having the risk or perception of something ugly attached to Amiga, that is a great thing.

And it allows people to talk about things that they wouldn't before. I'm talking about big companies now. People who are well-known and maybe didn't want to be associated to this.

Now that the agreements are in place, it's a less scary, litigious world to get into.

Yes, but it shouldn't at all. So, you should, we could have a long call about this and it would be inappropriate for it to be public, but there should be an analysis on the psychological and the financial aspects of the motives. What led some people to fund the litigation?

Why is negativity so much more successful than positivity in online forums? Did the algorithm work against Amiga in a way?

Why didn't more people feel like they could stand up, people who knew some things? And they all came forward, many helped during, but many came forward later. You said, you know, we picked the wrong side, we are sorry. And this is why I think the topic of reconciliation now is so important. And I have examples of how reconciliation was handled in South Africa after apartheid, in some indigenous tribes in Northern Canada, in Australia. There are ways of talking and solving things where there is pain left that I think are still there with us in the Amiga community and we should in a way, discuss and understand, who knows, maybe start a new book. I want to move forward with more beauty and peace and if there are any of these tension points and also feel free to mention them in the questions because I would be surprised if they weren't but i'm here to to to talk about this.

I'm gonna ask another one from Jake if disk is not viable anymore what other physical media do you consider if an Amiga Ultimate was were to be made.

Well who said who says that the floppy disk is not viable. That's a hint.

And second, yes I will if I was really really really rich I would have three factories a CRT tube factory, a floppy disk factory, and a tape factory, of course. And with doing all the hardware, the cassette tapes and the floppy disk drives and the monitors. On the monitors, maybe we can do... There's some good approximation of the pixel shaders involved in the process. I think it can be emulated pretty well. Even the curvature, I've seen experiments in plastic and glass. It probably can already be done. Low latency, not quite zero, but we are getting there. From a steampunk point of view, I would love to have more of these mechanical things. So in a future AI world, for the brief moment, how long that will be before the singularity takes over everything, and maybe then we will be able to choose to live in a steampunk world with floppy disks and tapes. Will there be a brief moment where robot factories will be able to produce floppy disks and tapes and drives again? I hope so. So yes, I think our children deserve to play with these things, to experiment with these physical objects. And yeah, so I feel the same. I want them back.

A lot of my friends' kids, they're getting fed up with all the subscriptions and streamers that they're excited about being able to pop a CD and be able to listen to their song.

That's a big topic we have with our partner Blaze Entertainment. You know, they sell content on cartridges, physical cartridges. And people are so tired of subscriptions or the whole cloud thing also from OneDrive taking over everything just because you answered the wrong question to all the subscriptions that don't even allow you to put all your artwork and whatever on a PC that is stable and you can't. Because you find out that all your video editing and graphics tools and what else depends on a subscription. And with Amiga I hope we will never get there Amiga has to be usable offline and in privacy and without accounts. Online might help getting some dependencies there. Let's make that easy, hopefully.

The other thing about floppy drives is that there's so much Amiga history on floppy disks. You're into preservation, which is fantastic. It would be important to be able to read and preserve those discs. So I think floppies are cool for that reason as well. So Jake, he already talked a lot about the new Commodore and, you know, he's meeting with Peri, that good team building experiences and, you know, things are, things are moving forward there. So I hope that answers that question that you had. If not, you can ask it again. I'm just going down a list here, Mike. So it might be a little bit, the topics may be a little random. MNemo is asking, are Amiga and Cloanto your main job or a side thing

No, they are my main job. Absolutely. And already that's one hub too much, I think. But not only that, I think B2B and B2C is a challenge. I like to say, and I mentioned this at Redcon, the speech at Redcon last month was sort of the prequel to the Kickstart one. When I explain what I do, I say, I do one thing I understand and one thing I don't understand. The one thing I understand is the 8-bit, 16, 32-bit, this Amiga world. And the thing I don't understand and that nobody understands really is complex AI-based tools. Because we don't understand how the neural networks have been created, which is why you cannot even certify them for some purposes. We don't understand, or we barely understand the LLMs. And once the LLMs help us create the next step, which will not be LLMs, it can be a totally, completely different worldview. So disruptive again, that we are lost even more than now. And then who knows the quantum and what else. But these are all topics that we started covering.

I remember a speech I held in 97 in Milan at an Amiga event. And I said, I see it converging 30 years from now. And now it's 97, 27 is next year so I would love to find a copy of that tape because it was in a way so passionate and it's all coming. So yes, they are my main business, Cloanto and Cloanto may actually rename itself perhaps after a product we are working on if that's success successful it's it has to do with AI but uh it doesn't follow some of the hype trends but uh it aims to put you more in control of the tools and your knowledge. Again, so it wants to show what I said, that I too care about being in control of your information and the tools that are going to access this information and where you spend the money if you want to spend it. Spend it on non-free models.

And Amiga is now in a position to focus on the things it can do without having the uncertainty about so many possible futures. And so we have a great team that is growing with Amiga because there's so much passion about it.

As I said, the other B2B things are more boring. It's crazy. We do about the same level of innovation and work, but the support requests on the B2B side function, and they are easy to solve. And so one challenge is like, how do you help people on the consumer side who paid nothing or one dollar or ten dollars solve really difficult problems with with the Amiga with Amiga on with different hardware or emulation and maybe with these tools AI tools I already saw a shift in how they help people solve problems maybe we we can do a more individualized higher quality help also for new users who are not very technical but also don't have the budget to have a big IT department to help them. Amiga means hacking and so sometimes you do, you might benefit from an IT department, let's admit it.

So we want to make it more accessible and with the new tools I'm excited that this is getting a possibility for people to learn because you said we're all getting older, we mentioned it before, and the challenge is yes. Amiga is at a peak maybe now can the peak continue or not we need to involve new generations we need to be a bit more inclusive and again it's the forums and the events that can help there for new generations.

I know many young children and teenagers for whom it's cool. And it was already 10 or 20 years ago. Cool to know about C64 and Amiga. These machines are the last machines, in my opinion, that can entirely fit in your mind. You can fully understand the hardware and the software. And they are great learning and training tools. I wish that the demo scene can be forever a manifestation of non-commercial excellence and competition and arts, for example. It's beautiful that we have this, and I hope it can continue forever. So maybe we'll have this Star Trek world with no money in the future, and there will be Amiga. Who knows? Forever.

Oh, thanks for the answer, Mike. Captain John just wants to thank you and Hyperion for working towards the settlement and achieving it.

I'm super excited for what the future holds. So right on, Captain. One Joyful Day has got a really good. Really good question. We haven't touched on this topic yet. I saw you guys release a new Amiga logo at Kickstarter 3. And One Joyful Day is asking if someone wants to make like Amiga merchandise, like a cap, or if someone makes an Amiga game and wants to put the Amiga logo on the box, who should they contact to negotiate a license deal with? Or are different trademarks like the boing ball uh owned by different entities so if someone wants to Amiga logo or boing ball logo where do they go?

So let me so credits to Paul and Thomas and to the many people who contribute to ideas and brainstorming over the last more than six years of this new logo adventure. There will be free and non-free licenses. So to have, I remember when I was an Amiga developer, we got, we had to pay the yearly $100 Workbench license and there were logo guidelines I seem to remember. Commodore also used to give us our own stickers and then they gave us the template to to put on our own printing materials so there will be guidelines as Paul and I mentioned a few weeks ago at Kickstart and there will be vector files we already saw now you know of course because you also tried to adapt a bitmap. We would prefer that the highest quality version is used. There will be guidelines for how to position these on white or dark background, the spacing around.

There will be non-commercials or no money changes hands, licenses for just manifesting compatibility with Amiga, of course. And we already have merchandising licenses for third parties, also for shirts, for example. I think Amiga will do more directly also. We have talks with some merchandising companies and yes but Amiga is the contact point so in a forward-looking way I can only say that there will be different guidelines and agreements for that and if there's any interesting project now prioritizing things a little bit, the long tail can only be dealt with standard agreements. But if they are really exciting, important projects, of course, we can get in touch immediately. And we are already with some entities.

