The Genesi-owned/sponsored Morphos.net website (Google cache) has been taken down and instead, a page, that reminds us a lot of the Amiga situation up to a few months ago, is described there. It claims that no new version of MorphOS will be released until payments are made to developers. The latest version of MorphOS is almost a year old already, while releases used to happen every few months in the past, usually.
MorphOS Developers Unpaid? MorphOS New Version Delayed
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
anybody ever saw that kind of situation ever turnning positive in the end?
At least they fight for what’s theirs.
Here is a useful link for press, media and further study of the situation:
http://www.genesi.lu/
I hope that Genesi can fix things .
A sad day for MorphOS users. What rights do the programmers have over this code?
You’d think it would be theirs, except that it must be mixed with code that they did get paid for..
If it became clear that they weren’t going to get the money and they could walk away with the code. That’s only good I can see coming from this, being that this isn’t the first time Genesi haven’t paid their bills…
This look realy bad for MorphOS. When you’re out of money, it’s almost impossible to deliver the goods. Seems like AmigaOS will be the only choice! IF they can finish it….
The statement isn’t signed by anyone and the server switched IP from http://64.246.36.198/ to http://62.212.119.139/. How do we know that this is for real and not just a hacked DNS server?
Genesi will never be able to pay their bills, if there’s no support for Apple hardware.
I’m sorry for the developers, but it’s the reality.
Many people knew this will happen sooner or later…
“Como el rosario de la Aurora”
Sorry for the spanish comment I couldn’t avoid it.
The new ip-number is pointing at an ADSL connection in France instead of the servers that Genesi uses in USA.
http://www.ripe.net/fcgi-bin/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_stri…
Last MorphOS (version 1.4.2/3) was released Jan/Feb 04. Please update the article!
Which is indeed almost a year old, so the article is correct.
I must say I agree with one of the above posters. Genesi could make a lot more revenue if they allowed MorphOS to run on Macs. I’ll surely pay for MorphOS if they release it for the Mac.
AmigaOS, BeOS, MorphOS: all of them are (was) niche proprietary operating systems who depend of paid programs to survive. They have no future in a monopolized market.
This is the reason why I only belive free (as freedom) software is the only viable way to combat Windows monopoly.
Coming from an ex hardcore Amiga user, it’s a shame that the whole Amiga situation’s become a farse.
I still think that AmigaOS is great and better than other OSes in so many ways, but I personally can’t see a realistic future for either Amiga or Genesi.
the morphOS page is still up at http://64.246.36.198/
From whois:
Updated Date: 14-jun-2004
Creation Date: 13-jun-2002
Expiration Date: 13-jun-2005
I would say they forgot to renew their DNS…?
So much for Bill Buck’s promises and funding. To quote Petro Tyschtschenko, former VP of Amiga Tecnologies; “He was all bills, and no bucks.”
Looks like more people have seen the light now.
Bah… it said “jun” not “nov” as I for some reason thought. So much for my DNS renewal theory 😛
Well, considering Genesi’s address is 64.246.36.135 it’s a good bet that the old Morphos.net site was hosted off the same server (or at least same provider)
Whois on morphos.net returns
Registrant:
VaporWare
ch. de la Mairie 15
Geneva, GE 1223
CH
Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: MORPHOS.NET
Created on: 13-JUN-02
Expires on: 13-JUN-05
Last Updated on: 24-MAY-04
Administrative, Technical Contact:
Gerber, David [email protected]
VaporWare
ch. de la Mairie 15
Geneva, GE 1223
CH
+41793554473
Domain servers in listed order:
A.NS.ZAPEK.COM
BORON.VAPOR.COM
The important part is registered in 02, expires in 05. If I were to venture a guess, David Gerber being one of the people owed money, he used his admin rights on it to point at a whole different server, since if he put that up on Genesi’s server they’d just take it down again.
One really has to wonder about the developers in this case.
What were they thinking?
Part of being a responsible employee is demanding payment and taking the appropriate actions if your boss won’t pay up.
After your boss misses, say, one month’s salary you might let it slide — take him at his word that the money is forthcoming.
After a second month he better have a damn good excuse.
