Genesi has launched their EFIKA developer’s program. The EFIKA is a “performance evaluation board based around the MPC5200B PowerPC system-on-chip from Freescale Semiconductor” The only thing you need to do, so it seems, is post a possible use for the EFIKA board on a thread on Power.org.
In italian “EFIKA” sounds like “it’s a chick”.
In other words.. “And Pussy”.
Hehe! Well, it is Greek (I think?) for efficient..
Well, it is Greek (I think?) for efficient..
Esperato? 🙂
Esperato? 🙂
Esperanto. (Note the ‘n’.)
It sucks to be me. I should be double ashamed, because Esperanto father, Ludwik Zamenhof was Pole. 😛
Esperanto?
this is cool, i love PPC arcitecture…
“The only thing you need to do” > “The only thing you need to do to win the one free evaluation evaluation board“.
I’d love to love Genesi, especially with all their offerings out there, but how they screwed over MorphOS in the past will haunt them forever.
Huh? Screwed over MorphOS?! Perhaps one or two spoiled developers, but not “MorphOS.” They still support the main support site and the only developer site: http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/01/and-winner-is.html
Rasmus
Can you provide me with any evidence that they have
“screwed over MorphOS”? Evidence from a certain web-
site with only facts from one side would definately
not work. Give me some solid evidence – court ruling,
recorded witness tapes etc.
Otherwise you should just shut your mouth.
If anyone feels “screwed” they should go through
the proper channels – file a police report and/or consult
a lawyer. Just spread FUD on webforums will definately
not help anyone.
Can you provide me with any evidence that they have
“screwed over MorphOS”? Evidence from a certain web-
site with only facts from one side would definately
not work.
morphos.org, refers to morphos.net, with the whole story.
If there’s a more official site than those, I’d be glad to hear about it.
It would be FUD of course, if they were the only ones. But they’re not talking about an isolated case, and although I wasn’t directly involved, the actions of Genesi in return seem to confirm the stated sides of the story. The OpenBSD adventure was completely seperate from the MorphOS incidents.
And yes, in an ideal world, the truth would have been found out in a court. Unfortunately for the truth, cross-national civil lawsuits are highly unprofitable for whatever side involved. It simply costs too damn much; otherwise Genesi would’ve started lible cases themselves, right? (if they really didn’t screw anyone over..)
And tell me, what would the involved individuals gain from spreading FUD about their intended platform?
Edited 2006-01-20 02:00
The ONE developer left the platform. The second one on the list has released software since the page was put up. The rest have ask to be removed or have been proven wrong publicly – Wayne Hunt right here on OSNews for example. It was a blackmail attempt and so you see the FUD did work with some.
If you know so much, how come you don’t?
The OpenBSD fiasco has been discussed hundreds of times. Go here:
http://www.phinixi.com/tiki-index.php?page=OpenBSD-Peg%20Wrap-u…
Most of us have read it two or three times. Conclusion: Theo is a jerk and there are two sides to the rest. Is something bothering you? Whose disciple are you?
Genesi did start a lawsuit and won it against Amiga Inc. who claimed MorphOS violated their IP. Genesi won. Would Genesi have done this for MorphOS if they were not worried about it?
Piss off troll!
Rasmus
Whether Theo is a jerk is not the issue? Why even bother with an ad-hominem? In any case, I do not see a motivation for theo to lie about something like this.
If it were just the matter of one developer claiming he were screwed over, then I might be hesitant to believe. However, when you have 10 developers across several projects who claim they were not paid what they were promised, it begins to raise some eyebrows.
I still have not read anything that makes Genesi’s actions understandable, much less, justifiable. Until then, I distrust them. I am not going to buy from a company that would screw over it’s own developers. Partly because a sympathasize for the affected developers, but also because giving money to such untrustworthy seems about as good of an idea as buying stereo equipment from the back of an unmarked vehicle in an urban ghetto.
