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[Rant] New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of XANN.lu
Posted on 23-Jun-2002 00:53 GMT by Andy Hall17 comments
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Frustration at the current situation put into words, lots of them, some even forming coherent sentences. Check it out on Class Of X here
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 1 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Adam Kowalczyk on 23-Jun-2002 01:36 GMT
That's the best bunch of fence sitting I've seen in quite some time, unfortunately creating one community that gets along will be hard to since there are two separate companies with different business goals. In fact I think it's time for a formal split in the market and announcements should be made from both sides to put an end to the bickering.
There are many people who want an Amiga and that means a licensed solution. This fact needs to be accepted by the people who want the OS to run on any POP board. If Amiga Inc. feels strongly in their licensing policy it's time for them to announce a separation of paths from the MorphOS/Pegasos/bPlan/Thendic crew. Yes, this is controversial and will upset people, but it is time for the divorce. Make the choice clear to the consumer and let them decide. Let the technical people and talent within the present Amiga community decide to develop software for one or the other, or both if it makes sense. The Amiga community should understand this as well.
The fundamental rift at this point in time is Amiga Inc. supports a licensed approach and there are others who feel "Plethora Of POP" (new recursive acronym)" boards are just around the corner which should be able to run the Amiga OS. Amiga Inc.'s policy is that the OS will not run on unlicensed boards. Period. Thendic/bPlan have stated the Amiga market isn't their primary concern. Skip the petitions, the grandstanding, the endless banter and cast your vote with your hard earned cash. People just need to understand that buying a licensed board supports Amiga, buying a non-licensed board supports someone else. In our tiny community it's impossible to cherry-pick the best software and hardware solutions and support all interested parties.
In the end if this means a part of the Amiga community morphs into something else, so be it. If it means we might not see a dual CPU board that runs OS 4.0 for awhile yet, so be it. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We have to respect that different companies have different business goals. Start the divorce proceedings ASAP, please.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 2 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by JoBBo on 23-Jun-2002 06:38 GMT
Three things...
1. "Likewise Thendic/Bplan would have sued Amiga for spreading lies if they were sure that MorphOS was 100% legal."
Well, Amiga Inc. has been rather quiet so far. If there was someone to sue for spreading lies about MorphOS, it would be most certainly Mr. Ben Hermans who has been a lot more active than any Amiga Inc. employee in this regard.
On the other hand, if I was in Thendic's position, I would just sit back and wait for Hyperion/Amiga to to throw the first stone. If Amiga Inc. sues first and fails/wins, everyone will say they were just trying to protect their IP. However, if Thendic sued first, they'd be most certainly recognized as "aggressors" trying to hinder "The Amiga Course(TM)"...
So yeah, there are good reasons for Thendic not to sue anybody of Hyperion/Amiga as of yet.
2. "For example it the reasons why the MorphOS team and Amiga didn't co-operate has changed many times from both sides, indicating that neither side knows or wants to say why it never worked out."
This is simply not true. Amiga Inc. has never commented why the cooperation with bPlan failed. And Ralph Schmidt of bPlan has never stopped staying that things fell apart because Amiga Inc. formulated condititions which bPlan thought, were unaccaptable. It's as simple as that. bPlan didn't like the contract proposal (which was written by Mr. Ben Hermans of Hyperion who ... SURPRISE, SURPRISE... later took over the AmigaOS4 project instead), but Amiga Inc. weren't willing to accept changes.
This sort of stuff happens all the time!
(Well, except for the Ben Hermans part perhaps (i.e. competing party being involved in negotations for no apparent reason).)
3. "A crisis meeting to discuss how to stop the whole market self-destructing. It should be held some place neutral [...snipped...] and it should be well planned and well structured. Something needs to be done to clear the air, and needs to be done urgently."
Rest assured, there will be a meeting between all parties involved. Everything will be well planned and well structured. Everyone will have its own arguments well prepared. And it will take place at a neutral place, too. Namely, a German court!