Say he’s shorted 1000 eu, you should consulte a lawyer. Don’t wait until he owes you 25k eu and whine about it online.
Christ — this is what lawyers are for.
You might pity these guys, but it’s not worth pitying a bunch of fools that let themselves get taken for a ride by a shyster. Genesi never had a hope at all.
Business model? Pah. Who needs ’em!
Another part of being a respnosible employee is not signing on with a fly-by-night company in the first place. If anyone can tell me with a straight face that Genesi ever had a chance, let me know. There’s a bridge I want to sell you.
This has been a constant problem over the past year, finally someone is standing up and shouting about it.
so where is bbrvs comments…. hmmm…..
so they dont pay the openbsd guy.. now they dont pay morphos and morphos was the ‘seller’ used in all the pegasos demonstrations…
but then, what idiot would work for so long and not get paid but keep going. more fool them.
Hi Linwood, do not despair and do not give up yet!
Hey timo, Genesi has much more than a chance. Seen any other new computer companies offering a hardware, firmware and OS solution come to market and survive lately?
As for the red troll brigade and especially for you Lennart, Petro also said this:
http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv02/020417_interview_bb_pt.shtml
In the meanwhile, we have posted an answer to all this here:
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
R&B
Genesi having used Morphos to lure ex-Amiga users to the Peg, now for the last few months have wanted to kill MOS in favor of PPC Linux.
Genesi and Mr Buck in particular cannot be trusted anymore. The best hope for Morphos is if it goes its own way (and looks for other target platforms maybe)
Why are they still there?
I kinda wonder if there how many amiga users they are compared to apple users.
This reminds me of the suituation with geos breadbox still has not realeased a 32 bit version an geos is a pretty good program.
Which bsd will run on the amiga.
Plus is there any linux that will run on the amiga.
“Genesi having used Morphos to lure ex-Amiga users to the Peg, now for the last few months have wanted to kill MOS in favor of PPC Linux.”
The arrival of AmigaOS 4 certainly changes things for Genesi, but that’s still pure speculation.
It seems my question about who owns the code has been answered on MorphZone and thankfully the answer isn’t Genesi. This may drive the move to other architectures quicker. Being associated with Genesi won’t be doing MorphOS’s image much good, so I hope they can make the break.
Hi Wilson, that is completely not true. There are many MorphOS developers that have continued to work hard. There have been more uploads of application software and OS improvements in the last three months than there have been for the same period in the last two years. The mere fact that we are having this conversation is testimony enough that we are still very interested in MorphOS, but you and others need to face a few facts:
1. PowerPC is not the dominate CPU in the market.
2. MorphOS is targeted solely on the Pegasos.
In the meanwhile, any OS targeted and supported on the Pegasos can drive Pegasos sales which in turn fuels opportunity and growth for all OS’s and applications concerned — and the development communities that go with them. Linux has clearly become a market force and we are doing our best to work our way into these development communities. You are right we are interested in LinuxPPC. Here is an example:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/release/2004.3/ppc-release-not…
“Full pegasos support out of the box. Thanks to Freescale Semiconductor and Genesi for donating Open Desktop Workstations. It is no longer required to pass arguments to the pegasos kernel, the default arguments are compiled into the kernel.”
Proudly, you will find us here now too:
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/sponsors.xml
You should see us pop up on the Debian Partner page this week. Eventually, we hope to be official supported by Fedora, Mandrake, Rock Linux and Ubuntu as we are for Gentoo, Debian, YDL and Crux today. These things take time, but these distributions are all either working on the platform already or in progress, not to mention some of the other more commercial Linux distributions.
BTW, Wilson, in what position do you judge me and under what authority? These threads are a useful tool to communicate broadly facts and opinions, but the mere freedom to do so often allows a voice to relevant and the irrelevant equally. Where do you sit? For at least our benefit, could you please reveal your credentials? Have we worked together? What is the basis of your opinion? We would like to understand how much emphasis to place on your remarks.
MorphOS in one form or another will continue to be developed and we will do our best to see this happens. It may not be with all the same people, but clearly many of the current team will still be involved.
