AmigaOS 4
In 2001, Hyperion announced that, after licensing the rights from Amiga, Inc., it would be working on the successor to AmigaOS 3.9 and concentrating its efforts on the development of AmigaOS 4. Hyperion still claimed that it is based upon AmigaOS 3.1 source code and, to a lesser extent certain, AmigaOS 3.9 sources. A quick port of 68k AmigaOS to PowerPC was originally planned, with new features added as development continued. Ben Hermans, writing on Amiga forum Ann.lu, claimed that these sources, along with the source of the PPC kernel WarpOS would be sufficient to provide a version to users within a year, making his now-infamous "change some flags and recompile" comment.
AmigaOS 4.0 was first released to end-users and second-level beta testers in April 2004, with AmigaOS 4.1 following in September 2008. It is currently still in development.[17]
In 2004, Hyperion attempted to obtain a licence for an AmigaOS 4 native port of the file manager Directory Opus, which had originally and been developed on the Amiga but for which development had since moved to the Microsoft Windows platform. Talks between Hyperion and GP Software broke down.[18]
The first managing partner of Hyperion, Benjamin Hermans, in the period between the announcement and release of AmigaOS 4, ignited a community controversy by repeatedly claiming that MorphOS, an AmigaOS-like competitor (which had been released in complete form in 2003), was illegal and had on several occasions threatened to take legal action against it either on the grounds that it was parasitic competition to AmigaOS 4,[19] or even that it was actually based on stolen AmigaOS source code.[20] No evidence to support either claim ever became public, nor did any legal action against MorphOS take place; neither prevented such views being repeated in public Amiga forums and mailing lists. This situation was inflamed by ex-Commodore engineer Dave Haynie, who backed up Herman's claims: "If you have seen the Amiga source code, you cannot produce a legally separate work-alike",[21] though again without any direct evidence.
Hermans claimed that Bill Buck, who led the Genesi company funding MorphOS, was a "con-artist".[22]
Evert Carton took over the managing partner position after Hermans stepped down in 2003, due to a lack of time for daily administrative work.[23] Timothy de Groote became another partner in 2003.[24]
Dispute and settlement with Amiga, Inc.
In 2007, Hyperion was sued by Amiga Incorporated for trademark infringement in the Washington Western District Court in Seattle, Washington.[25][26] Amiga, Inc. sued Hyperion for breach of contract, trademark violation and copyright infringement concerning the development and marketing of AmigaOS 4, stating that Hyperion had continued to develop and market AmigaOS 4 without paying agreed royalties and had continued to do so even after being warned to cease and desist.[27]
Hyperion launched a counteraction, claiming fraud in Amiga, Inc. handling of Amiga intellectual properties and debts, including the use of debt-holding shell companies, by shifting responsibility between these shell companies. They also claimed that Amiga, Inc. had failed to uphold their part of the contract and had been untruthful in correspondence and that they had failed to deliver the AmigaOS 3.1 source that AmigaOS 4 was developed from, forcing Hyperion to find it elsewhere.[28] In autumn 2007, Hyperion released a standalone version of AmigaOS 4 for classic Amiga,[29]
