The original design for AmigaOS was known as CAOS. The CAOS design included resource tracking, which I believe is a useful feature when it comes to implementing memory protection.
If I remember correctly what ended up happening was the microkernel for CAOS was developed in-house (Exec), but contractors were being paid to develop the rest of the OS, and they disagreed with the design decisions of CAOS and wanted to make it more Unix-like. Once the Amiga team realised the contractors had wasted time developing something different from what they intended, they sought out an alternative solution to replace the user-space side of the OS. As a result they contracted a different team to rework an OS called TripOS to use the Exec microkernel (that was originally intended for CAOS), which then became the AmigaOS that Amiga users know.
You can read a bit more here:
MorphOS - quite fast and usable :) http://www.morphos-team.net/intro
So, out with the old and in with the new.