Mr. Buck
Red troll? Hardly. no need to play Napolean, Bill. Your critics are not all “against” you, nor are they all pro-Amiga Inc/Hyperion/Eyetech.
“Some of the people referenced at the start of this email had agreements with the former company we funded in France. That company was closed. Any valid claims were honored and paid in accordance with French law. It fact, former employees were compensated (and are still) under the French social system. It is very unfortunate that situation did not resolve itself as we intended it to. We lost alot of money, time and effort there. We hope you won’t forget everything we did do in that period.”
Ah, Thendic-France and that security company coming back to haunt you, eh?
“We will work with those that we can and particularly those that can see the complete picture and not only the walls of their little rooms. Hurting Genesi hurts MorphOS. This kind of post — which has NO basis in valid outstanding contractual fact — is not the way to move ahead. We will do what we can. Of course, we will discuss this with Ralph and Frank.”
Do you deny that you owe the aforementioned developers money? Are they blatently lying? As for only seeing the walls of a small room, it sounds like the developers should be glad that they even have rooms at this point in time. That, of course, unless they’re lying and their claim “has NO basis in valid outstanding contractual fact”.
I do wonder what their contracts do say regarding wages.
“In the sad aftermath, we did our best to keep going. We were unable to support personally the kind of effort we had made before. We have done our best. We continued to be and are the sole financial investor in bplan/Genesi. While many people have invested their time loyally it still takes money and sales establish a company. We have provided both. For the most part over the last ten months every one still worked diligently together. We spent most of the money we had left building machines. It takes money to build machines and it takes money to keep a company going. We still managed to pay a small staff. The realities of business are harsh.”
To me, this sounds nothing else than “Genesi is going down, brace for impact”. If you haven’t got the funds, how can you possibly hope to survive as a company trying to push a new platform?
“We have traded may emails with David and he and the others have been paid as much as we could afford to pay them.”
So, after all is said and done, you haven’t got the bucks to pay your bills, Bill?
curious about the gentoo ppc notes.. since recently on the linuxppc mailing list there was a big thread because the peg2+odw OF is so broken it puts the via southbridge in a bad state regarding IRQs and hardware addresses that they couldnt get it working…
and they still dont have proper support for GigE…
there is no support for peg1, its OF is too broken.
peg2 support is semi broken. no GigE support and cant have devices on the 2nd ide channel because of broken OF.
odw = peg2. same problems.
the serious problems are down to the broken OF not initialising properly the via southbridge and doing proper memory mappings in its BAT’s with a working translate….
MorphOS is still very much owned by Genesi/bplan. Ralph Schmidt is still very much a part of the Company and Ralph *is* MorphOS. You do not see him complaining. He is busy on development and not message boards.
As for OS4, we think the development is great. We have been in touch with one of the key developers, Adam Kowalczyk, who has informed us that getting OS4 running on the Pegasos was “rather trivial.” BTW, we fully expected this to happen. We may have an interesting situation developing with Adam that could bring the Amiga “community” back together. That would sure turn a few heads…;-)
R&B 🙂
Lennart, we have made our position clear. Our responsibility is to the Company and the people that are part of it. We answer to them, not you.
The only thing that haunts us about Thendic-France is the opportunity lost. Being able to have moved ahead would have made the effort so much better for everyone. Napolean? I will take that as a compliment. 🙂
ceaser, as you can see you must have some bad information.
R&B
Bill,
You still have’nt learned your lessons. Why is it Genesi repeat their errors over and over. When you get your fingers caught in the till, its always others whom hold the responsibility.
I’m sitting here pondering your demonising the MorphOS people – people YOU personally recruited to your flag, your dream, your desires, and I see nothing good in all this.
But then I saw nothing good in your people’s little stunt on me, your actions relating to people in the same boat previously, Christian Kemp, Dale Rahn, and the rest. You did’nt learn from that, and stepped into some more nice stunts against the guy who runs Amiga Org. The list goes on, and continues to grow.
In terms of you recruiting Linux and Open source packages, well done, its been done off the back of work people have done and are not/will not be paid. Whats new ? Nothing. Just another day in the history of Genesi.