If you have some links that shed light on Genesi’s innocence, I’d be glad to see them.
Bah! Just posted a link. Genesi has done plenty of good things. Just look at the Power.org thread linked from here. See any people complaining while they post?
Theophilos, #of comments…”1″
Try harder troll!
Rasmus
In any case, I do not see a motivation for theo to lie about something like this.
He didn’t necessarily lie, but he clearly made statements that either the facts didn’t bear out or that were made based on misunderstandings. Read the relevant messages at the URL posted above and come to your own conclusions. I don’t know much about the man apart from what I read related to the Pegasos OpenBSD port, but his reactions in that connection might well lead a person to think that Theo might well react strongly and quickly before getting the full story on something.
For example, it’s more than a little ironic for hundreds of developers and users around the world to read, with their Pegasos machines, Theo’s statement that “there are almost NO WORKING machines in existance”. See what I mean?
I still have not read anything that makes Genesi’s actions understandable, much less, justifiable. Until then, I distrust them.
Again, have you read through the posts on the PDC page referenced above? Note in particular the retractions.
I am not going to buy from a company that would screw over it’s own developers. Partly because a sympathasize for the affected developers . . .
Totally understandable. But keep in mind that you are apparently accepting the word of one party in a dispute at face value while assuming the worst about the other. While there is no question that Genesi has been underfunded and has had trouble meeting its obligations to people at times, it doesn’t follow that every claim against them is valid.
Publicly countering even unjustified accusations doesn’t do a company’s rep any good so i suggest you (or anyone with a real concern) contact Bill Buck directly if you want more information about these issues.
It was obvious from reading Theo’s post that he was wrong about the availability of the Genesi hardware. I am not sure when Theo posted the message, but I assumed that it was before a significant number of board were produced. My guess is that Theo assumed that Genesi was a scam company rather than just a bad company. However, what led him to this opinion: the credible claim that a developer contracted to work for Genesi was unpaid.
Regarding the retractions, I only found one regarding some false reports of sabotage. However, it only retracted those specific claims and was sure to include “This is by no means an absolvement of any other issues.” Genesi does not have to engage in sabotage to be considered untrustworthy: simply not paying their employees is enough. As far as I know, that specific claim has not been retracted by at least two people from two different projects.
Not every claim has to be true. For a company with zero street cred to screw even one person over is a clear indication that something is very wrong.
Genesi did start a lawsuit and won it against Amiga Inc. who claimed MorphOS violated their IP. Genesi won. Would Genesi have done this for MorphOS if they were not worried about it?
The lawsuit was about a contractually promised port of a piece of software called “Amiga Anywhere” (previously known as AmigaDE) to the Pegasos platform and had legally nothing to do with MorphOS whatsoever.
Dear Rasmus: Thank you for the link providing the other side of the story. But would it have killed you if you had provided the link without treating me like I kidnapped your baby?
I still don’t see the blackmail attempt however.
“I’d love to love Genesi, especially with all their offerings out there, but how they screwed over MorphOS in the past will haunt them forever.”
You mean supported MorphOS with their Pegasos Developer Program? MorphOS is still an available target platform for their Efika developer program as well?
I know hard times hit in, and there were money related or other pending issues, but the one who invested most in MorphOS development by far is still Genesi. I hope issues will be ironed out one day, but as far as I see, support is still there.
I know hard times hit in, and there were money related or other pending issues, but the one who invested most in MorphOS development by far is still Genesi.
Maybe if you only count investments that were strictly financial. If you gave a hypothetical monetary value to each of the countless work hours spent by the core development team due to their own motivation, the total sum would clearly beat whatever was directly invested into the development by others.
Edited 2006-01-20 08:24
Efika may be the hacker-dream-machine. Small, so you can carry it around. Running Linux, so you have source code of kernel, drivers and applications. Throw network at it and you can build whatever you want. From small kiosks, web terminals to micro-servers.
I think the Efika is a great design.