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 3 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Desmon on 23-Jun-2002 06:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Adam Kowalczyk):
There was a lot said in the article, in probably too few words, but I'd like to say something to this...
[quote]
The fundamental rift at this point in time is Amiga Inc. supports a licensed approach and there are others who feel "Plethora Of POP" (new recursive acronym)" boards are just around the corner which should be able to run the Amiga OS. Amiga Inc.'s policy is that the OS will not run on unlicensed boards. Period. Thendic/bPlan have stated the Amiga market isn't their primary concern. Skip the petitions, the grandstanding, the endless banter and cast your vote with your hard earned cash. People just need to understand that buying a licensed board supports Amiga, buying a non-licensed board supports someone else. In our tiny community it's impossible to cherry-pick the best software and hardware solutions and support all interested parties.
[/quote]
What the community wants IMHO is access to cheap(er) hardware in order to run their favourite OS. I'm sure there's very few people who would like to see Amiga go down the tubes and many who'd like to see the platform succeed in a big way. By only allowing licenced vendors to seell licenced hardware, the platform itself will relegated to the days of having to buy C= hardware with all the acompanying custom chips.
I'd love to see the "Plethora of POP", with AmigaOS running on all of 'em!
Cache Ya,
Craig.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 4 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Joe Consumer on 23-Jun-2002 07:06 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Adam Kowalczyk):
The fundamental rift at this point in time is Amiga Inc. supports a licensed approach and there are others who feel "Plethora Of POP" (new recursive acronym)" boards are just around the corner which should be able to run the Amiga OS. Amiga Inc.'s policy is that the OS will not run on unlicensed boards. Period. Thendic/bPlan have stated the Amiga market isn't their primary concern. Skip the petitions, the grandstanding, the endless banter and cast your vote with your hard earned cash. People just need to understand that buying a licensed board supports Amiga, buying a non-licensed board supports someone else. In our tiny community it's impossible to cherry-pick the best software and hardware solutions and support all interested parties "
We shouldn't have to buy "specific" hardware to support Amiga Inc. Amiga Inc. is a software company, this is what they've been telling us over and over, you support a software company by purchasing it's "software", not it's mandated hardware. We've always intended to support Amiga's software, and nothing has changed. The issue really has absolutely nothing to do with "Supporting Amiga" because buying the licensed motherboard supports a third party, not Amiga. buying AmigaOS from Amiga is how you support Amiga, a software company.
We arn't trying to get AmigaOS to "support all POP configurations" as at this time this would hardly be practical, but we are trying to get Amiga to modify the license so that it doesn't specifically artifically limit where it will run. At this time AmigaOS only runs on the Eyetech board, everyone understands that, but the license, the way it stands now, is stopping people who have offered to widen Amiga's hardware base -for free- from doing so. I don't see any benefit in turning down volunteers, in any case this is obviously not an issue of "supporting amiga" as the license itself is turning away people willing to contribute time and code for free. The license would not have to be changed in a way that would hurt Amiga Inc, but it would need to be changed in a way that would help accomodate the people who are willing, and have offered support in widening the available hardware base.
This should not even be considered a "rift" in the community, and it's not logical for those who don't agree with our position to make it into one, as the position we are trying to promote in no way whatsoever affects those not partaking in these views. If Amiga accomodated our position, it wouldn't affect the system, support or software available to those of you who disagree with us. In any case, this is an issue we the customers have with the company, NOT YOU OTHER customers.
This is all a matter of public relations, the best way to deal with your customers is NOT to tell them to go elsewhere as you propose, although I think you're lumping this with the MorphOS issue which is something totally irrelevant to this one.
I've read Ben Hermans publicly in different forums, and the things he's said in response to some hypothetical questions have reflected that this license issue may not be as set in stone as some of the "Amiga public defenders" make it out to be, but if this is the case, you "Amiga defenders" really need to stand out of the way and let us take up our issues with Amiga themselves, without you people standing in our way.
