“At this point, I would recommend against anyone buying a piece of hardware from the Pegasos people because their firmware is SO BUSTED that it makes Apple roms look like hot sh**”.” These are the words of the infamous Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD founder. Theo cited problems with the BIOS of the Pegasos and other difficulties during the development of the OpenBSD port to the Pegasos platform.Theo’s two posts are here and here, Mitch B. Parker’s explanation of the overall events and the… sabotage attempts is here and Dale Rahn’s incredible story of his (unpaid) porting effort is here (Dale seems to be a good and responsible system software engineer, but out of a job because of the incidents described in his post, so if any OS/embedded/system-software companies need his services please contact him, resume here).
Another OS developer –who shall remain anonymous– had major trouble booting his OS using network, serial or floppy during the porting process. The only booting method that worked was to write the file out to the hard drive, reboot, boot from that, repeat. That was very time consuming and not a flexible/productive way to port an OS to a new platform, he told us.
Ha! Quite an interesting read, all of it. It seems SCO-like scamming companies about!
I suppose this doesn’t bode well for the future of OpenBeOS on Pegasos.
If this truly is all “smoke and mirrors” or some sort of investment scam, why have they gone through the trouble of shipping working test platforms to developers in the US?
sounds just like a shitty company that doesn’t have their act together… can anyone get this poor guy a job?
the words he says are funny. Is this article biased? It seems to have a risky investment on PPC in the first place..
i think that genesi is doing away with openfirmware and implementing thier own thing….
These are the words of the infamous Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD founder.
What made Theo infamous? Forking a BSD?
My advice is to never let a company owe you more than 2 weeks pay. Stop working and let them know that you would be happy to return once they have paid you for your hard work. Run your professional life like a business. Don’t be taken for a ride.
Think about it. If they don’t have the funds or credit to pay their employees, chances are that they have zero receivables and no real investment interest. Any financial institution would be willing to extend credit for payroll if they had some proof of incoming cash (receivables, investment, etc).
I was burned for two months salary a number of years ago, and I have friends that have been robbed of much more. Most entrepreneurs that I have met will feed you any line of bullsh*t. Don’t buy into it.
>What made Theo infamous? Forking a BSD?
No, his mouth. Sometimes I see myself in him. 😉
(I do like Theo btw)
Some say that is overly opinionated, others say he is good honest that says it like it is. Irregardless of p.o.v. Theo doesn’t always play nice with others.
Theo is not that famous, but the size of his mouth is.
What made Theo infamous? Forking a BSD?
Well, whens the last time YOU forked a BSD?
People, come on, stay on the real subject.
I’m tired of hearing people bitch and whine about how hard it is to do something–especially when it comes from the likes of Theo (and any other notoriously loud mouths).
Shit doesn’t always go according to plan, and god knows there are a lot more broken systems on the planet than this one (although I have no first hand knowledge of how “broken” this may be); that hasn’t stopped them from being supported by other projects–and even OpenBSD itself.
It’s time for Theo to stop this childish bitching just because he doesn’t like something. Grow up.
>I’m tired of hearing people bitch and whine about how hard it is to do something
Jeremy, you obviously did not read Dale’s post as linked from the article.
It’s time to stop this childish bitching just because he doesn’t like something.
Intereesting advice I guess. Perhaps you should stop bitching about this thing you don’t like ;^)
: Jeremy, you obviously did not read Dale’s post as linked from the article.
Infact I did not, but I’ve read enough rants by theo and the likes over the years to know that it’s an excuse to not do something.
Theo deRaadt’s rants are way off as usual. I have a Pegasos II G4 sitting under
my desk that I bought about a month ago. It’s working perfectly except for a mem
ory bug which is being worked on (one firmware upgrade fixed most of it, another
is coming soon). I have working DRI with my Radeon 9100 in Linux and I’ve had t
he machine running for about three days before I had to reboot. I know at least
one person who have had is machine running for a couple of weeks without running
into any problems.
All distributors should have plenty of Pegasos II boxes in their stock right now
as the latest batch was shipped a couple of weeks ago (I’ve stayed in contact w
ith the swedish distributor). As for expensive, I don’t consider ¿470 for a 1GHz
G4 that can use a standard PC graphics card expensive compared to what you have
to pay for a Mac these days. This is the biggest reason I bought a Pegasos inst
ead of a Mac as I had been looking for a G4 to run Linux on that I could afford
on my student loan.
The biggest problem with Genesi is that they spent most of their money developin
g and manufacturing the Pegasos II which is why they have trouble paying develop
ers such as Dale Rahn at this time, which is really sad.
Buy a refurbished Mac. You can get decent G3 and G4 systems cheap that way. Why pay for a G3 stuck on a five year-old PC mobo? That’s really all a Peg2 mobo is. Best of all, those old Macs are already supported by BSD/Linux/whatever.
My G3 iMac sells for around $300 refurbished. For that, you get a 450 MHz G3, ATI Rage Pro video, 2 x USB, 1 x FireWire, 1 x 10/100 ethernet, a 20G drive, a DVDROM, and a built-in 15″ monitor that looks good at 1024×768. Not a bad little machine for a Linux or BSD box.
The biggest problem with Genesi is that they spent most of their money developin
g and manufacturing the Pegasos II which is why they have trouble paying develop
ers such as Dale Rahn at this time, which is really sad.
No, the biggest problem with Genesi is that they don’t know how to run a business. Their track record with the OpenBSD fiasco proves that. No amount of excuses or wringing of hands can smooth it over.
And a whopping 3 days of uptime before needing a reboot? Sounds pretty damn broken to me.
Paying an employee with an uncovered, backdated check goes a little further than “not knowing how to run a business”. In some jurisdictions, that’s fraud.
If that’s how they treat their employees, imagine what they do with their customers.
Damn straight. I’m surprised that Dale hasn’t aquired himself a lawyer and filed suit against these knuckleheads. I’m sure that pay can be docked from someone’s salary.
Maybe they are simply having issues with their “new” product, give ’em a break. I don’t plan to buy one, and to the G3 guy above the Pegasos boards support G4’s last I read.
I’d like to see a company like VIA or nvidia create a new chipset for G5 and bring G5 to the more *open* market. Not really open, but multiple distributers can compete on components is what I mean.
Found here: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=108027872117087&w=2
“There were also sabotage attempts made on the CrunchBox itself, including a logic bomb within the code, and a concerted reverse-engineering attempt on the Pegasos-based Crunchbox.”
Another interesting peak at the ethos of the company.
Is there anything they can do to get the pay back? Like contact the Better Business Bureau? Surely this company can’t get away with not paying this guy his full funds.