Can someone please explain to me why Genesi is suddenly all crucified and such? Is this based on facts, or is it just yer average bash-the-company-because-they-use-open-source-software-for-a-closed-so urce-package, like I experience often when supporting SkyOS?
I get the situation about the dev’s not getting their money, and them demanding what’s rightfully theirs seems more than reasonable. But from what I understand when reading this thread is a general hate towards Genesi– why?
“Lennart, we have made our position clear. Our responsibility is to the Company and the people that are part of it. We answer to them, not you.”
And you customers (existing/potential)? Do you not answer to them?
Buy the looks of it, it boils down to this:
No money, no Genesi, no Pegasos (hence no platform). If you can’t give your customers even reasonable assurances that you’ll stick around and support the platform you’re playing way out of your league. What did you think? That you could have people develop a commercial product for Open source wages?
The old adage “you get what you pay for” comes to mind.
“Napolean? I will take that as a compliment. :-)”
Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me at all, smiley or no smiley.
Thom, it is a long story, but it begins and may end with the Amiga community. Do not worry. This is a small thread. There are thousands of Pegasos owners and MorphOS users that are not complaining. Some developers *are* being paid. We do what we can. What you see here is the zealous micro-minority from the red troll brigade.
R&B
“What you see here is the zealous micro-minority from the red troll brigade.”
Pathetic. Anyone disagreeing with you is a troll by your book, Buck? No wonder Genesi is going down the drains with such a helmsman.
No one can escape from the long sword of Justice! 😀
Actually, I am not of the ‘red brigade’, that is a name attributed in a silly manor by silly people. It indicates that if you are a member of the red faction in amiga land, you are tained by supporting Eyetech/Amiga/Hyperions actions and products.
A member of the blue faction indicates that you support Pegasos/Bplan/Genesi/MorphOS
Bill is incapable of understanding that some of us belong to no camp and attack either of the blue or red sides when they behave stupidy, lie, cheat, decieve, or don’t pay their staff/people/developers.
I’m not one of the blind followers of either Camp. I slagged of Amiga when they screwed people over, and I slag of Genesi and BBRV when they behave the same way. The issue these days is the red brigade are not very active.
Genesi are being abused because they have behaved irrovocably badly towards their own people. Do not feel sorry for them, and I would take it further, unless you see some public apologies and cler changes of behaviour, don’t consider becoing a customer/future victim.
Off course, all this has been seen before from Amiga inc and friends which makes it pitiful to see people being suckered in yet again.
Oh, and Lennart Fridén, have those T shirts been delivered yet? No? I thought not.
You can expect a barrage of counter statements from Genesi covering arse, and generally muddying those who are owed money. This is’nt the first time, its been ongoing for some considerable time.
Justice is great. Let’s have some.
R&B
Ah so it’s two parties not getting along. My conclusion is then that both camps are utter fools, since it’s kinda stupid to fight when your platform has a market penetration of basically zero.
This situation seems to faintly resemble the situation in the BeOS community (from which I’m part); one side supporting yT and Haiku, the other side only supporting Haiku. While, in the end, a true BeOS user/fan (like myself) supports both, since they both do all they can to keep BeOS alive.
Come on people, get a grip. We’re talking 1s and 0s here. If y’all are intelligent, y’all get along in order to keep the platform alive.
People are being shafted, and on both sides, for a quick buck, pun intended.
Unless you support that, then deny support to either side, because that is all they deserve.
peg2 support is semi broken. no GigE support and cant have devices on the 2nd ide channel because of broken OF.
Hmm… quite strange, I use the main GigE and I do have devices on my 2nd ide channel too… maybe I forgot to break the OF…
Thom, you are right on, but it has been exacerbated by people like AdmV who contributes nothing to either effort and plagues us with his libel under a banner of self-righteous indignation.
Our error is that we nevertheless feel these kind of discussions once they are started (unfortunate fact) have to be addressed. In a strange way, justice is served because the details eventually are called up and the facts are presented. It can be a huge waste of time, but some times it serves a useful purpose. AdmV has nothing other than heresy to support his rabid claims. This statement will undoubtedly draw a response, but how far do you go before you say something? He has no stake here and it is the avocation of many others beyond us. We suppose we could have ignored the whole thread, but it is not our distinction to do so. The other side needs to be heard.