Yeah, I've got a lot of good like boxed Amiga games over there. And I'm sure the folks are going to want to use the new Amiga logo on it, because that's what you do when you release a new game.

It's not just the new logo. You probably, now without forcing this onto anyone, but you probably also want to express compatibility, like with Amiga OS. 3 or whatever you want to specify. I remember there used to be a way to say how much RAM you need what do you need AGA and so on there should be a simple way to convey some of this information if it's about a game box or a website like you have a age rating logo you could have some information like that to easily visualize that.

Mike, I'm going to need a new shirt.

You need a new shirt?

I need a new logo. I need a new shirt, Mike.

I need one too.

Oh, man. John Chandler has got a question. What code backported from Amiga OS 4 will be removed from Amiga OS 3? Are there plans to re-license the components or develop compatible replacements?

That's a very good question. I don't know. I was told it's about 800 to 1,000 lines of code. I said, how much value can it be? Why can't we license it? It's not clear to me what we are talking about. Of course, everybody knows there's been issues with some like CD file system code for example. And this has already been replaced. Olaf has been doing the hard work of replacing that with some older Amiga code CD32, he expanded it with Rockridge and other work. I am not, until we get the code, until we go into the next round of talks, which should be maybe as early as next week. I don't know what we are talking about, because this came to me as a surprise. Of course, a negotiation is always a rollercoaster thing. You have multiple people having the say. And up to the end of June, And up to the end of June, like a draft version of 30-something or 40-something, there was a smooth transition from AmigaOS 3.2 and 3.3 to Amiga with everything. And then the topic of backported code came up. And we had to define it in a way that wasn't too broad. Because if you look at the overlaps, what's in common between OS3 and OS4, and one of the developers said, oh, but 80% of the code is the same. Okay, of course, that's because you're referring to the shared software basis. But software both into the 2009 and in the 2026 agreement is of course the basis for OS4 and that can't be taken away from itself. Is it then somebody else said "Uh but we fixed so many bugs to both OS3 and OS4" and should this count? I don't think that if a few bugs were fixed in both uh they should be unfixed you know if it's a bug fix. However there's potentially a bit more code like uh what was it that came up uh like the pop-up menus and somebody already implemented them just as a proof of concept and showed me look it's not even that difficult to have Intuition and Workbench have these menus why so how many lines of code are we talking about and how much value are we attaching to that should it be a deal breaker. I don't think so personally but I respect that the agreement is what it is. It may be that we have to rewrite some things, but I don't think these will be many if, as I was told, it's only about 800 to 1,000 lines of code. Let's see what it is. I admit, it's a bit fake. You know, that definition of backported. But it was necessary to sign it.

Sounds like there's still some details to be worked out there. Thanks, Mike. Well, speaking of that, this is a big question. Corbo, as well as many other folks, are asking if there's a world in which Amiga OS can be open sourced.

Yes. Well, the question came up on the Kickstart event. So I think we could get there in three steps. So first step, by making, the first step is just having free access to some, to the actual upgrade. So it's not open source. And it's just a way of introducing the word free. Free upgrades. Second, I think we should at some point move to GitHub for development and I think not public and then we should start considering a dual license model. So maybe the initial license may not be OSI approved. OSI is a way of defining what is open source and what is not. You know, if Amiga has to survive as an independent entity it cannot be subsidized as it was with our B2B work as I mentioned before.

So I think like the partial license which is OSI, the free license cannot license trademarks for example. There have been in the past examples often with disputes like you remember the MariaDB it was a database code that used a dual license. It was a database code that used a double license, a dual license, where the formally open license didn't allow for commercial use.

So would it be acceptable to have something like that at an initial stage? to have something like that at an initial stage. Like with one of the two licenses, you're free to use it for your own use. You're free as a developer user to hack with it, to use it as a free upgrade on your own system, or no, already licensed existing systems. Or no, already licensed existing systems. And if you are OEM, if you make hardware, if you need the trademarks and if you make commercial use, then you get a commercial license for exactly the same. So there are many other examples.

Like Microsoft initially, I remember when they opened up Windows NT 4, I think they started. Initially it was only for some partners, then it became more and more open. It was a read-only license basically. This doesn't meet your definition of open source, but especially as the code has been circulating you know there have been leaks since since the brown white days and I know of several things that were possible thanks to that I think that reality should face legality and practice that these should should all be converted convert they should all converge and maybe initially with a dual license for commercial and non-commercial use.

That could be the second step. And then let's see how it goes. Let's see if maybe, who knows, maybe Amiga as a foundation, maybe who knows maybe Amiga as a foundation if there's going to be a foundation or non-profit or something that has the resources due to donations and it doesn't even need to fund itself with commercial projects. Will there be a way to make it truly open source? But what then? Will it be good for historical reasons? But will it be, if there's total anarchy, do you want 100 different branches? So, going back to step two, should there be a non-fork clause in the license?

So, non-commercial, non-trademark, non-fork? How many limitations do you want to attach to the initial, let's call it public license, where you can play with the source code? And you get many freedoms, at least the freedoms I mentioned, that for no cost you can play with the code and use it for your own licensed hardware. These ideas, I welcome the brainstorming from experts, open source leaders, we already have some of these. I mean, you know, Tim, for example, Tim Ocock, I had some great discussions with him. He did open source also with Symbian and Nokia, and Brian and others, and Stefan.

We spoke about different possible licenses. And then there's lawyers who only do open source and many community projects some fail and some succeed for a mixture of elements not all of them are due to the license. Sometimes you know it's the leadership and the community just with small differences that can determine whether it works or doesn't work so it's a complex scenario and I just want to express awareness about some of the aspects and we keep working on this. That's all I can say right now. But yes, generally speaking we want to get there.

Thanks Mike, appreciate that. Phantom Interrogative. Scott question kind of relates to that. Will Amiga OS 3.27 have an SDK? Will further OS development open up the way to take advantage of the speed of emulation and FPGA power?

Okay, that's a question on the hardware front and on the OS front, at the very least. So, if we start adding instructions and features at the hardware level, let's say an imaginary 68100 CPU, I think they should be discussed and shared and accessible if the OS is to use them. So they shouldn't be private to one of the projects.

If we are talking about Amiga embracing some extensions and expansions, let's say do the 68K instruction set thanks to some new FPGA development for example. Likewise, I think the OS should integrate some features at some point about hardware. So just like I mentioned RTG and maybe there should be a network stack, something on the USB side, that all projects should, there should be at least at that level, plug and play, that you don't have to install some stack yourself when you buy a retro game system. It just works with these features.

As for the OS 3 SDK, well, you know, the pillar of this has always been Olaf Bartel, not alone, but too many names also to mention, but he has curated also Thorsten and others. Thomas, sorry, Mark, who was too many to mention. Yes, I think there should be an updated SDK and also the whole set of Addison-Wesley and former Bantam books deserve a refresh. And not only that, I think we should work on an agreement with the AI companies to allow them to officially ingest that and so to make it part of their knowledge so that they can be even better at helping people to create Amiga code.

So Anthropic, OpenAI and all these companies, you know, sometimes they they need, they ask for your permission, I would like to work with all of them to ingest all of the books officially so we can have even better code. And then of course we have this issue with compilers like SAS C. Olaf recently made me aware of an even more recent patch than the one we were using. What is it? 359 maybe. And maybe we should get in touch with the SAS corporation or decide how to work with the GCC developers even closer. So that even the Green Hills compiler on the Sun still produces some quite compact code, which was preferred by the Amiga companies when they already were able to build Amiga OS and the ROMs even with SAS and Manx C.

So we need to work also on the tools not just on the SDK. There should be an easy environment you know visual studio extensions integration if you want that AI tool, Claude code, whatever, they should know. Amiga much better and be able to tell the user more explicitly. If you ask, you know, ChatGPT or Claude or one of these tools, but how do you know? Do you have access to the manuals and to say no no no don't worry so why not make it official? This is the way you program now this is how you learn I remember when there was a new compiler version back in the 80s and you didn't know you have to work your way yourself to yourself to and there's a beauty in the journey of course as they say until it shines but why not integrate properly with the modern tools too you can always choose to switch the internet off and work offline if you wish. So yes SDK is important and it will be the discussion also with Olaf in the next few days.