I was planning to buy one of these boards when I got the chance, so I could do a little bit of PowerPC operating system programing, but I think I’ll pass now. Does any one know of any one else that make semi-affordable PowerPC motherboards? The only other one I can thing of are those TeronCX/PX boards, but they’re evaluation boards that start are nearly $4000 for one board. I was planning to get a new Mac this summer any way, so I guess I’ll wait until then and retire my G3 iMac to a deveopment machine.
Instead of complaining about Pegasos, the OpenBSD team could try to improve the performance of their OS on the available platforms. I still remember the scalability tests in which OpenBSD failed miserably compared to other free operating systems. So, Theo, stop running your mouth and take care of the problems that have plagued your product for years. Of course, I should mention that I am unable to write an OS myself.
Wasn’t that the guy who made a long and gratuitous rant against Sun, for not giving him the specs for a certain server? I think the problem was that Sun offered the specs, under the condition that Theo signs a NDA.
That’s because OpenBSD’s focus is on correctness and security, rather than scalability and performance.
That’s because OpenBSD’s focus is on correctness and security, rather than scalability and performance.
Seriously, I don’t know why they couldn’t at least aim to do both. I’m sure they do to some extent, but if they ignore one for too long because they care most for the other, they will lose out in the long run.
The recently exposed performance issues aside (the worst of which I know are being worked on), OpenBSD contains some very high quality code.
@mario: One of OpenBSD’s main focuses is being open. An NDA would limit that open-ness. How could a new developer learn about the system if Theo can’t pass on the documents to him? How could I sit at home and hack around with the source if I don’t have access to those documents?
Over all, my biggest problem with this is the underhanded attempts at screwing with peoples’ lives. I can deal with a broken architecture (they’re new, they’ll get it right if they last long enough). But with sabatoge, and past dated checks that would have bounced, and any other crap I didn’t mention (not the NDA crap) I don’t have the safe “this company will be around to support their products for a while” feeling.
Would I buy one even though it won’t be supported by OpenBSD? Yeah, if the company didn’t make itself out to be a bunch of crooks.
Seriously, I don’t know why they couldn’t at least aim to do both. I’m sure they do to some extent, but if they ignore one for too long because they care most for the other, they will lose out in the long run.
A possible reason might be limited resources. Besides that, there is a trade off between scalability/performance versus security/correctness. The OpenBSD development team try as much as possible to focus on the correct way of approaching solutions to problems, rather than providing short term ‘hacks’ or temporary remedies.
Frankly, that approach turns off the predominant population of coders who lack pristine coding practices, etiquettes and principles. Again, the project has its priorities. I doubt scalability and performance are on the top of its list, though.
Personally, I’m willing to sacrifice scalability/performance for security/correctness, all things being equal. So OpenBSD’s abysmal scalability/performance record hardly bothers me.
{digging deep into my memory banks…} Weren’t the folks at Terra
Soft Solutions gonna sell machines with these boards in them, but
then backed out soon thereafter?.. {darn, memory banks are sketchy}
Eyetech sells the AmigaOne boards… this is a G3 or G4 system that ships with Linux right now, with AmigaOS 4 to come later this year.
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/search.php?SearchStr=&SearchCat=AMA1
Not many PPC board makers out there…
Axel Dorfler mentioned the ugly Pegasos firmware on OpenBeOS mailing list this month… So Theo is not alone. It must really be that bad.
Does any one know of any one else that make semi-affordable PowerPC motherboards? The only other one I can thing of are those TeronCX/PX boards, but they’re evaluation boards that start are nearly $4000 for one board.
There is Eyetech, currently selling A1 for less than 800 Euros. http://www.eyetech.co.uk
Oh this are soooo bad news. I hope they’re able to clear this situation up. It’s just that I WANT to believe in Genesi. It would be a real pity seeing this this company vanishing in a puff of incompetence like all the Amiga endeavours did.
The NDA issues were to be expected when dealing with OpenSource efforts. Of course, Genesi has to find a solution here, because I suppose problems like this will just keep reappearing. OTOH the really bad thing is Genesis seeming inability to pay their employees. Very bad news indeed.
“Wasn’t that the guy who made a long and gratuitous rant against Sun, for not giving him the specs for a certain server? I think the problem was that Sun offered the specs, under the condition that Theo signs a NDA.”
Sounds like the guy. The problem about the NDA is that once Theo has seen the specs, he can’t then go ahead and use them to write the relevant patches to OpenBSD, because OpenBSD is available under the BSD license, thus the NDA and the license are in conflict.
I’ve had a discussion with Theo on porting the TenDRA C Compiler – BSD license – to OpenBSD, and ended it when I thought it might otherwise get out of hand. I admire the guy though – being irascible is usually a sign that you can’t get anyone else to do anything useful, and he’s managed to keep his entire OpenBSD team – volunteers – going for at least ten years.
Yep, the mould was definitely broken for him!
This story is a bit more complicated than the information posted here.
1. RE: TheoBSD
a. Genesi could not provide the information requested by OpenBSD without violating a confidentiality agreement with one of our suppliers, Marvell. We attempted to work around this in a number of ways. Ultimately, Marvell had no confidence in this operating system community.
b. Genesi could not afford to maintain the services of the OpenBSD consulting expert referenced at the rate of $5000/month. After the first month’s full payment that was nearly two months late, we made further small partial and delayed payments. We had a major unexpected cash flow problem within the first month of the consultant’s involvement. We did the best we could and have kept the consultant informed on what was possible. Any commitments made from our side will be honored when they can be. We have derived no benefit from any of the effort made and do not intend to until this matter with the consultant is resolved.
c. In the meanwhile, and unfortunately, we discovered as so often with many of the interesting and promising operating systems featured here that there was a lack of significant market interest in the OpenBSD Operating System as it related to the PegasosPPC or the PowerPC in general. Generally, in the institutional market, OpenBSD and particularly Theo is seen as a renegade and a pirate. “Security” and a lack of respect for the IP of others do not go together. As promising as it all sounded in the beginning this is what prevented the real success at the end. There is a tremendous amount of money being spent in the name of Homeland Security today and there is one important part of that Homeland that will not deal with Theo de Raadt under any circumstances.
Frankly, all these matters were compounded by the personality of Theo de Raadt. They could have been managed. When the situation reached a critical point in the discussions between the consultant and Genesi, Theo injected himself in the discussion, by sending insulting and threatening emails on the level of twelve year old with a temper-tantrum. Theo’s “contribution” was to poison any chance there might have been to come to a different resolution. He refused to acknowledge the need for Genesi to comply with a confidentiality agreement and appeared indifferent to the need to protect intellectual property. As a result of Theo’s intervention and the issues discussed above, Genesi decided that, even when times improve, we would not be interested in being involved with any project headed by Theo de Raadt.