MorphOS will continue to be developed. The Pegasos blade is coming as are a few other interesting and new developments.
We have to get moving today. We will check back tonight to see what happened next.
R&B
“Oh, and Lennart Fridén, have those T shirts been delivered yet? No? I thought not.”
Any particular reason you direct that question to me? Read what you wrote below, read my previous comments, and then replace ‘Bill’ with ‘AdmV’ if you still find it reasonable to direct this question to me. If I’m in a camp, it’d be my camp and that’d be miles away from either Amiga Inc or Genesi.
“Bill is incapable of understanding that some of us belong to no camp and attack either of the blue or red sides when they behave stupidy, lie, cheat, decieve, or don’t pay their staff/people/developers.”
I generally think you speak (write) reason, but don’t be to soon to pass judgement on others if you don’t like that feature in Bill Buck.
Hey Bill, I’m sure you meant Heresay, but a fraudien slip is humourous.
The problem with my so called ‘libel’ is that I have the information regarding our little email conversations, and I have no doubt you don’t have a leg to stand on
Your problem is largely that nothing you said was true, so it can’t be libel if someone says it.
In terms of me making comment on what has been laid out by other parties, thats life, it would be their libel, not mine
Interestingly, here is a comment taken from your own website, morphzone:
bbrv wrote:
> We have encouraged MorphOS for other platforms and this has always
> been met by resistance.
Somehow I doubt you’re aware of the relation of the effort needed
to perform a port to additional hardware, vs the effort required to
announce it.
Anyway, as I told you a year ago, I don’t think your problem lies so
much in your ability to fulfil your promises, which can be
understandable, as in your inability to be straight about bad news.
You are talking a lot about a “team”, about “loyalty” and about
“working together”. However, that is not possible without trust, and
trust is something you have definitely not earned in this rough ride.
Had I followed your advice from a year ago, I would have been evicted,
homeless and dead broke. Fortunately, I didn’t trust you and I took other
measures. I don’t doubt others learned similar lessons about what it
means trying to “work together” with you “loyally”.
Nevertheless, I’m hopeful about the future of MorphOS, but I do know
from personal experience that cooperation with Genesi can be a very
frustrating thing to attempt.
(made by Merko)
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?mode=view…
Who it seems was apparently smart enough to turn down your offer of none or partially paid employee ;P
Anyway, I am sure there is more to come, see you soon Bill!
“Any particular reason you direct that question to me? Read what you wrote below, read my previous comments, and then replace ‘Bill’ with ‘AdmV’ if you still find it reasonable to direct this question to me. If I’m in a camp, it’d be my camp and that’d be miles away from either Amiga Inc or Genesi.”
Then I apologise Lennart
I’ll join your camp some stage, mine is just over there, and no where near those two ‘camps’.
Mabe i’m a bit late in this party but i’m reading all comments here and i’m seeing a fight between bbrv and AdmV and I wonder… Who is AdmV??
So AdmV, what is your role in all this? Are you a former Amiga or Genesis employe? Where you once unpaid? Are you just a simple end user? What is your relation with bbrv?
I am the little angel on your shoulder saying don’t get involved with certain parties.
“I am the little angel on your shoulder saying don’t get involved with certain parties.
”
That’s it? That important? This does not give you any kind of credit in this debate.
“I am the little angel on your shoulder saying don’t get involved with certain parties.
”
That’s it? That important? This does not give you any kind of credit in this debate.
http://www.vocus.com/content/managementstewart.asp
google says it’s him =]
bill your ego is blinding you to the mistakes u are making.
i’m sure ralph will not be so quick as to drop mui or so.
you should really take a deep breath and start paying your moral obligations to pay these developers.
u have alienated the mos community as well as the amiga community
your statements to the contrary about thousands of happy mos users are pure propaganda.
And why pray tell do I need credit? Do I need credit to comment on a company that repeatedly behaves in unacceptable ways?