Thanks, Mike. I'll give you some easy ones because we've got some thick ones too. Modem, my man Modem is inviting you to Passione Amiga Day in Umbria, Central Italy on the 6th of September. So Modem is inviting you. It sounds delightful. I wish I could be there too modem Captain John's asking is there a possibility that the A1200 could be renamed the Amiga 1200 now?

So, Passione Amiga Day is in early September, the first weekend of September. Then there's Pianeta Amiga, which is a few weeks after that. I committed to attending Pianeta Amiga. You know, it's strange for me to get to the beautiful region, which is not so far from Rome. It's not as easy as getting to a German or British event. Well, but I am at the northeast. I'm in a village on the border with Slovenia and Austria. And so, yes, Trieste Airport is half an hour for me. And we have Venice and Ljubljana and Gloukenford. But they don't go there. Everybody goes to London and Frankfurt and Munich. Nobody goes to... So, okay, I can take a seven-hour train ride to get there or drive there. But it falls on a weekend where the schools are still closed and maybe we have a family vacation. So, Passione Amiga is on my list. I should remind one of the people who invited me that they thought maybe they can pick me up at the airport in Rome. Who knows if that works out. It's easy. Otherwise, you know, having two events in Italy in the same month, it's very Italian. And then Captain Jones, sorry. Captain Jones, what did he ask?

Yeah, he was saying it's called the A1200.

Yeah. When we entered into the agreements with Hyperion in March, we did an agreement to facilitate the settlement. We did an agreement to allow the resuming, the online sales of AmigaOS 3.2. So that's why they popped up in March or April. And then we did an agreement to allow Retro Games to call it an Amiga. But I cannot speak for Retro Games. They may call it the Amiga 1200. Yes, it's entirely in their hands. So already, sorry. They had this choice already months ago. Whether they will or won't, I don't know. Do you think it would be, let me ask back, do you think it should be the Amiga 1200?

If you're asking me, I say yes. People want to hear the word Amiga for sure. I think it should be. I think it might be hard. I mean, I don't know anything about this stuff, but I think it might be hard because they probably already made the box and the case and all that stuff. It seems like it's a little bit late in the game, but it would be rad if it was called the Amiga 1200. People would recognize it a lot faster than the A1200. I don't know. Your average person is not going to know what the A1200 is, but the average person might hear the word Amiga and be like, oh, Amiga, yeah, that computer.

So it may seem strange to some. I know we have a friend in Norway who always makes very nice posts and who got upset because he said, around 2016 or 17 or 15, I don't remember exactly, he wanted to know something about Retro Games, what are they going to do and when and he thought it was his idea. But you know, so many people have the same idea and execution really is the problem, not ideas. So they think that I know what Retro Games is going to do. I don't. Retro Games are a valued partner. They did things properly. They signed into an agreement in 2016. So they do the licensing well before the product.

They have an excellent team also on the legal and licensing front. They do everything proper. And only years later, sometimes after having acquired the license, as in our case, you get to know what the product will be. That's their freedom. I don't know what they're going to do. And I cannot speak for them. So just as I didn't know that the A500 Mini was going to come out. Some people blame me for that and I'm, it's okay to take the blame, but it's, they think I planned it. No, I didn't. So I have zero idea about what the product exactly will be named about the box or other details.

But it can be. Legally it can be. It's their thing.

Yes, thanks to Hyperion having agreed in March and thanks to the settlement, which totally clarifies that aspect. The reason why we needed the March agreement is that under the 2009 terms Amiga could not use the name Amiga with Amiga OS unless it was like a game system. But there were entities with pre-existing rights, they were listed in Exhibit 1 and Cloanto was one of them. So Retro Games could have done it, licensing it as it did from Cloanto at the time, but it couldn't have called it an Amiga. Unless it was games only. But since you can boot into Workbench, it's not games only. That's why in March, as part of the, you know, making things simpler for everyone, the Amiga parties agreed to let Hyperion sell Amiga OS 3.2 online and Hyperion agreed to let Retro Games use the Amiga name. That was before the settlement. With the settlement, this agreement is no longer necessary, but the possibility remains.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, a lot of folks don't call it the Amiga 1200 because it's not real Amiga 1200. I see that standpoint, that viewpoint as well, totally. I was just thinking if I was them, I'd want to call it the Amiga 1200 because I think it's more recognizable.

And you're opening an entirely different kind of worms yeah should there be alignment on new model numbers in general should Amiga control that should it not should it be a grassroots thing what the only thing I find very annoying is when somebody tries to claim an Amiga name as theirs a historical Amiga mark as theirs, they maybe registered it somewhere and then they sent nasty letters to somebody else who also is not Amiga. None of the two sides are Amiga and they fight each other. This is so childish. So in that case I see the point for Amiga, maybe it should have more of a role of maintaining an umbrella of civility and order. And letting everyone prosper. I think, nobody here, in the, you know, all the exhibitors at these events you see. Nobody is getting rich. We all pay out of pocket to attend these events. The hotels and the flights and what else.

Our time, our passion is the motivation and we don't do it for money. And maybe you can sustain a family with this business and we want to enable much more of that. Amiga as a company can do that. Because maintaining a family, you know, leaving your day job without the certainty that next month the agreement can still be in place is a bit difficult. But these fights, they should stop. That's where Amiga should still intervene, I think. I mean, we were happy that the legal the big problems were over but when there are these small childish disputes i think maybe we can have a say and help solve them.

Thanks Mike, Captain John and Jake are asking if you own the rights to OS 3.5 and 3.9. And do you have the right to use them?

So these are all great questions. 3.5 and 3.9 were developed by Haage & Partner and different time-limited contracts. I seem to remember that 3.5 was a five-year contract and it was five years both with Amiga between Haage & Partner and Amiga OS code being written by Heinz Wrobel and Olaf Bartel, which is to this day available. It went into 3.1.4. If you look at much of the changelog of 3.1.4, it was some of their work so that code absolutely has been retained. I am aware of some code that would be interesting to recover. I'm in touch with Jurgen Haage in Wiesbaden and I said when this is over, which it now is, we should get in touch and he has some big books with agreements and things from those days and I'm in touch with developers who are very familiar with what was in there.

You know, 3.5 and 3.9 in large part were bundles with add-ons, but you're right that there are some, there were some improvements that should be retained. And it will be important to tap into those. Just like we, after very long negotiations with SoftVoice, to make another example, we were able to bring back the speech synthesis again. So we care about these parts. And three point something, whether it's 27 or 28 or whatever, should leave no technical reason to anyone for missing 3.9. I think that should be a defining priority.

You know, I remember in the days when, you know, we were replacing the GIF graphics format with PNG. And it failed because they didn't include animation in PNG, even very basic animation. So it was driven by committees. And I remember the voting, should it be there? No, we should be somewhere else. They called it Ming. And at the end, it went nowhere and we still have GIFs today.

So I think there should be, if there are reasons for people to prefer 3.9 today, let's look at them one by one. Of course, numbering shouldn't be the reason. That is easy to make sure it's a higher number. And if it's TCP/IP or something else, let's look at what the reasons may be.

But I know that Olaf also carefully hand picked, he's also very attentive for his own personal needs, the very best of that, and he deserved that, and I'm sure it is not lost.

Thanks, Mike. We're making progress here. Lots of good questions. Appreciate all your time. Cartoon Monkey Studio has got a real interesting one. I never thought of this. Would it be possible to create a new Amiga that contained an ARM port of OS4 together with FPGA all on one board for 68K in a new wedge style retro case. He wants both in one case. That's pretty wild idea. So, ARM with FPGA? I think he wants an ARM to run the OS 4 and FPGA for the 60AK all in one case. Well… First they have to port it to ARM, right?