Conclusion: See what happens with time.
2. RE: the rest and the firmware, etc.
We are not Apple, nor a participant in the the even more impressive wintel world. What we are is everything in one package that can be defined and referenced. We are an enabler to two fairly large companies that make the PowerPC and a systems integrator. Does the “Linux Desktop to Grid Computing” make much sense without a PowerPC in the equation (excepting maybe a management CPU on a server) and/or what value are tools that have to emulate a PowerPC environment to work on a PC while targeted for a PowerPC environment? There is a missing link. We think we are on to something. We have introduced a few firmware upgrades and we will continue to do so. We have a couple thousand happy developers and users. We are progressing and doing our best to deal with all the challenges of a developing business. Soon we will have it *all* sorted out and we will publish the Open Power Architecture. With OPA these kinds of integration problems will be less likely and IP terrorism will no longer be necessary.
Conclusion: none yet, excepting there are always a bumps on the route less taken.
R&B
[email protected]
On this ShopIP product page, they are making a big thing out of the combination of OpenBSD with Gigabit ethernet.
http://shopip.com/products_and_services/GE.html
One can see why the Marvell NDA caused a problem. Is there an alternative chip without an NDA that could be used?
@bbrv:
re: your cash flow problems… Did you make “small partial and delayed payments” to your lawyers and accountants too? I highly doubt it.
General:
Theo may have a big mouth and yes he may be a bit childish at times… but the guy has INTEGRITY. In this sell-out-for-buck world that means something to me anyway. He’s probably also one of the brightest computer scientists on the planet. Mozart wasn’t that well liked by his contemporaries either… but there is no disputing that he was a musical genius. Think about it.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
– Robertson Davies
IBM is looking for PowerPC partners http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14876
Charly
“Mozart wasn’t that well liked by his contemporaries either… but there is no disputing that he was a musical genius. ”
Not a good example. Mozart was very popular and had plenty of friends and admirers, especially among musicians, singers, and masons. Haydn, the other great composer of the day, liked and respected Mozart, and the feelings were reciprocated.
Harry Partch would be a better example, IMO.
So you pass bad checks? Nice…
Don’t blame this all on Theo. Between buggy firmware (we are seeing this all over the place) and your “cash flow problems,” how are users supposed to trust in your company? How do I know that if I buy x number of boards, they’ll be supported tomorrow? Next week? In 3 years?
> We have introduced a few firmware upgrades and we will continue to do so.
Where ? I did not see anything…
It seems that new pegasosII contain an upgraded firmware but what about existing Peg1&Peg2 users ?
“Theo is seen as a renegade and a pirate.”
“There is a tremendous amount of money being spent in the name of Homeland Security today and there is one important part of that Homeland that will not deal with Theo de Raadt under any circumstances.”
“After the first month’s full payment that was nearly two months late, we made further small partial and delayed payments.”
It seems you have lost your credibility. I put the blame on you where it belongs.
The bottom line is, Theo is an abrasive a$$.
The fact that a majority of the comments on this subject keep falling back to that point speaks loads.
OpenBSD would be better off in the long run without him. Period.
I think Theo de Raadt and Matt Dillon are very much alike in the BSD community.
Radical, highly talented programmers that are willing to fork over a dispute in the direction of their work.
Theo was one of the founders of NetBSD, but due to several issues, including him wanting to make sure NetBSD was secure and coded properly and the head of the core team at the time thinking he was an ass and giving the NetBSD project a bad name by telling newbies to read man pages and faqs rather than ask the same damned questions all the time. So they cut off his access to the source. That’s why OpenBSD has no core, there is Theo as the head and everyone else just needs to prove themselves to get commit privileges.
Though Matt parted ways with FreeBSD on better terms, I see the two as very similar.
What does this mean
a. Genesi could not provide the information requested by OpenBSD without violating a confidentiality agreement with one of our suppliers, Marvell.
You should have taken all informations before launching yourself in another adventure…not good for a person graduated from West Point.
We did the best we could and have kept the consultant informed on what was possible.
Like paying people with backdated checks? Here in Italy this means instant jail..Bad, very bad.
c. In the meanwhile, and unfortunately, we discovered as so often with many of the interesting and promising operating systems featured here that there was a lack of significant market interest in the OpenBSD Operating System as it related to the PegasosPPC or the PowerPC in general.
Ah, this is your definition of the whole ShopIP scam? Perhaps you should have asked Nolan&Norton or another more professional IT consulting firm instead of asking PriceWaterhouse’s (an accounting firm, now). 🙂
Generally, in the institutional market, OpenBSD and particularly Theo is seen as a renegade and a pirate. “Security” and a lack of respect for the IP of others do not go together.
Oh, I know many many banks using OpenBSD for their daily activities…they consider Theo’s talking style the unavoidable trade-off for such a good product.
Frankly, all these matters were compounded by the personality of Theo de Raadt.
Have you learned West Point’s lesson about knowing your objectives before engaging them?
Theo injected himself in the discussion, by sending insulting and threatening emails on the level of twelve year old with a temper-tantrum.
Sorry pals, you’ve scammed the OpenBSD boss with a faulty hardware. He’s the kind of person who doesn’t like such treatments. 🙁
He refused to acknowledge the need for Genesi to comply with a confidentiality agreement and appeared indifferent to the need to protect intellectual property.
Well, haven’t you give a look to the OpenBSD site before starting this business with them? Over there is clearly stated that hardware with NDA will never-ever be supported.
we would not be interested in being involved with any project headed by Theo de Raadt.
Too late. Now for the whole Open Source community is Theo who wants to not be involved in any project headed by you.
We are an enabler to two fairly large companies that make the PowerPC and a systems integrator.
A marketing-way to say that you’re a customer of both IBM and Motorola. 😛
> And a whopping 3 days of uptime before needing a reboot? Sounds pretty damn broken to me.
Try that on Windows!!!!
>> And a whopping 3 days of uptime before needing a reboot? Sounds pretty damn broken to me.
>Try that on Windows!!!!
Well, my XP can resist at least 5-6 days before rebooting 😉
Hey, is it OpenBSD’s fault that the Pegasos product is plastered with ‘Open Platform’ left right and centre.
That is until you ask a question, then its NDA time.
Get Real.
AdmV
Ah ah, that’s upper-case Open. Which means ‘anyone can look, but you can’t tell anyone.’ It’s like free and Free, only in reverse.