If you have a claim about me, step forward. But until then, we have a public statement made by people against Genesi. Are they lying? If you believe so, maybe you can step forward and present some conspiracy theories you can email over to Bill, he has more arse covering and mudslinging to do.
All this *** posts, how can you answer them?
1st)
The Pegasos hardware is good.
– Many developers working on Linux/Database/other,
use the Pegasos on a daily basis.
– The Pegasos has proven itself stable being used as server.
Many Pegs are used in server environment for month and
run stable under heavy load and without any glitches.
Of course there are always people which will have problems with every hardware. Fact is that the Pegasos has proven is reliability many times.
2nd)
Genesi has done a lot to keep the Amiga spirit alive.
Just look at all the 100 boxes which were given away to developers.
What ever childish stuff is said here, fact is that there are companies
and individuals happily using the Pegasos everyday.
Thank you Genesi!
Gunnar von Boehn
MySQL
Lock this thread.
Delete the news item.
I wonder how much this kind of PR destroys any nascent trust towards …hmmm… those nice niche systems.
All?
Googling for common names is iffy. Its not me you refer to.
> I wonder how much this kind of PR destroys any
> nascent trust towards …hmmm… those nice niche
> systems.
No, keep it open so they can utterly destroy whatever credibility they have left, so people will finally see the reality and won’t get ripped of by ’em, red or blue.
The Amiga community has been held together by spite and hope for so long that they actually cheer the vultures picking at the carcass…
BBRV wrote:
“As for OS4, we think the development is great. We have been in touch with one of the key developers, Adam Kowalczyk, who has informed us that getting OS4 running on the Pegasos was “rather trivial.” BTW, we fully expected this to happen. We may have an interesting situation developing with Adam that could bring the Amiga “community” back together. That would sure turn a few heads…;-)”
I think you must contact Hyperion to do this 😉
There is so strange to think about an OS4 porting on Pegasos before pay the MOS developers 🙂
>>And why pray tell do I need credit? Do I need credit to comment on a company that repeatedly behaves in unacceptable ways?<<
Err, hello ??? yes, if you want to have any credibility in what you are saying.
Otherwise you will be considered just as some troll and thus ignored.
>There is so strange to think about an OS4 porting on Pegasos before pay the MOS developers 🙂
Maybe I’ve got what they think like: For what do they need MOS if there is a OS4-port?
Think about it…
Can’t say this is really news, as we’ve previously seen this story dealing with an OpenBSD (http://www.openbsd.org/pegasos.html) developer. That plus this story makes Genesi look very bad, I for one wouldn’t even consider buying their products now.
AdmV, the usual nick, is a Moobunny troll. Don’t mind him. He’s irrelevant and only looking for attention.
“1st)
The Pegasos hardware is good.
– Many developers working on Linux/Database/other,
use the Pegasos on a daily basis.”
OK, this is not an agreed statement. While you consider it as such, not everyone agrees with you. The OpenBSD guys thought something rather different, as an example.
“- The Pegasos has proven itself stable being used as server.
Many Pegs are used in server environment for month and
run stable under heavy load and without any glitches.”
OK, I could say the same about other questionable hardware. Does’nt remove the question. There is plenty of information on what people found about the hardware, you just have to be willing to look.
“Of course there are always people which will have problems with every hardware. Fact is that the Pegasos has proven is reliability many times.”
Sure.
“2nd)
Genesi has done a lot to keep the Amiga spirit alive.
Just look at all the 100 boxes which were given away to developers.”
Maybe its just me, but I can’t see how you can claim money is too tight to mention, and refuse to pay core people, or externals, while giving away machines. It is of note that the MySQL project has benefitted in kind. Suppose someone from MySQL is invited to join Genesi, and they join and are then unpaid. Will you then ignore the issue? I think not. Just because you have not suffered does’nt mean you should belittle those who have.
The foundation of Pegasos would IMHO not have survived were it not for having an OS to ship on the hardware. Now you benefit from standing on the shoulders of those people. Just remember that.
“What ever childish stuff is said here, fact is that there are companies
and individuals happily using the Pegasos everyday.”
Are they? You seem happy, but you have not as yet realised that for this to happen, people are being screwed.
“Thank you Genesi!”