So, we have some beautiful cases right now with two partners. One is A1200.net and one is Retro Games. And both cases are designed to add some of what Cartoon Monkey Studio asked. Whether you decide to put a Raspberry Pi inside, whether we... Okay, I cannot say what we have in mind for that, but okay. There have been experiments with other CPUs and FPGA combined. I remember the ACube hardware. So Amiga can do a Linux-based ARM system that boots into an optimized for that hardware emulation. I know of at least two projects: I'm in touch with the developers one would really like to. Do you remember Amithlon for example? It could be an ARM-based Amithlon. Amiga can do that if it's then 68K. Amiga cannot do it if it's an OS4 native version for ARM. That is something that needs to be discussed with Hyperion. So Amiga can only do 68K whether emulated, FPGA or real, whatever. So an Amithlon-like ARM device with an optimized, banging the hardware, Linux is a possibility. But FPGA doesn't come into play here. So maybe I didn't understand the question properly.

Yeah, I think he's just dreaming of a device where, like a case that has an FPGA in it to run the Amiga 60K as well as an ARM processor to run Amiga OS 4.

Do you need it? Right. as well as an ARM processor to run Amiga OS 4. Do you need it? Because let's look at the very low level. Perfection isn't there in either one. I mean, I'm a fan of low latency. There was this paper, Every Millisecond Counts also by Microsoft. We did a lot of tests also on the input lag. We measure the frames on screen. We have some hardware to test. Emulation experts and implementation experts are very aware of the cycle exact needs. Some systems are cycle exact for some features, some are not. But the current FPGA, as I mentioned before, isn't a perfect replica of the Amiga either. It isn't you know gate by gate and everything exactly the same and would it bring an advantage? I don't know that. I don't have the measurement. I admit. Even a cyclone 5 which the MiSTer uses doesn't fit. Is a bit tight for the 68060. So would you put that on the ARM side would you use a more expensive FPGA why would you need ARM and an FPGA side by side. Yes for hacking it's great. ACube tried to to do this and you know they had their own Mini-Mig-like device a few years ago. And I think it would be a great hacking device, but I would need to understand the use case a bit better to explore, to continue the conversation. Maybe it would be an interesting chart.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. We're working through them. Based on the latest agreement, this is from Walker OGR. Based on the latest agreement and announcement, Hyperion will continue with Amiga OS 4. What happens if Hyperion declares bankruptcy? Would OS 4 be able to be continued by Amiga Corporation?

Yes. It's in the contract. You can read it.

He asked Amiga Inc., but I think maybe Amiga Corporation, meaning you.

No, I meant this is... You can read it in the contract, is my answer, because I am not a lawyer. I didn't want to avoid the question.

The livestock, Amiga owns everything. The additional layer in the settlement agreement, which is a license, allows Hyperion and not any other entity to do certain things. So if Hyperion were to go bankrupt a court would have to decide what to do with the assets and with the non-assignment clauses that are in this agreement under Belgian law. So to be honest, it's much beyond me to theorize what may happen. And it would, you know, in the legal case between Hyperion and Amiga from 2018, what Hyperion said and what was blocking for so many years was that the agreement could not be assigned and they made a strong point about this. And I think Amiga should also see in a similar, symmetrical way who might end up owning the assets. It could be that it's a bankruptcy and nobody gets the assets because nobody's interested because the contract is not usable without some other assets. So a contract is an asset. Can it be assigned? Can it be auctioned? I don't know that. I think it's a bit difficult, but maybe a Belgian judge could change it in some way. I have no idea. Could we bid? Could Amiga bid for it? Maybe since we already own much of the rest. Why let the OS4 work done by Hyperion end? I think somebody should bid. I think it should be the commitment of Amiga, if not of Trevor or somebody else, to at least try to save what can be saved and preserve it. Yes.

So, and by the way, I have a continuity plan. If something happens to me, somebody will else would take over. I don't know if that was a question, but I spoke for a while as if I could survive Hyperion, but maybe Hyperion will survive me. So I don't know that.

That's a good question. No one asked it, but good to know. Hopefully you don't go anywhere, Mike. You're doing great things, so appreciate it.

But I wanted to reassure, because the question came up, you know.

Yes. Zuperdan, the creator of the incredible game, Boom, he's asking, "Will including OS libraries with the developer's free game or tool on ADF distribution still require a license and approval.

Yes. So whether it's a free license or not as I mentioned it used to be a hundred dollar license we still made it was a 99 license recently some got it. There are some things like the installer or some file systems in the boot block things like that. They are on a list of things to clarify communicate and license I don't think that people should pay just because there's like an installer should be free and right now I think the installer on Aminet, you know, send some postal mail to some address in Germany that no longer exists. So it's high on a list. I regret that we couldn't fix everything in the first few weeks. But yes, so the so-called Workbench license, as well as individual parts of what may be needed for a developer to publish a title like they install on Aminet. And not only that, they will be taken care of. If more things come up, I encourage people to send this type of question because it should be refreshed. It's important that they are solved. They are all small pain points, but they should be solved.

Similar question from Zendar from Badger Punch Games. Doing great stuff over there. Is there anything being done for new games to have a standard way of packaging onto the new systems? WHDLoad with AmiBerry Loader caters mostly to the old games because of WHDLoad database lookups.

Yes. This question came up also from a game developer at Kickstart the last weekend. So WHDLoad is a nice way, and they also taught us a lesson and how you can in practice it works well how you can snapshot the entire memory, save it, restore it and do many things also on the compatibility front, not just on game packaging. So I can tap into my past developer experience with packaging titles without needing a database. With our RP9 file format, we experimented a lot with that. And I agree that database lookups break things. They're not nice. We have discussed with some developers a modern RP9-like format, JSON-based, so more lightweight and clear, easier to parse relative to the XML manifesto-based one. I think that could be a way where you can package a title as one file with a preview image. You see the name of the title, the developers, and it has all the configuration details in it. And I think this past work brought some interesting experience, and we should continue that way, yes.

Some folks were getting excited when you were talking about the new. Han Solo was asking about the new RTG when you were talking about that for the A1200. He said, "Just talk one minute about the new RTG."

Well, should I reveal the name? Whatever you can reveal, reveal it, baby. Let's go. Well, it's an RTG. I've been involved with RTG and my colleagues also, and Oscar and others in the company. You know, we are long-time Amiga developers, and work with RTG since the 90s. I think it was 92, 93 probably. Commodore was working, they were working on amigas 3.1 they knew that they needed something else to go beyond the custom chips they started rewriting intuition they created this display data database concept which by their own admission was messy but they went to improve it in 3.2 and 4.0 so these were already version numbers they had in mind for their own development had they not gone bankrupt.

And our Personal Paint program was working intimately with them. They were using the Novel graphics card, then Village Tronic started with the Picasso 2 and we worked on that as well. Always with prototypes. And we worked on that as well. Always with prototypes. Commodore had in '93 something they called already "RTG Library" and this concept of how it should work, how intuition and graphics library and layers library would have to change to allow for different memory arrangements and features. So we tapped into that creating just like CyberGraphics and P96 did. Like amiga itself a common Amiga itself had done up to eight bits we are. This RTG system is fully system compliant I mean there are different ways and tricks you can use to determine whether this is an RTG mode and like you can see whether the memory is in chip RAM or whether it's a known PAL or NTSC mode because that list is hard-coded.

But you can also use one of the new flags like BMAs RTG and you know those bytes per pixel and bits per pixel and all features that are in OS 4 we need to find a way now and it would be a discussion with some OS 3 and OS 4 developers in the next few weeks and I'm basically I'm before even asking some of these people should we use your same flags is the agreement I'm telling you publicly now here. But you know we have these nice features which in part are always OS4 features and we put them in in this it's not even OS 3 it will be in our OS 3 but it's for now it's an RTG monitor and an RTG library, which you can just install onto any Amiga OS 3.1.

So we have Amiga OS 4 features, we have a CyberGraphics library compatibility, and we emulate that. So, and up to 8-bit, basically you don't have to invoke any custom functions because you can use any the standard Amiga system functions. Of course we patched intuition, graphics, layers, I think some of workbench also. There's a lot of patches and once this is in ROM it doesn't need any patches anymore and right now the implementation works with different emulation environments but it's designed so that it can support different hardware. And they of course once we go public with this we look forward to the collaboration with other developers to support a variety of hardware and keep improving the system.

And the Retro Games hardware will be the first to use it. So it will be in the A1200. Does that answer some of the questions?