*sigh*
It’s a shame. I was really starting to like Genesi until this. Was hoping to make my next computer a PegasosPPC-based one. Not any more.
I’m sorry but the Pegasos makers must be really out of the loop, how did they expect an open operating system to ever protect IP (*ESPECIALLY* considering the whole OSS attitude towards IP?). Did they want a a binary version of OpenBSD? Did they not know *ANYTHING* about Theo? I think these guys thoguht “Hey, this could be k3wL!” and really didn’t think about it. I don’t know about the quality of their product but I’ll never touch it… thumbs down to them for being stupid! Really that line about respecint IP in OSS == Clueless.
I still remember the scalability tests in which OpenBSD failed miserably compared to other free operating systems
Markus Friedl and others fixed a bunch of bottlenecks; OpenBSD 3.5 is a lot faster under heavy network socket loads.
I’ve had a discussion with Theo on porting the TenDRA C Compiler – BSD license – to OpenBSD, and ended it when I thought it might otherwise get out of hand.
I’m not sure what you mean here … “out of hand”? Thierry Deval and I ported TenDRA over (ports/lang/tendra), and it wasn’t too hard. It’s temporarily broken in 3.5, but will be fixed immediately after the tree unlocks with a small patch to sys/cdefs.h. If you feel like bootstrapping it on architectures other than x86, then do so and get in touch with me.
There is a tremendous amount of money being spent in the name of Homeland Security today and there is one important part of that Homeland that will not deal with Theo de Raadt under any circumstances.
*cough* bullshit. I work in this area (since pre-9/11) and I have never had this so-called problem. Oh and BTW the sales cycle for homeland security wouldn’t work for you guys, its usually at least 4-8 years. Many of the me-too vendors have only realized this fact now, and I see lots of them going out of business – usually trampling people in the process in some last desperate attempts to make some money. Ofcourse, its the end user/citizen that gets burned by this, since tax dollars are wasted on crap.
Genesi could not afford to maintain the services of the OpenBSD consulting expert referenced at the rate of $5000/month. … Any commitments made from our side will be honored when they can be.
Remind me never to do business with your company, based on what you and others have said. Let me guess, the guy kept working and he was never informed that he may never get paid. The good old squeeze them for every dime — they don’t have enough money to hire a personal lawyer to sue us — trick. ‘Homored when they can be’? That’s some of the sleaziest commentary I’ve seen in a long time. Are other employees treated with the same respect?
Jeremy Tregunna may as well change his name to Michael Fay ’cause he’s had a royal caning!
Genesi is in a market that has hardly opened yet, but which has good potential. When the cash starts flowing, there is no doubt in my mind everyone will get what they are owed.
It is unfortunate that Genesi will be hurt by the rantings of one little man with a chip on his shoulder. If anything, this article has guarenteed that I will not use OpenBSD.
I have learned much about Genesi since I heard of them in this article. I am in the market for a PPC based board/system and will keep an eye on this company for the next few months.
Are the
– Teron boards Terra Soft was going to sell,
– AmigaOne boards sold by Eyetech
– Pegasos/Genesi boards
all the same mobos? Do they differ in their ROM’s?
(Also — Neat! A preview button!
I think the AmigaOne boards are based on the Teron boards, but I think the PegasOS is a completly differt thing.
It is unfortunate that Genesi will be hurt by the rantings of one little man with a chip on his shoulder. If anything, this article has guarenteed that I will not use OpenBSD.
Theo is hardly one little man, and has done much to advance both the security of free systems, as well as to advance free software itself. He is stubborn, and quite often rude, but he’s done more productive work than many of the people who only come here to bitch (I do admit that bitching can be fun sometimes if not overly productive).
If this silly little article all on its own is the sole reason that you’d never use OpenBSD (there are much better reasons, like the current lack of kernel threading or SMP) then you’re avoiding a very decent OS for a pretty dumb reason. From everything I’ve read, it’s the Pegasos people that are the problem, not Theo.
Sooner or later people will realize AmigaOS/MorphOS/AmigaInc/KMOS/Genesi/MorphOS/PegasosPPC/whatever is all just a shell game. The platform was dead years ago. PPC itself is smoke and mirrors. It is not a good desktop chip, especially considering there really is only one vendor, Apple, that uses PPC in working systems. Why base a new architecture on a chip that has a tiny share of the market. Why go through all the pain of writing everything all again for PPC? It just doesn’t make sense. UNLESS you are running a scam.
I will be glad to see the world rid of Genesi/Pegasos and their lying co-cult-leaders. Their operation has stunk since day one and it is absolutely no surprise to see the maze of lies that is behind their cult.
From what I’ve read, while looking for a PowerPC motherboards, it seems like that Mai Logic has no plans to really sell the Teron boards to people like me, but instead Eyetech is selling them as the AmigaOne, and at one point Terrasoft was going to sell them for use with YellowDog Linux. The AmigaOne boards seem to be priced slightly higher than an equivilant Mac, and Terrasoft doesn’t show any signs of reversing their decision not to sell Teron boards. Other than these companies, is anyone else selling Teron boards? It’s a shame Terrasoft decided no to sell their own PowerPC boxes, it might have started a new market of PPC linux boxes.
1) I think the Pegasos itself is a nice piece of hardware. I have the Pegasos I running without any problems over here.
2) Its firmware, however, is really bad when you compare it with the OpenFirmware standard it claims to comply with, there is a lot of stuff missing (like support for onboard devices, be it the floppy disk or the networking chip), but
3) it basically works. That is, it initializes the machine, and can boot an operating system.
This is why the OpenBeOS port is not yet complete; the Pegasos makes OS development pretty uncomfortable. It’s much easier to just port a complete system over to it, though, and that’s why the x86 and Apple ports will be finished first – the Pegasos is a creative mix out of both platforms, so it’ll be easy to get it to run once we have all the pieces together.
With a better firmware, the Pegasos would be perfect for OS development IMO. I would think that the AmigaOne (which is practically the same as the Teron boards) could be a great alternative, too.
It is not a good desktop chip, especially considering there really is only one vendor, Apple, that uses PPC in working systems.
Just that only one big company uses it doesn’t change the value of the product – many years ago Linux wasn’t used in much, but the value was still there.
Why base a new architecture on a chip that has a tiny share of the market. Why go through all the pain of writing everything all again for PPC?
I cannot comment on the Pegasos. But you did bring AmigaOS into it and remember that AmigaOS isn’t a new architecture – and Amigas have had PPCs for many years now – it was the obvious route to go.