It will open a new market to the PPC.
– Its a complete computer which is powerfull enough
for doing serious work.
– Its small and very appealing to computer geeks.
Everybody likes those small cute devices. 😉
– In addition to this it could be sold to many
people as a tool like a video recorder or settop box.
– It could be really inexpense. Being inexpenve it will open the PPC market to many more people than the Mac or Pegasos did.
– With the Openfirmware Linux and MorphOS should easely run on it.
– MorphOS is fast amd slim. I would make a nice and fast OS for the Efika.
– No one can denie that Genesi did an excellent job in promoting the nice but niche OS MorphOS.
– The Efika could give MorphOS and even AmigaOS4 new momentum. With a low price it would be an ideal tool to run those OS.
There is a huge potential for cheap, low power computers. Today in my company a few collegues complained about that their computers are to load to view movies with them. In no time ten people talked about and they all expressed that they look for another silent computer for movies and music playing.
Cheers
Gunnar
Emil: Yeah, Maybe it was Esperanto..
I’m really looking forward to the EFIKA.
Genesi: What about an EFIKA Developer Meeting in
say.. Gothenburg?
Nice that once again there will be a developer program. Although personally, being just a consumer, I’m rather looking forward to the 4U2, i.e. a complete sub-notebook device. Would be convenient to get some stuff done on it (assuming that MorphOS will run on it) while sitting in the train to and from work.
Regarding that very old (and, to be honest, boring, since there have been no really new facts added for two years or so) discussion about Genesi <-> MorphOS at certain forums from time to time, I’d suggest to finally draw a line now and restart.
Of course I could go on myself now, mentioning that many good things Genesi achieved – not only to their customers especially regarding the free Peg1/April exchanges, but also to MorphOS by investitions, promotions and hardware supply ALSO to MorphOS developers, not just Linux ones, even during the previous two years -, but that would probably just again provoke further postings about some mistakes made by Genesi and of course the problems this startup company did have by nature.
No, my actual point is that I do not understand what those few but vocal anti-Genesi posters think to achieve by this?
Okay, there may be some really fanatical OS4 fans among them who simply want to hurt MorphOS (like I guess almost any OS does have such questionable “missionaries”, especially when it has forks of ‘brother OSs’ within its bigger family) – but I guess that quite a lot are also people who do really like and actually use MorphOS. I.e. people who are just disappointed and/or upset because the bright start MorphOS did have could not be kept at the same strength later due to financially tougher interim times for Genesi.
But especially the latter group (but also the former, since ATM MorphOS seems to be the ONLY post-Commodore AmigaOS with a slight but justified chance of commercial success) therefore would achieve nothing else than the final deathblow for MorphOS by still continueing to accuse Genesi for not supporting MorphOS (or rather: for not supporting it as much as those posting that stuff would have wished, I’d say).
I’m really noone who would praise Genesi to have always done everything right – definitely not! But what everyone has to understand, IMHO, is that Genesi seems to be the last, best chance for the Amiga operating systems to gain some momentum again (within a certain niche, of course). Of course nobody is forced to love Genesi – but why can’t the detractors, for the OS’s sake, just stay silent instead of repeating the same stuff again and again? Let’s just step back for a while and watch what happens.
Being a MorphOS fan and despite or because of this fact trying to hurt Genesi’s attempts to achieve some business opportunity for MorphOS – that’s almost as insane as the fratricidal war of AmigaOS4 fanatics attacking MorphOS: in the end there would be very likely no Amiga-like OS at all anymore (not counting a handful of AROS coders, maybe).
Thus, liking the advantages of the traditional AmigaOS, at least I personally would clearly prefer to see any Amiga-like OS to outlive – no matter in the end if it would be MorphOS, AmigaOS4, AROS or AmigaOS/AfA – instead of all of them failing due to these childish flame wars. Because then I’d have to use really “alien” operating systems instead of just a close relative of my post-Commodore AmigaOS of choice.