I think so. I think yeah. I think that answered a lot thanks.

I mean we have the name but you have to convince me to reveal the name.

There's the name of the the new RTG. The entire the entire community is watching right now Mike so now's your chance.

What do you think of the name Renaissance RTG?

Renaissance RTG? Yes. I like it. Renaissance is kind of like a rebirth, right? It's kind of what's happening.

And also, R is like RTG.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's cool. I like that name, Mike. You should consider it.

I can see people filing for trademarks tonight.

Yeah. I think it's really good. Everyone in the chat is psyched about Renaissance RTG. I think it's a very, very cool name. And whenever I think of Renaissance, I think of the Italian Renaissance, so it connects to you too.

So internally, just to be clear, we don't have a Renaissance library. Because we prefer, just like OS4, you know, they, some functions which were in P96, they put them into OS4. But we have CyberGraphics library compatibility. So there's an option to have that. And so there's an internal, it's not even a library file. There's a way to create that compatibility. As you may remember, for people who may not remember, CyberGraphics was the original RTG standard used by VillageTronic before they changed to P96. It used to be called Picasso96. Now I hear that P96 is the way to go.

It's fun to be here.

Yes, I'm glad you're having fun. I'm telling you, Sunday Funday is a lot of fun. I look forward to it. Every Monday morning, I'm like, is it Sunday yet?

Vectorfunk is asking, can AmiBerry ship with Kickstart ROMs? Either free or paid.

We need to find a way. Some. So I consider we are in a great relationship with Dimitris and the developer behind AmiBerry. And we always say when we meet we should do something together. Somebody proposed to have an online system where once you have the ROMs you can you know like a subscription. Ugly topic but different ideas came up to not have to. How do you get the old and the new in a way that you can use it with with different things should should there be a centralized way where you the user can use it with different projects. So somebody proposed like cloud-based model where anything you have on all your devices can use the same. Amiga ROM operating system files. Old and new. And another way would be for Amiga to release should I mean.

Actually let me turn it into a question to you. If you were Amiga do you think Amiga should have an Amiga app on iOS on Android on the Raspberry Pi or should it encourage the creation of different apps. What's best?

Hmm. That's a very, very good question. Different apps are the same. Well, I feel like having one is always the clearest and the cleanest, but then like, what if like some folks prefer like for example some folks would prefer to use, you know, FSUAE, some folks like AmiBerry, some folks like different flavors you know of emulation, so there is a value to having different ways to emulate it as well different types of emulators like someone downloads an official Amiga emulator, Amiga, and doesn't like it, and someone else could... And there's another option available that they like better, then should they be able to use that?

So this, for me, underlines the importance of continuing the conversation. It's even when maybe there is no solution right now today. I mean, there is a solution like on PCs. On PCs, Amiga Forever under license from Amiga gives access to the ROMs. But then it doesn't give you the license to put them on whatever else system. And there should be a way that is friendly. Let's call it friendly, as in Amiga. In some context today, even the word legal and legality and copyright have a negative connotation. And I can fully understand it. In a world where, you know, where it tends to cost to zero to reproduce things, and I've said this already 20 or 30 years ago, it can be hard to understand why you have to pay for things. So, to me it boils down to the aspects of legality of course and we get to the Star Trek world with no money. But how can Amiga support itself? Nobody's getting rich. I'm not getting paid for that. But it has to sustain itself. It has big costs and I don't even want to talk about the costs it had over the last few years. I consider them whatever. It's not the topic now. But all subsidized. But I think Amiga to move forward needs to have some margin to keep operating. So, I'm not expecting free for everything everywhere and but there should be a way to have more platforms with ROMs yes.

Yeah, that doesn't, of course, everyone needs to, everything can't be free.

But it should, shouldn't it? I mean, after all, if something can be free, free books, free. I remember I had this friend in Serbia during the Serbian embargo, the embargo they had, and all culture, movies and music and software was free because there was no way to legally acquire it. The country was isolated. And it was from that cultural point of view, it was an experiment, a social experiment in free culture. It was, you know, morally acceptable suddenly, because it was the only way. And I would love to live in a world where we don't have to ask for money. Sometimes I feel like you have to beg for money, which is not why you wanted to write the software for.

And I had this conversation with Richard Stallman when he was at an event in Milan. And I remember he said, no, you should have a day job and not ask money for the software. You should only do open open source software by night and that was his way but yeah. In his economics maybe it worked he came from a world where and I cannot speak for him where mainframes where the money was attached to hardware. And in a way, maybe I think Amiga should get the license from the hardware companies. So it's not too distant from that. The expectation today is not to pay for the software. You don't buy for a Windows or Mac OS software update, for an iOS update. So it's also a matter of expectations. The value perception of software has shifted so many times over the years. Open source has been a great example. Free browsers. Free everything since the late 90s to get market share. So I think the model where you have to pay for Amiga OS for an upgrade is weak. So let's keep the conversation open.

Sorry if I digress. I mean, you have your questions, but I have my ways of going.

It's all good. You get out your oar right now because there's some navigation to be done. I'm just going to consolidate a bunch of questions into one. Many folks are asking about the Apollo team and possible collaborations with the Apollo team. Where does Apollo team stand. I'm looking at all there's a lot just a lot of questions about Apollo team. Is there any conflict? The Apollo team is working on what could have been the future of Amiga 60080 with AMMX. Is there any chance of collaboration and the relationship of Apollo team, if there's any?

We've met at events and also with the different Vampire and Apollo ramifications from Igor, Renaud, Gounard and others. I think it's one of the cases where the clarity will help. Apollo didn't know who to ask. To be honest, how could they until a few weeks ago. I mean, and we had this conversation at Amiga Germany events and not only, at Gamescom. I think they would love to do something. And now, you know, this agreement is only a couple of weeks fresh now. The announcement was August 4, now is August 16. And they signaled in the past that they would like to do something. But Apollo is also a great example where some standards about the hardware enhancements that might be of interest to others and what should be part of the OS, there should be a discussion about that.

Thanks, Mike. I'm going to answer One Joyful Day has got a question. I'm going to answer it quickly because I want to make sure we get to all the questions, but you can chime in if you think I'm not answering right.

He's asking about the possibility of porting Amiga OS 4 to x86, and with the new agreement, they're allowed to port. OS 4 to any current or future CPU.

We clarified that. They can port to anything other than the 68K. So there can't be an OS 4 for the 68K, which in theory might be an interesting thing with these powerful CPUs.

Han Solo No is asking if you're in contact with any third-party companies or persons concerning new software for the Amiga, not just OS, not just apps, but like any productivity software or games.

, in contact, yes, but do you mean not non-system apps? So Amiga right now needs to focus on the US and on facilitating third-party apps. There's an in-between area of apps that could be Amiga apps. The topic came up. Amiga can do this in the next one year, I think. So, contact, yes, but not that Amiga becomes a publisher of other apps. We need to maintain focus now. So, yes, obviously we meet a lot of people, and people email and I don't know if that answers the question.

No, yeah. So right now, you guys are focused on the software. Because like Evan Helen is asking, is it possible to get an ASIC 68K CPU produced?

This is a great question. So once one of these FPGAs reach a stable level, if we get there, of course, the next possible step is ASIC. ASICs are expensive, but not impossibly expensive. I remember I had this conversation with Jay Miner, and you and I are one of the few who had these exchanges with Jay Miner, no? I think I saw a picture of you with Jay. You didn't look like I expected. I think I might have seen a picture, Mike. So I saw a picture of you with Jay Miner. Oh, yeah. I had hair. So, he was telling me how already by 1990, the 5 micron design rules had moved over to 1.5 micron. But anyway, by today's standard, they are not nanometer level expensive things that require the latest manufacturing technology.

There are research projects and universities where they teach how to create ASICs to their students which have the production capabilities to create an Amiga level ASICs. So the question remains what features are you going to put there. Would you put all of the custom chip features? Would you put some video features in there? I mean I would love to have a one chip solution like Jerry Elseworth had with the DTV you know the 64. And I remember again we go to the value perception of hardware and software.