UNLESS you are running a scam
If I was running a scam like that, I’d probably use x86 hardware instead of trying to design my own stuff… (but thats not saying that I approve of Genesi in a any way!)
I agree with your post entirely. The language in my previous post was probably a reaction to the harsh words in the posts before. I do not know theo, nor have I ever spoken to him.
Speaking negativly about this board on the word of one man, (or one organization) who is bitching because of a bad business deal seems foolish. Genesi is obviously having financial problems, when staring a company tough choices need to be made. It is unfortunate.
As for the NDA, I dont see how they have any control over that other than to change the chip they are using.. I can’t say if that is an option or not.
On another subject, I am curious as to why Genesi did not work with NetBSD, who may have more experience in porting to alternate architectures. Did the name “OpenBSD” appeal to their sense of openness?
Speaking negativly about this board on the word of one man, (or one organization) who is bitching because of a bad business deal seems foolish. Genesi is obviously having financial problems, when staring a company tough choices need to be made.
There are a couple of ironic matters you need to note.
(1) Genesi is not bbrv’s first company; he led another (Viscorp), which died after similar “financial troubles” related to the Amiga.
http://amiga.emugaming.com/visglory.html
(2) For a company that is low on cash, Genesi has spent mucho denaro on lawyers, trying to drive one of their competitors (Amiga, Inc) into bankruptcy. Amiga, Inc hadn’t money to pay ITS lawyers, and so it looked like Genesi was going to get a free hand and win, until a recent resurgence of Amiga, Inc
http://www.mindrelease.net/amiga-thendic/ (entire webpage)
(3) What tops the cake is that part of Amiga, Inc’s renewed complaint to the judge’s ruling, is that they have been unable to fulfill their contractual obligations because Genesi won’t provide specs — kind of like what Theo is claiming.
http://www.mindrelease.net/amiga-thendic/ (see last few documents submitted by Amiga, Inc)
So, to you it looks like the complaints of one man (organization), and that’s understandable if you’re new to this. To others of us, this is absolutely NOTHING NEW when it comes to bbrv. I’m sure bbrv had good intentions in the long run, but since he’s American I’m sure he’ll remember our proverb about good intentions, and perhaps the next time he starts a business, he will act in a more chastened manner.
As for me, I’m remembering a proverb we Amiga fans exchange among each other, “Break out the popcorn.”
Hi, Jack. We do not know you, but here is a Proverb for you:
“Speak up and judge fairly”
You got the first part right, but you left out a few details in reaching your conclusions…
1. We were shareholders in VisCorp and I was the CEO. We left VisCorp after the attempted Amiga acquisition, which the Board of Directors denied in the end. The Company continued for years after our departure and the attempted acquisition.
2. Our total cost for nearly a year and a half of litigation are less than $10000, because we did most of the research and work ourselves. We made a partial payment to our legal counsel recently as we have to everyone that is involved in this effort. In any case as the ruling has shown we were correct and only trying to enforce an agreement made by both parties. It is unfortunate we had to resort to such measures, but it became necessary as a result of Amiga Inc.’s failure not ours.
3. The Amiga Inc. situation has absolutely nothing to do with this one. As you will note from the Court Order, Amiga Inc. is required to deliver sources, etc. to us. BTW, did you read the latest filings. That might shed some more light on the situation for you.
The only thing that is not new here are the typical detractors like you who usually shoot off their mouth before they understand or even know the facts.
R&B
Hey! Someone had to say it ;D
BBRV: Fix this shiet, we need you
The people who got burned by Pegasos have mostly their own clueless behavior to blame. If you work for somebody for more than a month, you have a contract. The contract should specify payment not less than monthly. If they miss a payment, you send them a letter (certified mail) stating that they owe you money, referring to the contract, and stating that if they don’t pay up, you will take legal action to compel payment of the debt. Then, they either pay, or you take them to small claims court. You don’t go on working for them unless you are a complete idiot. And as for accepting a check without looking at the date on it … words fail me. I’d never hire a guy as dumb as this.
The root of this whole ruckus now, the root, not the entirety of it, is that late last year Genesi started to have some cash flow problems. They cut back on personnel, and some of the personnel getting cut back understandably got mad, and some went public with it. I understand that Genesi made partial payments and severance payments in some of the cases, and that they intend to settle up as their finances permit. This is not something nice for them to do, this is their minimal obligation.
Dale Rahn says: “I received a simple reply that was an acceptance of my resignation, and a statement that ‘We will make every effort to pay you for the services you have provided over the past several months.'”
The firmware complaints and Gigabit Ethernet NDA complaints and so on are things that would have worked themselves out in my judgement, if Genesi was still able to pony up the cash. Because they aren’t able to you the problems are magnified and you get this righteous anger from Theo de Raadt who is no doubt going on the attack to avenge his man Rahn, he calls Pegasos “SLOW” and the firmware “BUSTED” and tries to damage the reputation of Genesi, but this doesn’t move anything in a positive direction and it sure as heck doesn’t get Dale Rahn’s backpay issues handled quicker.
On the margins we have an non-specific accusation from Mitch B. Parker that a “logic bomb” was inserted in the code for the Pegasos-based Crunchbox. This is a loaded, incredible accusation and he really needs to provide some details to back it up. I have gotten to know the core Genesi coders as well as any long-time IRC and forum participant can (in addition to meeting some of them personally at conventions) and I simply don’t believe this. So far, as near as I can determine, Mitch B. Parker is the only person to have made this accusation. It occurred amidst a piling-on of criticism that apparently began with Theo de Raadt’s diatribe.
The more credible charge is from Dale Rahn that he was handed a bad check. Dale says the check was dated 12/11/01, this might indicate bad intentions, but it might have been accidental. In a hurry I myself have written last year on a check, or the year before last.
In summary this is a low point for Pegasos users and believers in this alternative, low wattage, modern computing platform, and it is a bad time personally for Dale Rahn who didn’t get paid on time, resigned, and probably hasn’t yet been settled up with, but it is not the end of the world for anybody.
It is not even the end of the road for OpenBSD on Pegasos; they say it will be supported through v. 3.5, then dropped, but who know what the futue holds. Genesi is taking some hits, metaphorically the starship has lost warp-drive but it is still running on impulse power, the OpenBSD initiative went haywire but there is no indication that the cash flow problem has impacted the core Genesi coders and engineers . Hopefully in a year we’ll look back on this and be able to put it in context.
This happens for all AMIGA companies. Stay away from AMIGA. Read my comments here http://www.flyingmice.com/cgi-bin/squidcgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand…
The only thing that is not new here are the typical detractors like you who usually shoot off their mouth before they understand or even know the facts.