Every customer has a right to express concerns about the product and it's issues with the Company itself. You people who are interfering with this process are in the wrong NOT because of what side you're on, but because you're interfering with a -normal- customer-to-company relationship. You have no right to disrupt a normal consumer relationship between Amiga and it's customers, if you don't have an issue with the way things are, that's great, but leave those who have complaints about a policy which affects THEM alone to deal with the company to try and resolve the issue THEY have.
Honestly, the next time one of you "defender" types purchases a car, I want to stand between the dealer and you, and obstruct your business relationship between you and the dealer, then you will be able to understand that I would have NO right to do that, EVEN if I personally didn't have issues with the dealer and you DO.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 5 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Andy Hall on 23-Jun-2002 10:18 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (JoBBo):
>This is simply not true. Amiga Inc. has never commented why the cooperation >with bPlan failed. And Ralph Schmidt of bPlan has never stopped staying that >things fell apart because Amiga Inc. formulated condititions which bPlan >thought, were unaccaptable. It's as simple as that. bPlan didn't like the >contract proposal (which was written by Mr. Ben Hermans of Hyperion who ... >SURPRISE, SURPRISE... later took over the AmigaOS4 project instead), but Amiga >Inc. weren't willing to accept changes.
I'm afraid your wrong.
For example, Ralph Schmidt's story has DEFINATELY changed. Shortly after the AmigaOS 4 announcement, Ralph Schmidt alledged that it was J. Haage that had sabortaged the Amiga/MOS deal. He claimed that Amiga liked MOS and was ready to go with it until Haage had a private meeting with Fleecy Moss at a show, and Amiga suddenly did a U-turn, wanting MOS to be "ported" to WarpOS. This is when Haage and Partner were supposed to be working on OS 4. Then suddenly last year his story changed to the current "Ben Hermans ruined it for us so they can have the contract for themselves" stangely just before Hyperion took over.
How can you trust people who change thier stories like this?
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 6 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by JoBBo on 23-Jun-2002 10:26 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Andy Hall):
"How can you trust people who change thier stories like this?"
Well, bPlan negotiated with Amiga *twice*!! Both stories are true.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 7 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cheesegrate on 23-Jun-2002 10:30 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (JoBBo):
>>Well, bPlan negotiated with Amiga *twice*!! Both stories are true.
oh def more than twice.. ;)
phase 5 had a 3.1 licence btw..;)
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 8 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cheesergrate on 23-Jun-2002 10:39 GMT
fleecy and co never cared about the community or aos.. here is a nice quote from a few years past from fleecy .. ;)
>For Amiga Inc we don't "need" the existing community. Our market is
>much bigger than just desktops and, in another sense, it won't be us
>that concentrates on the desktop and high end, it will be our
>licencees. Our OS and HW references will scale.
>So technically the Amiga community could die and we would be ok.
>However, this is a limited way of looking at the situation.
>The existing Amiga gives us
>a) a good name and reputation -many ppl remember it very fondly,
>b) a worldwide seed community for the new machines - not many
>companies can work on a product with an almost guaranteed first sale
>of 100,00 units. c) a worldwide evangelical force d) a very talented
>pool of developers e) a philosophy and attitude that is just waiting
>to be promoted and will be so much more effective than the stale
>Apple "think Differently"
>The problem is that many in the existing community are only looking
>at their existing 1980's definition of computing, and of how the
>Amiga fits into that, so because we are not building PPC A5000s with
>PPCOS4, they feel betrayed. It requires a whole new mindset
>-computers are no longer just geek toys - they are the conduits for
>digital information.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 9 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 23-Jun-2002 11:17 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (cheesegrate):
" phase 5 had a 3.1 licence btw..;)"
And bplan / thendic swear blind their not related to phase 5 and the crap they pulled off , But its pretty clear they're related to DCE and that thickens the plot.