Gunnar von Boehn
MySQL
I will make careful note of your contribution here next time I see some abuse of MySQL IP, GPL, as we now understand your point of view.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8842&limit=no#301865
++++
Is that really AdmV? Please tell? How is the anonymous man? Where is your courage to put your face to to the name?! Me, I read and watch and stay unknown because I assume not the responsibility of judging.
Hi Ronald. Before people get the wrong idea, they can look you up here:
http://www.morphzone.org, he is of the blue fanatics. Hardly someone to take note of. His line will off course be that Genesi and BBRV are whiter than white, they can do no wrong.
I haven’t a clue about what’s the truth here…
If Genesi owes some developers some money, they ought to make it a priority to start getting some money to them.
A lot of us in life procrastinate about paying debts because we want to pay it in full, in one shot.
If money is owed, and had it been paid in increments, I’m sure the programmers would have been much happier, even IF they hadn’t yet been paid in full.
I would like to see the Pegasus II do well as a platform, and MorphOS do well as an OS.
I was considering purchasing one, I won’t now… Until this mess has been settled.
I’d gladly buy a MorphOS that ran on a Mac Platform.
If AmigaOS 4 runs on the Pegasos II Board, NEAT!!!
At some point, maybe MorphOS would be able to have full compatibility with AOS 4 apps, and still retain it’s own special qualities and flavor.
For those who love the Amiga Platform, the goal shouldn’t be to have MorphOS kill AmigaOS 4 or vice-versa.
Or the AmigaONE Motherboard kill the Pegasos II..
It should be getting the largest quantity of machines out there, running OS’es that are at least compatible, so there is a market large enough to support developers of applications.
I hope Genesi and the MorphOS team resolve this to their mutual satisfaction (and I have NO IDEA what that will look like…), and move forward with the Pegasos II/MorphOS platform.
If the programmers have not been paid for their work, using AmigaOS 4 compatibility as some kind of lever doesn’t seem right to me.
If you owe them money, pay them.
Perhaps BEFORE giving 100 systems to developers for free, that money could have gone to pay the programmers of the OS.
You could have sold the boards to developers at your costs instead.
And perhaps a release of a newer version of MorphOS might be made available at a small cost, so that the money generated by upgrades would go ONLY to pay the programmers.
I think there’s LOTS of room for ingenuity here, to generate money to pay all debts..
Sell MorphOS T-Shirts for pete’s sake.
Sell MorphOS Coffee Mugs.
Posters! Mouse Pads!
But, pay the programmers…
LOL!
“ignorance – what is a moonbunny troll ?”
Moobunny is an unmoderated Amiga discussion forum, on which flames abound.
The Moo part of the name derives from the period when Gateway (with their cow theme) owned the Amiga.
@ Elmo
See this web site: http://www.moobunny.org/
@ AdmVorlon
I don’t own a Pegasos. Never tried MorphOS. I wanted a Mini-ITX AmigaOne with a G4. Numerous posts prove this. I also wanted AmigaOS4. Numerous posts also prove this. I am not a “blue” nor a “red” troll. But I am pro-both camps.
Nice try to save face. Better luck next time.
Did someone already mention the OpenBSD case?!?! ;P
read about it here….
it was already known that Genesi was somewhat out of money…
http://www.openbsd.org/pegasos.html
The Pegasos firmware:
http://www.codegen.com/SmartFirmware/
Possibly the best info on the quality (or not?) of the firmware can be found here:
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/
(search for “SmartFirmware”)
I’m curious myself. I did buy a Pegasos 2 but sold it for various reasons after the OpenBSD affair, IIRC. It would be cool to be proven wrong, on the issue of the business ethics of Genesi and that of the Pegasos firmware.
wel this is not great news but here is a positive light to it……Genesi is having a little trouble but they came out and told the MorphOS community and that takes a lot of guts ….that to me shows they are loyal to there customers and want to work all this out…..they could have put on a poker face and bluffed it all saying all is well but they didnt…..but even if it turns out they only have a pair of 3’s that still better than not having a hand at all…..at least with a pair your still in t he game….and there is always another harnd to be delt
Like poundsmack said that`s alot better Amiga Inc. going around promoting OS4, only to find out it was sold last year, but atleast it came out. In time the problem will be fixed with MorphOS.