I don’t see a single fact I’ve misstated; you haven’t said a single thing to contradict what I’ve written. Everything you wrote agrees with what I wrote — “less than $10000” is still mucho denaro.
Hi, Jack. We do not know you
Whether you know me or not is immaterial to the facts, and I fail to see whether “who I am” enters into the equation.
I just read an article on /. about LinuxBIOS.
Why doesn’t someone port this BIOS to the Pegasos I & II boards and be done with it?
Since I was dealing directly with our OpenBSD Consultant in his relationship with Genesi, I want to provide the rest of the story. This will be presented in two posts, because of the character limitation of an individual post.
Our OpenBSD Consultant was brought on board to port OpenBSD as part of a plan to develop the Guardian in partnership with ShopIP and Diginexus. We worked towards this goal and ultimately displayed two Guardian products at the Information Security Show in New York City in early December 2003. At that point several things began to unravel.
1. Genesi uncovered information regarding ShopIP. I had met with John Johnson of ShopIP to outline the terms of a business arrangement prior to the InfoSec show and on December 7, 2003, proposed a letter of intent regarding that relationship. That letter included the terms he requested in our earlier meetings.
During the InfoSec show, we discovered three things that were of concern: 1) there were questions about whether ShopIP actually owned the IP that they were trying to sell to us; 2) ShopIP was only three months old as a corporation and was talking about 5 years of development expenses; and 3) we received unconfirmed information that some members of ShopIP had criminal convictions not related to computer hacking. I posed these questions directly to John Johnson after the show and told him we needed clarification on these matters before we could proceed. I presented a series of due diligence questions to ShopIP on December 22, 2003. John Johnson’s immediate response was that he would get me the necessary information as soon as possible. Then he wanted to only provide some of the information. I told him that the three questions noted above were the most critical. He said he would get me something soon. Instead, he simply asked for an immediate payment of over $2,000,000 for the Crunchbox, followed six months later by another $2,000,000 payment. This was so absurd and beyond the terms of any prior discussions that, on January 22, 2004, after receiving NO information from ShopIP about the any subject whatsoever, I told him that Genesi was no longer interested in pursuing an arrangement with ShopIP.
Mitch Parker of Diginexus was aware of the reasons for the breakdown in discussions with ShopIP because I told him of them in telephone calls. When the talks broke down between Genesi and ShopIP, Mitch told me that, because ShopIP had a product and Genesi did not, he would continue in his association with ShopIP. He also told me if we ultimately developed the Guardian, to let him know and he would consider representing that product.
Perhaps Diginexus has information about ShopIP not available to Genesi. Based upon the information available (or, rather unavailable) to Genesi, we simply did not feel comfortable in entering into a relationship with a company of questionable background (ShopIP), especially when the product was a network SECURITY product.
No one associated with Genesi did any programming on the features of the Crunchbox. Someone has made an absurd assertion that we attempted to sabotage the Crunchbox with a logic bomb. Not only is it untrue, it makes no sense. Think about it – if Genesi intended to include the functionality of the Crunchbox in it Guardian product, why would it ever want to sabotage the code?
Paul Adams
Chief Operating Officer
Genesi USA
Part 2
2. Genesi experienced a severe and continuing cash flow problem, due to a variety of reasons. December paychecks were issued in anticipation of a wire that never hit the accounts. Normally, I wired money directly to everyone’s account as soon as funds were available. Because I was in NYC and could not perform the wire, I issued and FedEx’d the checks in anticipation of the wire. One check was written with the incorrect date, it was a mistake and explained as a mistake at the time. We have been struggling ever since to keep moving forward under difficult financial situations.
Our OpenBSD Consultant was obviously aware of this situation. He communicated with me about his pay status on a regular basis. I explained the situation to him and others on many occasions both verbally and in emails. Other explanations came from Raquel & Bill. Despite making many threats to walk (the first one in an email dated December 23, 2003), our OpenBSD Consultant stayed on and continued to work on the OpenBSD port.
Early on, our OpenBSD Consultant informed us that he needed information to develop certain drivers needed to have OpenBSD support of the 1 Gigabit Ethernet port on the Pegasos II. Our OpenBSD Consultant completed the port of OpenBSD to the Pegasos II on February 4, 2004 and he informed Genesi that he could not proceed further without the information he had requested regarding the Gigabit Ethernet port. We had been working to try to find a way to get him that information since early January. Unfortunately, it was covered by a non-disclosure agreement with Marvell and we were told we could not release that information to him. So, Genesi was in a bind; we could not complete the OpenBSD functionality needed for the Guardian without violating our confidentiality agreement with Marvell. From February 4th on, there was nothing our OpenBSD Consultant could do to help Genesi and nothing we could do to get the information our OpenBSD Consultant needed to proceed.
The plan had been to convert Genesi consultants to employee status in January 2004. This conversion was necessary to enable a medical insurance plan. I personally negotiated with the insurance carrier. Because the consultants are scattered around the US, we could only find two carriers even interested in delivering a quotation. Those quotations came in too late to put any insurance in effect by February 1st. I obtained the necessary forms from a selected carrier on February 6th and passed them out to all the consultants to be covered. I needed the forms back by late in the month to complete the corporate application in time for a March 1st deadline. No one returned the forms in time, despite repeated reminders. Our OpenBSD Consultant did not return his until February 24th, which was too late to complete the corporate application and obtain coverage on March 1st. If benefits were so important, why did people not return forms in a timely manner? I am an uninsured diabetic with two artificial knees and probably want coverage more than anyone. This was not a scam, but a paperwork problem and the person complaining about lack of benefits did not even send back the paperwork in a timely manner.
Our OpenBSD Consultant ultimately sent a resignation email on March 1, 2004. I responded that I understood his decision and accepted his resignation with regret. My hope was that we could part on civil terms and, if the financial situation changed, we could rekindle the relationship. Then Theo de Raadt decided to interject himself into the discussion.
Theo had received a FREE Pegasos G3 from the original production run, for him to use to test OpenBSD. His board had the initial openfirmware problems associated with the first production run and he was not aware of the need to flash the bios before using the board. As a result, he rendered the board inoperable. Not his fault, ours. He was immediately sent a second FREE board with the upgraded bios. His initial dissatisfaction with the Pegasos was related to the first board, he made no negative comments after receiving the second board. Theo was not scammed with a bad board, he did not pay for it. He experienced a problem which was unfortunate and almost immediately repaired. Our OpenBSD Consultant informed us that he NEVER paid for any equipment, he will only work on a platform if he is given free equipment.
