In reply to Comment 27 (Anonymous):
>> I'm not sure how this is working for bbrv. I mean maybe his priorities are
>> such that he needs to expose some facts...but as for the rest of us, this
>> makes working with Genesi appear to be an iffy proposition, what with all
>> their problems, it doesn't seem stable.
> A good point.
Just as a note - it's not Genesi that the moo-bunny posts is about. Genesi has never been in the security agents business, nor into drug screening products, nor into air travelling/transportations, etc, and Gaussens, Jumel, Breuillaud, Ferreira, Guillon, Salmaso, etc, etc, has never been employed by Genesi.
Or am I missing something here?
But how is the moo-bunny posts related to Genesi then?
First, there is simply NO WAY that Pegasos sales on the Amiga market alone can finance even a fraction of the hardware development, sofwtare and OS development, website development, Pegasos production runs, etc, etc. NO WAY ON THIS PLANET (se below)! Until a "real" market or business deals emerges that can bear all this, and generate a solid profit on top of that, things has to be financed through some seed capital. This is how it has been in Genesi the whole time, they have not been seeking to profit on the Amiga market with the Pegasos, rather the opposite, they have spent and spent and spent huge amounts on supporting developers with free machines, sponsoring development projects, and getting numerous OS's available for the Pegasos, including MorphOS! All with the view of that "the investments comes now, the profit comes later".
At 17-Nov-2003, BBRV wrote: "At today's hearing of the Tribunal of Commerce in Paris a judgment was rendered declaring Pretory, S.A. in bankruptcy and appointing a receiver. The process finally will now begin to transfer Thendic-France's assets to Genesi SARL."
So, the "Genesi gas tank" would be refueled. "Finally" as it says, so there might have been a need for refueling quite some time before that, and they seems to have been counting on this particular source. But it seems like it takes more time than expected, and (unknown to us) problems arose.
At 26-Dec-2003, BBRV wrote a post that is very interesting when looking back in this context. It says among other things: "A business lives or dies through sales -- sales to customers, sales of licenses, sales for services. Sales and profit is what pays for everything. Without sales and without profit there are no companies, no developers and no employees". It then discuss thinkable views of products based on the Pegasos, followed by: "What we need to be sold to cover the actual expenses of the Genesi team is 25,000 units a month with the current price schedule. Unless you are willing to send a check, start helping us get there (...and, if you have been helping, thanks, but it is still not enough!)"
This post explains the situation quite well IMHO. It will not be possible to continue the spending fiest the same way now. It's time to start doing business. I see the italic part (made italic by me) as a call/plead to the entire Genesi team to understand the situation and continue to help moving the ship forward to a safe harbour instead of hauling the sails in the middle of the ocean.
At 19-Jan-2004, BBRV wrote: "Due to the difficulties associated with the bankruptcy of Pretory SA, Thendic-France will be closed. The original intention was to convey Thendic-France and/or it assets directly to Genesi to allow for an uninterrupted transition of services and coordination. This did not happen and will no longer be possible."
As I discussed earlier, they obviously had been counting to be able to move their money with them over to Genesi, and as the posts by BBRV over at moo-bunny now shows, the reasons to the current unfortunate situation has been totally *out of their control*.
As I said in a post above, the moo-bunny posts might shed some light on the reasons behind a financial situation in Genesi, that in turn led Christian Kemp to "express his frustration" in his latest "MOTD" and other posts. But that's all. Pretory, and the strange things that happened there, is not related to Genesi.
Genesi *has been proven* to be a well functioning entity with HW and SW development, production, marketing, etc. A machine that has been running very well when the gas tank was full. Now it seems like the gas has been choked significantly, and it becomes obvious that some components in the machinery gets hickups from this fact, some even stops. But there are other gas stations than the "Thendic" ones out there (there are also alternative fuels than the "seed-fuel", like "income-from-sales-fuel"), it's "just" a matter of reaching them, refill the tank, and then find some new, functioning, spare parts to replace the unstable parts of the machinery.
> In my opinion this is, though, very much in line with Bill Buck's character
> and past actions. He has always been far more willing to discuss his
> personal and corporate trials and tribulations than, say, those involved
> with the current Amiga Inc., who are well known for trying to work their way
> around any embarrasing factoids.
I agree, I find this openness to be quite refreshing. They have been quite open about all kinds of problems and letting us (the public in the community) know what's going on and why. Some people obviously gets a "reserved reaction" at first about this somewhat unusual and unexpected way, but in the long term it leaves a solid fealing of honesty, at least to me. But they are not only discussing *problems* in public, they also have a nice track record of discussing ideas for new products and developments and other *positive* things in the open too (in a ping-pong kind of way ;-))! |
