[Rant] Hostage Negotiation | ANN.lu |
Posted on 27-Jan-2004 02:07 GMT by Greg Ford | 260 comments View flat View list |
There are a group of people, at Amiga Inc, who have decided that their personal reasons
are more important than the interests of the company, employees, investors, the customers,
and even potential customers, and have ceased any and all effort to involve themselves in
anything at all that doesn't directly relate to these personal reasons, even if it means
earning an income against it's current mountain of debts. Amiga is being held hostage, and someone's looking to do something about it.
The only people that were in any position to remedy this situation were a group of investors who had already lost fortunes in Amiga Inc, and were asked for more money. They were concerned over the money already invested, but told that unless they invested more, they'd never see any returns on these investments ever. The investors didn't like this at all, they felt, exactly like
I said, that the small group of people at Amiga Inc, were literally holding Amiga hostage for more money. They did the only thing they could do, they hired Garry Hare to try to restart the
company and salvage something for the investors who had already invested large amounts of capital into the failed company.
The problem was, those few at Amiga quickly realised that this was an attempt to get around Amiga Inc's demands for more investment capital, and completely refused to cooporate with Garry Hare, and
even going so far as to publicly obfuscate to it's customers Garry's position in the failing company. Garry was instrumental in generating dozens of potentially profitable leads in his three month project that he spent representimg Amiga Inc at tradeshows and technology conferences. Many business contacts and developers became interested and attempted to follow up on these leads, only to be shunned by Amiga Inc who was making it very clear to the investors that they will not be subverted in this way. Either they would invest more capital like Amiga Inc demanded, or Amiga Inc would literally sit on their hands at Amiga Inc and do absolutely nothing, ensuring that the investors money would not produce any potential profits at all, and keeping Amiga Inc in a nonproductive stasis untill such a time when the investors will finally cave in to their demands and give them the investment capital.
To this day Amiga Inc. and the investors are still locked in a standoff, and it appears that neither will give in to the other. The investors are still looking for a way to controll the damage, to get at least a little back from their investment or even wrestle controll as to lead Amiga into promoting it's current technology, while Amiga Inc refuse to both (1) go bankrupt, instead hoping the investors will cave in to Amiga Inc's demands, or (2) try to generate an income, they will not do this as this would be giving in to the investors, who they want more money from.
There is no right or wrong being implied here, but the fact remains nothing will change untill someone gives in. It's quite apparent Amiga Inc believes that it will be the investors who will give in, as they speak quite publically about expecting the next round of funding to be recieved any day now. However I don't know if Amiga Inc realise that, as we speak, the leads that have been generated in spite of Amiga Inc's steadfast resolve to hold out against the investors are being contacted for information about the way in which
Amiga Inc has shunned them when they tried to follow up on these leads. I myself have been contacted although I couldn't offer them anything other than telling them Amiga Inc simply refused to follow up on inqueries I've sent them.
All I could gather from these people is that they are determined to do something about the situation. Unfortunately
I couldn't offer them much. It would be in my own interests as well for this to be resolved one way or the other as
my own plans are in stasis untill something happens as well. Someone has to give. Seeing as how I can't help them much
in any way, I'd like to hear from others who might have information that might help the investors in making their case
that Amiga Inc is intentionally keeping the company in stasis. I'm not sure if they are preparing legal action or whatever,
but to be on the safe side, if you could refrain from posting the details, and instead contact me and I'll give you
instructions on contacting the interested parties.
You can contact me at GregFordEmbedded@hotmail.com, and we can start from there. Thank you for your time.
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Hostage Negotiation : Comment 233 of 260 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Oppressor on 01-Feb-2004 20:00 GMT | In reply to Comment 231 (samface): > Why does it bother you that they are still around? Why would it be an improvement if they ceased to exist?
Well, many people are feeling bitter. Here is how I see it: The OS4 project is under an unfortunate star with a nameholder being disrespected by so many people, who would otherwise be beneficial and loyal towards the Amiga heritage as a whole (not necessarily to brands and labels). Count me into this camp.
I'm personally not tempted to buy an AmigaOne anymore, as long as this issue is unresolved. One might claim that I was successfully "bribed" by Genesi already, because I got a free Pegasos. However I got it for some libraries I volountarily contributed to MorphOS. Why the Dell not? They asked, and I was in the process of open-sourcing my work anyway. The same would've worked if somebody else had asked. And while I'm not owner of an AmigaOne myself, I would nevertheless like to support it. Unfortunately, the prerelease SDK is only for AmigaOne owners, according to an announcement at amigaworld.net.
There is no easy way out, but I know for sure that sitting on the name alone doesn't help. Sitting on the name only protects the painfully slow development at Hyperion. 90% of the work is done in 10% of the time, and the remaining 10% of the work consume 90% of the time and resources available. The slowness at Hyperion causes enormous damage to the "Amiga thing" as a whole, and by that I mean people who have bought AmigaOnes, Pegasoses, who are using their old Amigas or different operating systems (like myself), and who are just waiting. If we're losing only one of the "beneficial" people per week and one "beneficial" developer per month to outside platforms, then we're running out of resources shortly.
The problem with the Hyperion development is that it is (to industrial standards) organized unprofessionally - not only that the release dates were haphazard, leave alone that they now refuse to give release dates at all. There are also haphazard decisions in what will be included to 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0. And during all the time OS4 is in the Vapour Awards. Thanks to Amiga Inc., who obviously failed to organize and support this work professionally. Hyperion, on the other hand, are not to be criticized. They need only a few hundered OS4 units to provide them with almost guaranteed sales program of game ports in the next years.
At the same time, vast amounts of proven competence in "Amiga-like" development is sunk in MorphOS and Genesi. Hey, they did no less than to prove that they can develop an Amiga-lookalike OS - with the help of AROS people though, where another large amount of energy is being spent.
My proposal for solution would be as follows:
- The name and assets are transferred to a community holding with strictly non-commercial statutes
- Amiga Inc. can close its doors, the individuals can live on peacefully without ongoing persecution by mad stalkers
- Hyperion is now free to sell their work to Genesi, or to continue development in accordance to "core API" styleguides that need to be set up and protected by the holding
- Both Genesi and Hyperion or neither call their product Amiga, or the same would be allowed to other companies and groups. The community holding could allow the AROS group to call their work "Amiga" even without paying fees, because it's of a non-profit nature.
"Dream on", sure. A development like this is not as bizarre and improbable as it might sound. Amiga Inc., Hyperion and Genesi are all on extremely thin ice, and only a bit of change can catalyze larger changes. The community, for a start, could boycott Genesi and Hyperion and give them even worse press and public pressure until some kind of progress starts to settle. |
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