Our OpenBSD Consultant had told us that Theo made his living selling OpenBSD and related products and did not compensate those members of the OpenBSD developer team that contributed to the code base. I thought Theo would have been interested in working out an arrangement whereby Genesi could reach a level of financial stability to at least be able to pay our OpenBSD Consultant for the services rendered. That was not to be the case. Once I started communicating with our OpenBSD Consultant about his resignation, Theo informed me that he would not return the broken board because he was holding it as part of our OpenBSD Consultant’s unpaid compensation. We exchanged a couple of emails wherein he appeared to be more interested in sending insults than in finding a way to resolve the situation. I decided that it would not be productive to continue to have a dialogue with him. His most recent email to me was so insulting and threatening that Genesi made a decision that we would never develop a product using OpenBSD as long as Theo was the project head. He is much to unstable and irrational for any business to risk introducing a commercial product based upon his efforts.
I have been associated with Genesi since December 2002. Genesi is not a sham company, but rather a struggling new company trying to introduce a new product into a difficult market place. We have introduced a mainboard, a bios and an operating system. What other company has attempted to introduce such a complex product in recent years? While everything may not mesh perfectly, it all works and is being steadily improved.
Those with an open mind who have used the product know it is magnificent. We have problems to resolve and have made mistakes, but have never done anything malicious to anyone.
Genesi will succeed and, ultimately, we will pay those who are owed money for services rendered to us. I have never been in a situation where people did not get paid and this situation will be no different. It may take time, but it will happen.
I do not intend to engage in extensive dialogue on these matters on various lists, nor do I intend to provide further details of the Genesi corporate situation. There are two sides to every story and this is the Genesi side.
Paul Adams
Chief Operating Officer
Genesi USA
Perhaps that’d enable OpenBSD to be ported easier – I don’t know anything about LinuxBIOS so I cannot comment on that. But what I can say is that at the moment to only real reason to buy a Pegasos is to run MorphOS, and I’d guess that replacing the firmware would stop MOS from running.
You seem to be a more rational person than bbrv.
“we received unconfirmed information that some members of ShopIP had criminal convictions not related to computer hacking.”
Unconfirmed, yet you also told this “unconfirmed information” to Mitch Parker, who then proceeded to select ShopIP over you – and you wonder why?
Your post was very interesting and illuminating, thanks for sharing. However,
Genesi is not a sham company, but rather a struggling new company trying to introduce a new product into a difficult market place. We have introduced a mainboard, a bios and an operating system. What other company has attempted to introduce such a complex product in recent years?
As a matter of fact, two companies come immediately to mind: Amiga, Inc, and Apple. Don’t expect us to feel sorry for you. When you have a working product that performs as advertised, you earn the trust of a loyal userbase — see Apple’s OSX. Otherwise… see Amiga, Inc
How is it that you accept a persons resignation as of a specific date and then 3 weeks later decide to detect 3 weeks from their pay? The acceptance of my resignation would appear to me to be the completion/acceptance of the employment term.
While I recommended that boards be supplied I do not have any legal obligations with Theo and should not be held repsonsable for boards you sent directly to him.
Is this nearing the point where I need to post all correspondance and contact lawyers to obtain what I am due?
Dale
Didn’t they ask ShopIP for a clarification on this matter and they never got it? And they told this to someon else. How is that slander?
> Jack Perry
“Our total cost for nearly a year and a half of litigation are less than $10000”
And you thinkg that is a lot? How much does one developer cost for the same period?
Amiga and macintosh are not old platforms?
> Dale Rahn
I’ve done consulting myself and I _never_ expected to be paid for work I didn’t do. If the contract was for 2 months to implement A, I never imagined I’d be paid for 2 months work if it only took 1 month to complete.
It seems to me that Genesi is giving the most professional and unemotional explanation of the situation. Others are just running their mouths without actually knowing anything and others are just letting off some steam.
Maybe is the time for Open Hardware ?
Let’s adopt it !
Just so it’s clear, I didn’t accuse Genesi of slander, nor do I say they aren’t being slandered; all I said is that this story with bbrv is not new.
As for $10000, even if I were to take his word at that — (1) The research and time that went into it costs, even if Mr. Buck did it himself. “Time is money,” and that’s time he could well have spent on doing something more productive, especially if you read the court documents — which despite his protestations, do not paint such a pretty picture of his “research” abilities, considering for example the gaffe of submitting as evidence an email that he should have known was forged. (Read the documents — I’m just repeating what’s there.) (2) If $10000 is all that he’s wasted on court costs, that begs the question how on earth he expected to pay his consultants the amounts that he promised them. If he promised to pay his consultant $5000 a month, yet he had no idea from where that money was going to come — I don’t call that good business planning.
As for Amiga and Apple: AmigaOS 4.0 and the AmigaOne board are a new OS & board (the AmigaOne is NOT identical to the Teron) — certainly they are no less new than Pegasos and MorphOS/Linux/OpenBSD, all of which were originally implemented on other platforms. Apple’s G5 is a new board, and OS X is a new OS, at least insofar as the 64-bit implementation (admittedly still being worked on).
Let me repeat: I don’t think bbrv are evil; I think they had good intentions. Alas… “break out the popcorn.”
There was no slander of ShopIP. I informed Mitch Parker of Diginexus that the reason we had not moved forward with ShopIP was that we had several areas of concern, including unconfirmed information about the background of some people at ShopIP. He was told it was unconfirmed and that we needed information before we proceeded. Perhaps he received information that we did not receive or perhaps he did not care because he just wanted to sell something. In any event, after raising the subject with ShopIP (with no response) and informing Diginexus about the situation, we decided not to proceed.
I do not expect anyone to feel sorry for us. You named three companies. Apple is not a new company, they introduced their products many years ago and its most recent releases are the product of a mature business. As a mature business, they have the financing and market share to support the effort.
That leaves two, Amiga and Genesi. Amiga has been trying for quite some time. While the Pegasos development effort has been going on for some time, Genesi USA was incorporated in January 2003. Our product works and is improving. That is why we are confident of future success. We do not want your, or anyone else’s, sympathy. We want to earn your business.
Paul Adams
You sent your resignation email on the evening of March 1, 2004. I saw it the morning of March 2nd and immediately responded with the following email.