So, PLEASE, let’s draw a line and try a restart – ALL of us. Not for Genesi, but for the AmigaOS successors.
Nice post! Thanks, at last sanity. I am a Gentoo Developer and Genesi has done right by Gentoo donating many machines and sponsoring a number of events. I really don’t know much about Amiga or MorphOS but I am tired of the incessant trolling. Genesi has the only widely available and supported PowerPC platform in the market with the departure of Apple. We in the Gentoo PPC Team make the ODW our target, not the G5 and not the PowerBook.
Rasmus
Ah, I think I see why some people are so quick to overlook the past crimes of Genesi: they are desperately hoping that Genesi will provide them with a future for their preferred platform.
To me, forgiving Genesi because they are “the last, best chance for the Amiga operating systems to gain some momentum again” is stupid. I care very little whether the Amiga platform is revived. It is not that big of an issue to me. My criticisms for Genesi have absolutely nothing to do with OS4 or anything else.
In fact, I can appreciate some of the good things that Genesi have done. In particular, I like that they have provided hardware to Gentoo, which is my preferred Linux distro, but that does not factor into my criticism either.
Why do I not want to draw a line and restart? Why am I unwilling forget about what happened? For the simple fact that pretending it never happened shows a tacit approval for Genesi’s previous tactics and is another slap in the face for their victims, having the double humiliation of being cheated and having nobody believe them.
Genesi has a black mark on them. It has been there for two years. It is not that hard to fix it. Until they do, I do not trust them and will encourage others to do likewise. This is not about my own selfishness in wanting to revive the Amiga. It is bigger than that. If the situation were different, I would be hoping for Genesi’s success, but things are what they are.
Oh, it’s not about forgiving – as I said, Genesi did mistakes and I’m all for getting it sorted.
So pointing potential new volunteers to past experiences of other coders, employees, etc. is absolutely fine with me.
But as much as I’m not requesting anyone to forgive, I’m also not asking for a crusade by third parties (supposedly) in the name of such ‘victims’. [Remark: I’m not using the quotation marks in a way of denying that there would have been victims but just because I’ve not been a witness of those parties’ agreements with Genesi.]
I.e. I do not welcome a blackening of Genesi at places like OSNews where it might jeopardize the company’s business with other companies (since visitors from the outside of the Amiga market most likely won’t be able to judge that stuff in context and therefore might overrate it without it really being anything to worry about for them).
But I’ve zoned out already. As I said, telling individual coders about that “black mark” you’re talking about is fine with me. But since my concern indeed is MorphOS (although not in such a way that I’d forgive anything if they just save my favourite OS), I’m also saying that everyone in the Amiga market is perfectly aware of that “black mark”. Thus there is absolutely nothing new one could tell us Amiga users in this regard – there simply is noone left who would still have to be “warned”.
Therefore I’d wish everything would be kept where it belongs and where everyone is familiar with the situation to judge it within the context where it belongs. I.e. keep the Amiga stuff on the Amiga forums and don’t transfer it to general forums.
That’s what I was aiming at with ‘drawing a line’. Things would be different if there would be further “black marks” also elsewhere – but in the Linux market or with Polaris they aren’t.
So as long as Genesi doesn’t make new mistakes, I’m for giving it a rest for now – or at least keeping that more than two year old stuff at the Amiga forums where it belongs.
Edited 2006-01-20 15:24
I think your trolling is 100% FUD. You have made three posts during your entire OSNews membership and they are all in this thread, but your knowledge is slightly more aged and stinks like old cheese. You have an axe to grind and you are doing your best to create problems.
What “crimes” have Genesi committed? Name one. What do you need to “forget?” Your “black” is not mine. Were you cheated and humiliated? Come clean scumbag…
Oh yes! You are probably one of “them.” You have three fingers on each hand, eat mustard with your corn flakes and like dark damp places. You must be baaaaaad.
Rasmus