Being a software developer I envied my hardware friends because their work was perceived to be worth more than whatever the software people did. So the box you had in your hands before, the Amiga Forever box, cost more to make with the three DVDs inside than Jerry's joystick. So with the 3DVDs. So that's strange. And with ASIC, you can go down to, if you invest a 7-digit amount, you can then go down per unit. And this is the way to go. I mean, you should have in mind how much you can go down in price as the units increase.

And I think 1 million units, we already are in the six-digit ranges. You know, our new hardware and software solutions with the partner ecosystem are reaching an incredible number of users which probably inside the Amiga forums, there's little awareness about. When Retro Games or Antstream or Blaze Entertainment or SpecNext or others do the hardware that's five six digit people at a time. So that's why we have this more holistic view maybe talking to you and with these wonderful people and questions, but also with our partners. We have a different view of an industry perspective, of communities that know nothing about the Amiga legal troubles that happened in the past few years. Who don't even know that there are forums. And maybe we'll find out about AmigaBill because we advertise it in the box. But so they, like some even former Commodore engineers, they didn't know that there was a retro scene again, you know. Like Beth Richard said a few days ago, I was mourning the death of Commodore until I found out there was a scene. So many of our own users, they see it in a store, they do some strange AI or Google search and they find out that there's products like this Retro Games or Amiga Forever or that they can stream it online. It's even part of the XBox subscription and you can find Amiga games even there now. And so many other ways in retail and online that reach so many new users. So you know I could dare to say that it potentially already now is one order of magnitude more than our community of active users, which maybe is 5,000, 10,000, maybe a bit more.

So I don't know what your numbers are. Let me ask you this question, too. How many people do you think are active in the Amiga community, engaging with you and interested in new hardware and so on? Inside our, let's call it bubble, I think that number I gave you, five, 10,000, maybe a bit more could be realistic. What do you think?

I think it's realistic. I think, let's see, I think there's different layers. It's almost like an onion. Like you have, you know, one to 5,000 of super hardcore folks who are just, I think the forums are more hardcore. That's where you'll find like the real hardcore folks. Especially the older folks from like back in the day. And then as you, then you get there, you know, you have like all the people are developing new hardware, new software, and like you have that hardcore community of one to 5,000. And then like five to 10,000, you kind of get more into folks who are more into, into retro and different retro systems and love Amiga and know all the stuff that's going on. And the further out you get, there's people who love Amiga and they have a lot of nostalgia for it, but they're not active in the day to day postings online, but they probably bought like an A500 Mini.

So I think there's just different, I think it starts with a a core of one to five thousand and then starts to spread out. But I think one thousand is low it's probably like five to ten thousand of like hardcore folks and then and I think a good way you know it's a good way to reach more people like you said yeah like XBox Live I was really excited to see. I can't remember if it was the A500 Mini or the A1200 like at Best Buy that's pretty cool or it will be but that's a big deal here in the United States. Best Buy is like our only electronics store not only but it's one of the biggest ones. And YouTube, YouYube's key. Like YouTube search YouTube algorithm that's key to reaching new people that's massive. YouTube's got the best algorithm for discovery I think like unfortunately Twitch does not. That's why I post on YouTube as well.

So I totally agree with you on the hope and the message I would like to convey is that there's one order of magnitude more. Amiga now with its partners and with a more holistic view. I think we can tap into more than 100,000 and maybe we can reach 1 million. With the products you see at Best Buy and the equivalent stores in Europe. With pain-free price points under $100, under $200, or maybe also with more sophisticated products. So the partner ecosystem has the ability to create these nice products. And it's exciting to try to also unify the software across these and to be able to share the same content across these. So this is one of the Amiga priorities.

It's a good point. I see a lot of folks in chat saying, you know, like Paul Vince is here. He said he's got almost 20,000 users in the AGS Facebook group. And that's just the Amiga Game Selectors. So that's actually an interesting number because on Facebook, there's a lot of inflation of numbers. So I know there's some Commodore Amiga groups with like, I don't know, like 50,000, 60,000 people. And I think there's a lot of hardcore people in there, but I also think there's a lot of fluff as well, just by the way Facebook works. But like Amiga Game Selector is like pretty hardcore.

That's like one specific product, if you wish, for the Amiga. And he's got 20,000. A number that I heard that was interesting from game devs, they're like, if we, this is sell, sell, I'm not sure if it's sell or download, whatever, like a thousand copies of our game. Like that's good. But again, that's just a game. These are just numbers I'm throwing at you. They, but that's a good, it's a good point. These are just numbers I'm throwing at you. But that's a good point. There's a lot of...

Ask how many A500 Minis were sold and how many the A1200s are pre-ordered or going to be sold. That's also a good indicator as well. Those are good points, guys. Really good points.

I cannot tell numbers. But I can convey the message that we should add one zero to the hope of how many units these game developers can sell. Yeah, 1,000 is good. I remember when I was myself attaching disk labels at night to make the end-of-month shipments, you know, word process and paid program. And I'm still attaching Amiga disk labels now. So when I when I refer to attaching Amiga disk labels that that's what I mean we and my family were physically and my neighbors were physically preparing those packages from different suppliers and assembling them and putting the disk labels and I have a feeling for how much 1000 was in the old days.

I remember the manufacturing runs of 2, 3,000, 5,000. We had good Amiga days. And then of course the bundles were done by others, by Commodore itself. But I think those who now are pleased with 1000, they should see an increase in the sales, especially if we provide a content delivery system where they can sell their game in a way that is easily playable. Like on the Retro Games or some other system. Amiga, of course.

We're doing good with the questions here, Mike. We're almost done. But you were just talking about the bundle, like the Amiga Forever bundle that I got right here. And the Commodore 64 had an interesting question I never thought about. But, you know, this has got lots of, you're very into preservation, which I have a lot of respect for because I'm all about the history as well. And there's some really great speeches on here, including our buddy, Jay Miner. And Commodore 64 says some of the material he found a little bit hard to hear because it was recorded with old technology. Is there any plans or would you ever consider enhancing some of these archives with current technology?

Yes. So the Jay Miner interview was funny. So I did that interview myself and the batteries were discharging. So somebody restored it with me. So at the end we were talking like, you know, Mickey Mouse. And at the beginning it was okay. It was a tape recorder that's just going slower and slower and slower. So i know some of the original agencies who also did the work and I'm not the only one in having chased not only the possibility of better restoration. And I think that will come you know we experimented with super resolution already more than 10 years ago. You remember the top parts and other tools, I'm sure you're familiar with them.

I use Topaz. It's built into Photoshop right now, Topaz.

So super resolution was a hot research topic back then, more than 10 years ago. Intel and others were researching into that. But also, we were looking at better quality materials, first generation, if it was possible to get some better materials from some archives. So both options are being chased.

Awesome. Some of the AI upscaling I've seen is actually really good. Some's really bad. Some has been really good. Another two folks, Teen Angel and number six, a few other folks, they're asking, is Amiga.com, is the website going to be updated and expanded?

Because you guys have a lot of new information and a lot of folks. Even me, you sent me a really cool link that I talked about the two the two agreements but you need the actual like URL to get there. Is there a way that you can go to like amiga.com and see all this new information.

Well you're right it's amiga.com has the X link and that points to the article. Number six is right. He's emailed me. He's emailing me almost every day these days. Hi number 6. Hi Alan. Of course it's the same team who is behind the logo is working on more than the logo so it will be done when it will be done. Probably in stages and yes we'll get there. Yeah so for now. I'm thankful, I'm thankful to all these opportunities to speak here and for others who fill in the dots where it's needed I know it's not optimal, but we'll get there.

No, exactly. It takes two to, but yeah, a lot of folks I see are asking about the website. So it's a good, it's a great point that they have. And dude, I hate updating my website. My website's so out of date. It's like, I'm not a web guy, Mike.

I got a crazy question here. It's so funny 'cause before I was running the demo over there on my Amiga game selector, and I got a software failure here. And I got a software failure, which I love. And I kind of missed the guru. And Captain John is asking, is there a future of replacing software failure with guru meditation? Bring back the guru.

Of course. I love the guru. No, no. This is iconic. Yes.