Its also pretty clear now that Thendic don't want the amiga community either , they want to sale PDA's and thinking any different is childish. The only people that seem to want to give us an os and hardware solution are hyperion/eyetech and before you say anything about ben flaming mos look at the people in the mos circle they love to have a go don't be so blind.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 10 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cheesegrfate on 23-Jun-2002 11:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (cOrpse):
huh? ;)
where did your moderate stance go corpse? ;)
i just stated fact, just bec i don't have much respect for amino clowns does not mean signify pro mos or anti os4?
so chill out
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 11 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cheesegrate on 23-Jun-2002 12:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (cOrpse):
and u still cannot make a distinction between developers and management?
wolf dietrich and whoever other management/creditors that made the decitons at the end of phase5 are not at bplan..
is this so hard to understand..
thought the people that stopped h&p developing ppc os4 when the *licenced the amiga ip are still at amino..
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 12 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Adam Kowalczyk on 23-Jun-2002 14:56 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Joe Consumer):
> Every customer has a right to express concerns about the product and it's
> issues with the Company itself. You people who are interfering with this
> process are in the wrong NOT because of what side you're on, but because
> you're interfering with a -normal- customer-to-company relationship. You have
> no right to disrupt a normal consumer relationship between Amiga and it's
> customers, if you don't have an issue with the way things are, that's great,
> but leave those who have complaints about a policy which affects THEM alone
> to deal with the company to try and resolve the issue THEY have.
How come other people spewing their oppinion is okay, yet my oppinion is considered interfering? How have I put myself between a consumer and Amiga Inc. What I'm stating is that people have to understand that until anything changes on Amiga Inc's side they'll have to buy a licensed board and this is how one supports the Amiga community. Is that too hard to understand? There are really only two solutions that I consider as valid options to run the Amiga OS, the Eyetech AmigaOne and the bPlan Pegasos. Until the number of available POP boards hits more than a half dozen or so, I don't feel like I've lost any options. As far as pricing goes, the AmigaOne is priced cheaper than a CSPPC and uses off the shelf hardware. Yes, there is a bit of a premium over x86 boards, but that's where the support for the Amiga companies comes into play. Amiga Inc. is a software company with agreements with other software and hardware vendors. They work in a symbiotic business relationship. Amiga Inc. cannot support running the OS on non-licensed boards if this hurts a key partner. If people aren't comfortable with the premium that will always be there for running an Amiga, then they might as well move to a PC and run UAE. How much choice do we need before we've spread the market too thin? In my oppinion two vendors would be nice, but Thendic/bPlan aren't interested.
"You people" need to talk to Thendic or possibly Merlancia about getting other POP boards running the OS under the appropriate licensing agreement. I agree with Amiga's licensing policy and do not see why they should have to give in to petitions. That's why I say it's time for the split. If the other POP boards come out and another company like Eyetech is interested in going through with the licensing, then we'll have another option. As consumers we do not have the same liberties as the x86 crowd that can purchase any number of motherboards. The diference is due to the volumes. In my oppinion, Eyetech has taken a financial risk for the Amiga community to provide a board that we can use for the OS. The same cannot be said for Thendic/bPlan who have their own business goals and have a board and an OS to sell to you as well.
