[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 259 of 260 | ANN.lu |
Posted by .jon on 17-Mar-2004 03:59 GMT | In reply to Comment 52 (Greg Ford): No, you are not screwing it up.
It is a matter of indepentantly intelligent people and those who have a fixed view of all and can not adopt to your message, which for me clearly imposes, that you do not want to be sucked in by the community, instead all you do is to hear of people who share very same interests as you.
You are a developer in its widest sense (maybe 'producer') and your application is stalled, your business is halted, since you *would* like to aim the Amiga market but your can't seem to go forth or back.
They simply do not reply to your contact. And this is strange for you, because you'd have a really interesting offer for them. And since they do not answer you scratch your head, ask yourself "why". And so do many investors (as far as I understood), who, being their nature, want to see some revenue, except of pouring more money into a Black Hole.
I fully undersand your concerns, desire. You have expressed yourself *very* clear from the beginning.
However, you need to realize the fact, that most people over here are fanatics, in one way or other, and as fanatics tend to be, they can not change places, are inflexible to other's people demands. It's within their way of thinking, in their nature of mind.
So, unless you say *exactly* what they want to hear, they simply *will no* undersand you. Stay away. Anyone in the same boat as you long has understood you.
Good luck !
P.S. I have had some brilliant ideas for AmigeDE, however, I never went further, since I believe they are a bunch of losers. I once got a reply by 'fleecy' who commented on a UseNet post I did and he said: "Excellent post". That might even have been in Amino days. It was actually describing what Amiga Inc. originally had (seemed to have) in mind.
I backed off any intent to get into "more" since I saw that all they have is an idea but are too inflexible to realize it.
By now it is too late for Amiga Inc. They wanted to create a hardwareless computer. They failed so far. And I am pretty in doubt, that it will be them to deliver this in the future.
The only platform, where a hardwareless computer (the *really* PERSONAL computer) would make sense is either on a huge installation of public terminals, in hotel rooms and everywhere (forget about that) or within personal mobile devices PLUS the base of machines installed at home.
I however doubt, the customers would ever realize the benefits of such an architecture, as long as those other systems do what they want.
Why install a system on top of another system, if the underlying system does what one wants and delivers full interfaces to the different system on the desktop or the server ? |
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