It is. That would be so much fun to have a good meditation again on the new one oh man let's see so okay cool the website will be updated we need a new state of the art guru exactly Luke exactly let's see we're almost done here Mike I appreciate it I get one a good question to uh for to kind of well there's a few more but Paul Vince Amiga game selector is asking uh like where do you see Amiga Corporation in five years. Like do you think it'll be smoother and less complicated than it is now do you have a vision for it will be you know five years down the road.

Yes I think it can only get better. Some of the things will line up. This is whether you look at it from a game theory point of view, legal or strength. I think it will be simpler, yes. Clarity helps and the perception of strength or the opposite way, not the feeling that there is a void and confusion, which some people seem to almost celebrate. And the restoring of beauty, you know, who wants to be involved in something ugly if they feel there's something ugly. It's intangible, but beauty for me is important. And for me, Amiga was from the beginning, about beauty, about excellence, about creativity. And that passion attached to that is what keeps driving us all. And these are core elements, I think, that should not be forgotten.

So in a beautiful, strong and clear ecosystem, I think it can also get better. Especially in this world that maybe we get more confusing, we see different trends, some are totally unpredictable, we don't know where AI will bring us. But we long for the past, this is something we can understand. It's important that we as a community invest in it and in an inclusive way welcome others to it. Because if we all get 50, 60, 70, 80, it will disappear with us.

I like to think that at least the classic part of Amiga is like classic cars and other things that are here to stay. Because, you know, there's one theory that says, no, it will disappear with the generation that had it in their youth. I already can prove these people wrong, because I see the new generations. But it requires a bit more investment. So to make the whole system more accessible. And that's why the collaboration with the AI tools, the SDK, another great question, and the compilers and hardware uniformity and demo scene competitions and being able to find the original old on eBay. And all this should be part of a coherent ecosystem.

And yeah, five years down the road, I see the classic. And I see something new. I see a community that still loves to meet. I think meetings in person, you see it as a trend in general, people want to meet, especially in these days of online and AI and distancing, you know, after COVID. There's a pulse. Amiga gives people, and you know, I was just reading this book, The Great Third Place, I haven't given a chance. People need a way to meet outside of home and work. And Amiga with its events, and maybe we should have some tools, nobody asked this, we should have some tools to help create events and for people to connect at events. You know, I touch your badge, you touch fine and we can have an Amiga page where we know who we are or just like family, we meet every six months or one year at some different event and it's a way to travel the world and make friends through. You know these are smart diverse people that is always a joy to meet. We don't need some super exclusive expensive think tanks. The conversations I have at Amiga events are totally stimulating, enjoyable. So five years from now, classic, new events. Will we live in an 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit steampunk? world, I don't know. Five years is a lot. Also from an AI point of view, a possible change. But I hope that if the AI things go well, we will have a choice of how and where to live. And that's why. I think the choice will bring us back to what we're talking about now.

I love talking about meeting up in person because our local Amiga club, Westchester Amiga user group. I'm just going to, I'm going to tout it for a second. We've been meeting since 1988 and we never stopped Mike and never will baby. We used to meet in person on the first Thursday of every month. Now, because of COVID, we went virtual. So we meet, we still meet on the first Thursday of every month, but virtually kind of like you and I are doing now.

But then we still have the physical meetings so we have one big one a year at my place well this year will be two and I want to have like a I want to have like a even bigger one for our 40th anniversary so maybe you could make that that'd be amazing to have you here that'll be in 2027. Oh that'd be perfect timing man you'll be you'll be getting ready to get the OS the OS3 to the 3.3 that'll be a good time for it because if we need something in New York. I mean AmiWest is awesome that's why I really want to get the OS 3.2, the 3.3. That'll be a good time for it. Because if we need something in New York, AmiWest is awesome. That's why I really want to get out there this year because those guys are awesome and they put on a great show. So I would like to maybe something like that on the East Coast too.

I'll try to attend VCF East again next year.

VCF East is great. Yeah, yeah, nice.

There are phenomena like community. The word community sometimes is exploited as is retro. There's this retro exploitation phenomenon, which I am very glad not to see at VCF. There's this community spirit, hacker spirit, volunteers, and it's great to be there.

Yeah, that's a really, really great. And it's so cool that it happens in the shadows of the original Commodore. So you get a lot of those folks are still in the area. So some of the folks that attend are unbelievable. I'll never forget when Greg Berlin surprised us for the surprise visit before he was even back in the scene. That was really cool. And of course, Bill Herd's always so supportive of VCF. He's awesome. He always comes for us. He's an amazing guy. Jerry Ellsworth comes. It's great.

Just a couple more quick questions here, Mike, if you have the time. This has been epic. Absolutely epic. I appreciate it.

I will be sad when this is over as you've seen I've been swapping my earpods because they're out of battery but I swap one with the other.

It's a good system Mike. It's a good system. It's a good question from Triple P75 will the current OS 3.3 developers at Hyperion be working for Amiga Corp on the next OS?

I respect that this is their choice. So I hope that we can... We are in touch with some, and with some, not yet. After this signing. I mean, many I know, but a couple I have probably one or two I've never spoken with, but most I have at events. But since this agreement, I've been in intense touch with two or three of them. But they have their own internal discussions. I'm sure they too have questions to ask that haven't come up yet. And they have their own decisions to make about the motivations and goals. So I cannot speak for them, number one.

Second, I respect the very difficult, fragile situation that they too have gone through, because not everything was as clear, as positive, as... You know, sometimes you want to play with something you want to believe maybe that some things. There have been sources of confusion let's put it that way. And the sources of confusion I hope are gone and this should help everyone. So Timothy of Hyperion has been great at also facilitating the communications. And I think there should be a smooth continuation of things.

If I wanted to talk to someone from Hyperion, like have them come on the show, would Timothy be the man?

Timothy is much better than me in his teaching.

Oh, come on. Mike, you've been awesome, dude.

No, I'm not a good salesperson. I say the negative before the positive. I don't try to sell things. I'm a developer. I see problems. I want to solve problems. And I see the company too with its limitations as a problem and sometimes manpower and budget is a limitation.

And especially after seven or eight years which are undescribable from that point of view. I mean, the problems that they have been due to the legal challenges in the past eight or nine years, do we want to write a book about them? Do we want to forget about them? I don't know what the right thing is. Maybe we need to slip over it a bit more. Maybe it's too fresh. Or let's see also how history evolves on the sides.

Bash64, I'll kind of answer it too. Is there any new Amiga hardware coming, like an A5000? I know the A1200 is the next new piece of hardware. And maybe there'll be something in the future, but nothing on the table right now, right, Mike?

Well, no, as you mentioned, we're still discussing what people want and what is possible. You mentioned a similar question who seemed to imply that Vampire was the way to go, so there is a few Amiga cores, more or less refined ones in FPGA. ASIC of course is a possibility. How much do we, what a revolution would it be to have a really low cost Amiga? And what Amiga OS features would it have to meet? What would you want to have in it? Would it have to have some like mesh communication system embedded, some home automation system? What is the new killer app for a low-cost Amiga? These are all exciting questions. What interfaces? So do you want like a universal serial canvas, Connex, LoRaWAN, many, many possible possibilities. But then you also take, when you want too much, you take away some of the beauty. So it can be a modular system. Others have done each of those systems. So maybe in the next year, let's focus on bringing order to the core. And the partners will do hardware. I hope they will do it in a more unified way. And as for the A5000, let's see what the future brings. Whether it's FPGA, ASIC, ARM, RISC 5, or whatever.

On that note, let's see, I got just like two more here. Good question. I'm sorry, I missed one. Someone's asking is, with the new agreement, is AmigaKit still going to be able to call their products like A600GS, A1200GS, and A1200NG?

I cannot speak for the company. They are co-owned by Trevor Dickinson. They are enmeshed with agreements with Amiga through Hyperion. I haven't seen those agreements. Hyperion will have to show us some of those agreements in the next few weeks. The ability to name a product after an Amiga original product is a complex topic and I am not a lawyer. you know. In, for example, in some countries you cannot even register a model, a trademark after a model. Some people like to play mid-stairs and they think they can stop others from using it. I think that's ugly. Amiga hasn't done that.