Dale
I read your email on your status with regret, but I do understand your situation. At this point, it is not necessary to try to discuss what might have been rather than what actually is. With reluctance, Genesi accepts your resignation as a consultant. We will make every effort to pay you for the services you have provided over the past several months and wish you well in your job search. If I can be of any assistance in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Paul
I accepted the resignation of a consultant and agreed to pay for consulting services. After sending my reply to you, I did not hear from you for 10 days. In your reply, you stated that you were an employee and entitled to wages through March 1st. I responded to your March 12th email on March 24th, simply pointing out that you were not an employee but a consultant and re-affirming our intention to pay for the services rendered through February 4th. By your own emails, you had been unable to perform any services for Genesi since February 4th when you completed the OpenBSD port. If it took you 10 days to reply to my email, why is it improper for me to take 12 days to respond to yours?
In your capacity as our OpenBSD Consultant and resident expert, you stated categorically that we had to send FREE boards to Theo in order to have OpenBSD support. You emphasized that Theo never pays for ANYTHING. We followed your directions and sent first one board and, when there were problems, we sent a second. Now that there will be no OpenBSD support, it is curious why you and Theo want to keep those boards, especially since Theo claims they are so defective. Besides, Theo said he was going to send those boards to you as partial payment of your compensation. Are you saying that Theo has not done what he said he would do?
You are the one who apparently interjected Theo into the discussions surrounding your resignation. I heard from him almost immediately after I responded to your March 1st email and it was clear from those communications that he was aware of our email exchanges. When I sent you a private email on March 24th regarding your situation, I never heard from you directly. I did, however, almost immediately receive another insulting and threatening email from Theo. He contributed nothing to the exchange except to make a rather difficult situation worse and to make us realize that there was no reason to consider a future relationship with OpenBSD.
You can post whatever you so desire and contact whomever you please. Neither action will change the financial situation of Genesi. We have never denied that you provided consulting services, nor have we denied that we have been unable to pay you for those services. If you are aware of a way that posting emails to a list or contacting a lawyer will generate revenue to help us reach a point to be able to pay you, then please let me know how that works. As I have repeatedly said, when we are able to do so, you will be compensated.
Despite our numerous direct communications over the past several months, you are the one who chose to make a public post about your situation, rather than to contact me to discuss things and attempt to reach a resolution. I do not understand the logic behind that decision. In one of your emails, you described your working full time for Genesi as a charade. Perhaps you could have sent me an email explaining what you had done since February 4th and March 1st that benefited Genesi and deserved compensation.
I personally believe this whole matter could be better resolved if you and I communicated privately. Other than publicly stating that we will pay for your services when we are able, I have no intention of conducting public negotiations on this matter.
You have all my contact information. If you desire to resolve this in a reasonable manner, contact me off line and we can see what can be worked out. Just be aware that there is no secret pot of money available for immediate payment.
Paul Adams
There’s a mistake in your post which I think only adds to the confusion.
I assume you meant “AmigaOne IS identical to the Teron”, since “AmigaOne” is nothing more or less than a trademark that one of Mai Logic’s customers (namely Eyetech) have chosen for their distribution of Teron boards.
Eyetech used to(?) lie about this, God knows why; Terrasoft were going to call them “Boxers” before they discovered that they weren’t fit for public consumption, and Inguard still try to sell them as “Dragons” (at least they still list the boxen built with these mobos on their site).
I assume you meant “AmigaOne IS identical to the Teron”, since “AmigaOne” is nothing more or less than a trademark that one of Mai Logic’s customers (namely Eyetech) have chosen for their distribution of Teron boards.
Eyetech still claims it’s modified, and I thought I had a link to where Mai said the same but I can’t find it atm.
I said it to bbrv and I think you need to hear it too.
Are you unable to pay for legal and accounting services?
-begin-
You can post whatever you so desire and contact whomever you please. Neither action will change the financial situation of Genesi. We have never denied that you provided consulting services, nor have we denied that we have been unable to pay you for those services. If you are aware of a way that posting emails to a list or contacting a lawyer will generate revenue to help us reach a point to be able to pay you, then please let me know how that works. As I have repeatedly said, when we are able to do so, you will be compensated.
-end-
But to be fair, your account seems sincere and I applaud your courage for posting it here.
Cheers
Hmm, you seem to forget IBM uses PowerPC chips too
>Besides, Theo said he was going to send those boards to you
>as partial payment of your compensation. Are you saying that
>Theo has not done what he said he would do?
Of course he cannot do that after he ran over them with his
truck…
Here is how the Teron and AmigaOne boards relate to each other: http://amigapop.8bit.co.uk/newamiga.jpg
AmigaOne is modified with a donglecode in ROM to protect the AmigaOS which will run on these machines.
Eyetech is granted licence “to distribute the Teron CX and PX development systems in Europe, and to
distribute production systems based on the Teron CX and PX designs to the Amiga market worldwide.”
http://www.mai.com/news&events/PressRelease070902_2.html
>What other company has attempted to introduce such a
>complex product in recent years?
Microsoft’s XBOX,
For those of you who have not interacted with Theo in person, let me just say that he tends to write the exact same things in emails/posts that he would say if you were sitting at the Ship, having a pint with him.
For example: Theo asks you if you are retarded. In person, he might say it with a smile that implies a good-natured jab. In email, it comes across as a pretty serious insult. Most of us moderate our written style or use smileys to compensate for the ’emotiveness’ restrictions imposed by email. I don’t think Theo does this.
Yes, Theo is acidic. But I also think that a previous poster was correct in saying he’s one of the most brilliant computer scientists around. Having a conversation with him can quickly make you feel stupid, but instead of being insulted, the best thing to do is learn from him. Yeah, I’ve got my geek ego too, but recognize that no matter how good you are, there are always people smarter than you. And Theo is probably one of them.
Andy
Your idiotic jpg may be funny when preaching to the choir, but I find it unconvincing. The quote from MAI says “based on”, which is not the same as “equal to”. Meanwhile, here’s a quote on some differences in the design
MAI logic are a chipset manufacturer, not a PPC motherboard manufacturer, but they had commissioned a low volume, high cost evaluation board, the Teron Cx, to help sell their chipsets. The Teron Cx was never designed to, or intended to, go into volume production. We therefore asked them if they could recommend a design company who was familiar with using the Articia S in PPC motherboard design. They recommended the same (Far Eastern) company that designed their Teron Cx evaluation board.
The new Eyetech AmigaOne design obviously shares a lot of commonality with the Teron Cx board, but more than a cursory glance at the specifications (ATA speed, integrated ethernet, custom firmware, number of active PCI/AGP slots etc) – and the price – of both boards should be enough to convince most people that they really are different designs.
However if you remain unconvinced you are of course perfectly welcome to purchase the Teron Cx evaluation board. It costs $3900, misses many features of the AmigaOneG3-SE, and won’t run OS4.
http://amigainfo.boing.net/amigaone.html