You can take it, or leave it, or complain about it. Buying a licensed board supports Amiga Inc because it guarantees all three parties the just rewards. Selling an OS package doesn't support Amiga and it's partners to the same extent. Maybe when the established base of licensed Amiga boards is sufficient, they may decide to relax this, but until then I just don't see it happening. They are holding all the cards. If you really want OS 4.0, you'll have to buy a licensed board. Whereas I'm comfortable with the Eyetech Amigaone and it's successors, other's aren't. I'm not going to lose any sleep over the Pegasos not running OS 4.0. It would have been nice to see it as a licensed option for those who want to run OS 4.0 on it, but that's not completely Amiga Inc.'s fault.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 13 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by coldfire on 23-Jun-2002 23:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (Adam Kowalczyk):
I'm really pissed off that Pegasos isn't going to run OS4. I just can't figure out who to blame yet. I can't believe that Amiga Inc. and BPlan are unable to come to a solution to this.
coldfire
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 14 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Adam Kowalczyk on 24-Jun-2002 01:56 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (coldfire):
The Pegasos doesn't represent that big of an improvement, if any, over the AmigaOne for me to be pissed. The ability to swap CPU cards is nice, but not that impressive since you cannot use off the shelf CPU cards from third parties. If bPlan is as tight with information as DCE appears to be, I doubt anyone will be making any CPU cards other than bPlan. Until OS 4.0 supports Altivec or SMP, I don't see any value in anything better than a G3 at this point in time. Based on the history of Amiga hardware holding it's value, I'm not worried about reselling an AmigaOne on ebay or trading it in for an XE if/when it comes out. For a board that has relatively little different from the AmigaOne, it's hard to understand what the fuss is over. Firewire and a CPU slot? It's amazing that something so trivial has caused such a split.
No sense blaming anyone. If you're attracted to the hardware and want the bPlan, buy it and run MorphOS....if you want to run OS 4.0....buy an Eyetech. Do you really think that OS 4.0 will be that much better on the bPlan machine over the Eyetech board? On the same speed CPU's I'm not expecting much difference in performance. The boards have the same Southbridge from what I can tell, not quite sure what Northbridge the bPlan folks are using, but it looks like it's in the same chip package as the MAI chip although they claim it isn't. The Eyetech AmigaOne isn't a Teron CX either...just close cousins.
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 15 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by Andreas Wolf on 25-Jun-2002 08:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Adam Kowalczyk):
> The boards have the same Southbridge from what I can tell...
That's not true. The AmigaOneG3-SE has the VIA VT82C686B while the Pegasos has its successor VIA VT8231.
> ...not quite sure what Northbridge the bPlan folks are using, but it looks
> like it's in the same chip package as the MAI chip...
Yes, the Pegasos uses the MAI ArticiaS as well.
> ...although they claim it isn't.
Sure they did?
> The Eyetech AmigaOne isn't a Teron CX either...just close cousins.
I'd call them brothers ;-)
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 16 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by 3seas on 25-Jun-2002 12:17 GMT
How to take control????
A hint?
http://www.flyingmice.com/squid/cgi/moobunnythread.pl/amiga?flat=73947
New Rant: "Community Take Control" at Class Of X : Comment 17 of 17ANN.lu
Posted by cOrpse on 25-Jun-2002 14:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (cheesegrate):
"huh? ;)
where did your moderate stance go corpse? ;)"
Its still here , just not worth wasting on loners like yourself.
"i just stated fact, just bec i don't have much respect for amino clowns does not mean signify pro mos or anti os4?
so chill out"
Its pretty clear your pro mos , you shout it out every chance you get.
"and u still cannot make a distinction between developers and management?
wolf dietrich and whoever other management/creditors that made the decitons at the end of phase5 are not at bplan.. "
You brought up phase 5 ( and why did you bother ? they have nothing to do with this ) , I brought up DCE, DCE have time to assist the production of the pegasos but not to send back hardware which was under warranty or *PAID* for to be fixed.Its what we english call bloom'in cheeky.
"is this so hard to understand..
thought the people that stopped h&p developing ppc os4 when the *licenced the amiga ip are still at amino.."
The more times you use the word amino the stupider you look , as stupid as someone that reads into the sokda brand name on the new models , everyone knows their VW's. Whats in a name ?
H&P i used to respect but selling a product and not paying for half off it is *BLOOM'IN CHEEKY* and amiga have been grown up about it and sorted it out which is nice of them isn't it.
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