Do I think there should be more order also in these fringes where these difficult questions come up? Yes. Do I think that a product that claims to be Amiga-like should have an official OS? Yes. And I cannot really say much more about that. You're bringing up a difficult topic now.

Links Oranges is asking what about a new Kickstart. Could there be one more dynamic to accommodate a new boot logo or the ability to customize the boot logo. Flexible to RAM position with more functions to call to get RTG directly for example.

I like when you hold the two mouse buttons. You would like to yeah so you don't like the check mark in the boot.

I don't know I'm asking yeah I mean I think he's got something customizable but he said the new logo though the new one because you guys redefined it I guess that's what he's talking about. You have the new Amiga logo now.

We have a pixel artist working on putting the check mark in the boot screen again. Of course, even the developers I spoke with, the AmigaOS 3 developers, they told me, no, we want the checkmark back. And I agree. So I am a classic checkmark boot. But what else would you want? A QR code or something like that? Maybe not, but yeah, polish it up a little bit. But if you mean the whole boot process, like the ability to press two mouse buttons and pop up some features, that should be standardized, I think. RTG is a possibility, but right now, RTG is also... If something is broken, you boot into a black screen and you don't see anything. So yes, we work on that. But I agree that right now one of the points that already came up is to standardize across the partners what to do with the boot screen options. That is, when you do something like press the two mouse button at the same time, what should happen? A lot of options should be exposed there. So, and as for the graphics, there will be the checkmark, but if you want to customize it, that's an idea. I don't know.

I think that's what he's asking, to customize it, because I mean, hey, I like the checkmark, I like the checkmark, but I love the Boing Ball. I respect the check mark. I love it. But if you want someone to put a Boing Ball there or whatever their logo, maybe their own logo. I don't know. Maybe they're like a Westchester Amiga group logo.

As long as you don't put an Atari logo.

There you go. Good answer, Mike. Because you know that would happen. You know there'd be some rascals that'd be doing that. You know that. Oh, man. I think. So the Boing Ball's totally out. It sounds like Mike's going checkmark.

Teen Angel wants to know about the artwork behind you.

So this is my niece. I don't know where you're going to cut because we agreed that you would cut the light. Yeah, no, I framed in all the artwork for you. Okay. So this is by my niece in Palo Alto. Everything else is by Theo and Leo who are my sons. And so Theo is now seven and Leo is four. And this is old artwork. So let's call it classic. New develop new developments. So by the way, I am full of moving cartoons I apologize for the it's real you see me as I as I am here when I work in this home office now but I'm moving to I should have in the next video or maybe next year in my office something maybe not as interesting as that, but also not as chaotic as that right now. So yes, these are my children.

That's awesome.

Thanks for asking. It's not me. I'm not that good.

That was Teen Angel. Good question, Teen Angel. Thanks, Mike.

It's, you know, it's artwork, like physical artwork. We're talking about, oh, look at that. That is awesome. I've got two.

Ah, this is an Amiga.

I love it. Of course it is. That's, that's, that's beautiful. I love that. It's, it's, my, my nephew gave me a little Amiga mug that he drew. It was really cool. And physical art is so important. We're talking about physical. There you go. Mike, I got, I, we got to you some Westchester Amiga user group swag. We got to. But one of the things that I treasure that I have, besides a coffee mug that Jay Miner signed, is a piece of original artwork that Gail Wellington made. I was doing an interview with her for that new Amiga user group documentaries coming out from Anthony and Nicola and she gave me this magnet of her she did she was very into art and painting and she gave me uh this really cool magnet that I treasure it I treasure it.

Gail Wellington really helped us she was at the top of the team who encouraged and helped us developers. I met her at several events devcons and cbit and she really conveyed faith in me as a developer and she's one of the reason why we continued for so long. She put a lot of energy in in supporting us so very fond memories of Gail.

Another important part of preservation. That's why I love, like, I'm really lucky. She's been on the stream just like you, and I've interviewed her, and that interview is so important. Like, we covered so much material in that interview, like we did today. It's just, I think it's a great piece of history. You know, I think it's so important to capture the stories, keep the stories, preserve the history. It's so important, and I really appreciate the fact that you prioritize that, Mike. That's awesome.

A lot of folks in the chat are saying that Mike's an awesome dude. Amiga's in good hands. Mike's all ears. Let's take the opportunity to give him suggestions. Yeah, everyone really appreciates you, Mike, and appreciates all the time that you gave us today. and appreciates all the time that you gave us today.

Thank you, Bill. This is lovely, a bit embarrassing for me, but I'm not afraid of criticism. Sometimes it's the criticism and the direct confrontation also that brings improvement. So don't be afraid. Like you ask difficult questions like Amiga A's and others, feel free and to also help reprioritize things that maybe sometimes are known but they tend to be forgotten a little bit and they need to be higher in the priority list. So I hope we don't disappoint and the next steps should be in delivering more. There have been a lot of announcements, two in one basically packed in early August. These were meant to address a long list of questions just like you had a list of questions and I hope this help move forward now.

So there's two other videos I would like to mention. One is the Kickstart presentation, but strangely and interestingly, maybe from a historical point of view, I had this six week before speech at Redcon where I did not have myself the certainty of being able to enter into these two agreements. And basically there we were saying, "I hope that next month we can have these agreements done," without really saying it. But I'm curious myself now, I would like to go and see what I said without being able to say it. Because for me too, it changes a lot. To not have 10 different futures, possible futures in mind, but only five. And maybe I didn't want to admit it myself, but having so many points of tension in your mind, you can now begin to clean your physical desk and your mental desk of some scenarios which you can slowly begin to let go. And this is also for me good.

Mike I appreciate it. I uh yeah I really come back anytime you know like when there's more developments. I got you can you're welcome to come on the stream like anytime. Amiga community would like love to hear from you. Like I would love just even do I could just an interview with you. This is more of a Q&A but from the community. But I want to I'd like to learn more about your past, you know. You have a very interesting past. You have a funny picture with Jay Minor as well. So I want to I want to learn more about Mike as well. And it would just be great for you to keep us up to date.

It'd be awesome for you to come on. You know you can come on wherever you want a couple times a year whenever there's something cool that is happening with Amiga. Like we'd love to have you come on and answer questions about it or just tell us about it. You're welcome here you know anytime and if there's any way I could help just let me know. You know I'm just a dude who does live streams and got the user group but if there's any way I could help you out, you know, you and I both have Amiga. Like Amiga is just like a huge part of our lives. Amiga's been with me basically my entire life so you know any way I can I can help you. Because I know you love Amiga like I do. Like I'm here for you and and so is my community.

Thank you Bill and all the people who are listening listened and asked questions. And I hope to meet in person at some events and if not let's meet again here and you're also welcome to visit.

I you know you don't have to twist my arm to visit Italy. I'm just saying.

It helps if you need to convince a loved one you know. Let's go visit. This is a very diverse region between sea and Alps. So you get a bit of thought within one hour. You can have lunch in the mountains, like Heidi like Alps, real Alps with a funicular. And then you have dinner on the beach.

That's incredible.

So this is maybe also why after working in the US and the UK and Germany, I ended up then probably settling here. Now children are going to school here so that's where we're going to stay for a while.

Italy's beautiful. I love. I'm in the north. I've been to like not anywhere near your area but I've been to Milan and like Lake Cuomo. It's just all, god ridiculous, so love Italy it's the best alright Mike thank you so much maybe I'll catch you at AmiWest if I'm able to make it out there if you're able to make it out there if not here and maybe we'll even get you to a Westchester Amiga user group or a VCF again that would be awesome. Amiga42 Germany there's lots of possibilities. I love it.

It's. I met Marcus last week and it's a strong possibility yes Amiga42 Germany I cannot speak for him of course but I'm pushing in that direction and VCF East is also likely next year. AmiWest I don't know I run out of my travel budget in terms of days I'm allowed to be away from home but let's see.

Okay that sounds good Mike. We'll meet up again for sure in person. Wherever it is and appreciate everything you did for us today and everything you're doing for Amiga. Keeping it alive and well, baby. Let's go.

Thank you, Bill.

Have a good one, Mike. Peace.