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[Forum] Ralph Schmidt comments on deal with Amiga Inc

Posted on 04-Nov-2001 05:00 GMT by Adam Cheesegrate

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On the 'fleecy comments on morphos' thread Ralph responds to the following
questions about the frequently mentioned
unsigned contract with Amiga Inc
-Did the morphos team revise the contract proposal
and fax it back to fleecy?
-What was the response from amiga inc?
- did the morphos team treat amiga inc with some respect?

1. It contained unacceptable paragraphs.
These paragraphs would have led to devide the licence sums to
almost nothing depending on a short amount of "amigaos" releases
which Amiga Inc. *decided*. That would have meant a complete
loss of "control" about the sources and its wealth.
They would have also meant that Amiga Inc. could control bplan's
product release...by not releasing anything at time..demanding
"extra special hw support licences" and so on.
To make it simple..the contract was an unprofessional joke.
2. The previous agreed sum between me and fleecy were "cutted" by 80%
in the "final" contract.
Fine if they wanna play sandbox games they can choose other
people...the 5 months wasted on communication with Fleecy Moss
were enough.
3. The contract came after about 8 weeks "delay" and only because i
gave fleecy a deadline from that day we will concentrate on our
own business to get the job done.
This means we can't wait and wait for a "deal" while we actually
need to port other modules to get a product done.
Therefore i set a deadline..and since then we port the remaining
important AROS and own technology which is needed.
Otherwise we would still wait until judgement day while real
work could be done.
4. The contract was written by B. Hermans which makes the contract
invalid automaticly for this break of trust.
I heard this some time afterwards through several sources.
That`s like letting Mr. Haage writing our contracts with Amiga.
An absolute *inacceptable* issue.
5. We saw that Amiga Inc. was not able to do any project management.
o As i`ve said before..Hyperion didn`t want to support MorphOS
as AmigaOS when Fleecy told them so.
Conclusion fleecy had no control about them.
o Absolutely *nothing* happened for 4.0 development *besides*
Olaf Barthels doing TCP/IP and FFS development for *him*.
o Absolutely *no* time plans..nothing...no real work responsibilities.
Though asking about these issues i've *never* got a sufficient
answer.
o Amiga Inc. has no access to the OS 3.5/3.9 sources and though
i asked fleecy *several* times about this i never got a sufficient
answer. But planning for a new OS release the knowledge on what
you can base your work on is *crucial*.
It was also common agreement between Olaf Barthels and us that
the WB needs a *major* overhaul and that it would be best to
base it on some previous 3.5 work..asl/amigaguide/icon..stuff
which has some worth. But as Amiga Inc. is locked about these
sources they would only have 3.1 (rom and wb) left.
As we're quite close to a complete rom replacement and the
wb needs a complete rewrite anyway there was nothing left
they could offer besides the name.
o Though after several tries to discuss the RTG problem with
Fleecy Moss his standard answer was...you`re not in the gfx team,
you may be allowed to give some suggestions but that`s it.
While we knew that *nothing* really went on about "their"
fantasy gfx team P96 which didn`t even know in april what
they should do at all. Maybe the Friedens did some 3d work..so
be it..but that is *NOT* what i understand as RTG.
But as a graphics.library replacement is a *MUST HAVE* option
to even get a non amiga hw up we did our own graphics.library
replacement with cybergraphx. It would have been unacceptable
to "wait" for fleecy's fantasy team to get a graphics.library
replacement working while we wait 6-12 months until we can
get the pegasos working.
o Amiga Inc. *USA* was informed that the AmigaOne hw won`t come
in time(if ever) and that there's no real 4.0 work at
H&P by some Amiga Inc. employee which came to the IFA in
germany end august and found an obvious project GAU.
(Note..the AmigaOS project manager Fleecy Moss has obviously
never ever *checked* the project`s progress though i`ve
warned him several times about certain issue...he never
listened)
But while all this has happened i still get an email from
Fleecy Moss where he asked me where the problem is in
these special clauses....
This contract had some paragraph like...
"You must support the 4.0 VM API" while *everybody* involved
knew there *is* no 4.0. So how can we support an API for an
not existing product ? Nuts..
To me this was another sign that the guy somehow lives in
a fantasy world..argueing with fantasy work groups.
BTW..also for my friends at Hyperion..at that time we already
had our own VM we only added for your "future" games.
-> conclusion..it`s *impossible* that amiga inc. could organize
any amigaos development and that this development would be
ready for our HW. Then we decided to continue on our own
with our partners and focus on our own product.
6. Early September Olaf Barthel(in the name of Amiga Inc.) saw the
Pegasos running here in an early beta and we discussed the whole
situation with him and told him our opinion of the situation.
He mostly agreed about the project management issue and that
*nobody* is even close to our state.
He also thinks that the whole situation is just plain ridiculous.
He informed Amiga Inc. *USA* about it and our opinions of the
situation but we haven't heard anything about them until sometime
mid October. Then it was clear that B. Hermans talked Fleecy into
that he is able to fix his AmigaOS PPC "problem" to safe both
people's faces. Now it`s only a farce...
A lot things have already been said...some may be new to you but
this should be enough for now and at least clear up a lot of issues
concerning our decision. And before the name believes attack me
again, better read this *twice*.

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