Well, like you I’m a stranger to this whole area, but posts like this:
“There are thousands of Pegasos owners and MorphOS users that are not complaining. Some developers *are* being paid. We do what we can.”
don’t exactly endear me to this guy or his operation.
@ been there done that
I hope you don`t mean the U.S. government, they owe me alot of money. HA HA HA, and they always, always come up short, but they are quick to take it that`s for sure.
As allway, someone try to make money with the good old AmigaOS, as allways they going to fail, my english isn’t good to explain myself, but for me the only good thing that could happend to AmigaOS is to come under GPL or another free source licence
Amiga is dead near 1992, today nobody will pay for 14 years old thing with no support and no software
Amiga steel alive, but in my heart not in my hand
Christophe
Is why Eugenia and the OSNews crew mod down all kinds of comments that they don’t feel are acceptable, no matter how relevent they really are, and meanwhile, arguements that they feel a part of (Amiga and BeOS are both safe bets) are allowed to run on and on through the message forums, no matter how silly or insulting they get.
A great example is this crap between AdmV0rl0n, Mr. Buck, and other assorted people. Someone said it best (and I paraphrase): “You’re all idiots. You’re arguing on and on over a platform that has 0% of the global market share”. If you can’t agree at this point in life, just think how poorly you’d behave if you did have some market share behind you. This type of infighting is also why the Microsoft’s and Intels of the world don’t feel at all threatened by the likes of you.
Well C= went tits up in 1994 through 1995, but by 1992 it was already dying.
The people behind Genesi tried to buy out Amiga from C= under the name “VISCORP” and failed ( but not before claiming several times over to have succeeded during the buyout auction ) in order to turn the Amiga into a set top box platform.
It finally went to ESCOM in 1996/7 who went spectacularly bust after they bought up the Rumbelows storefronts in the UK and overexpanded.
Gateway then bought it and licensed the technology to Amino, who renamed themselves Amiga Inc. They announced that the DE was the way ( repackaged Intent from Tao ) and the AmigaOS was “classic” ( e.g. dead ).
Roughly about this time MorphOS was started by a few dissilusioned folks, then BPlan was created by former employees of a bankrupt hardware manufacturer ( PhaseV ) who also had people in common with MorphOS and Genesi came on the scene claiming to be a merger of Thendic France, Pretory and BPlan or something similar.
In fact, it wasn’t any such thing, it was a new luxembourg registered company with William Buck ( of VISCORP fame ), Raquel Velasco ( CEO of the parent company Pretory – parent to the now defunct Thendic France who got into trouble with a “scandal” with Air France Air Marshals and were wound up by the french government – interestingly Thendic France was run by her son Thierry Velasco and was the employer of at least one of the people on that list Raquel is also the wife of William Buck and the RV in BBRV ) as major shareholders and Gerald Carda’s wife/girlfriend ( PhaseV ), Ralph Schmidt ( PhaseV ) as distinctly minor shareholders.
BPlan remained a seperate company, as did Thendic France. Pretory USA ( the holding company for the Pretory/Thendic empire ) should be checked out for its current share value and the share value curve.
The business plan was to shift MorphOS on the back of the Pegasos hardware platform – Pegasos would sell MorphOS to the masses and MorphOS would sell Pegasos to the Amiga market ( not masses ). The plan failed to bring in more than 600 customers in the Pegasos 1 ( which was fatally flawed hardware ) and by the time Pegasos 2 was developed the cash cow was in serious need of grass to chew which never helps when you are a hardware manufacturer no matter how many off the shelf parts you use.
Its remained on this shoestring ever since, selling PPC boards as cheaply as possible and even giving them away for free and perhaps spending far too much on glitz and glamour at trade shows before there was a good enough market proposition at hand.
Linux and BSD ( all things to all people ) was seen as a possible saviour to sell Pegasos boards to *nix geeks and shops. This as we all know doesn’t really work when you are trying to sell stuff more expensive than x86 boards to those that like free beer. Worst happenned when Dale Rahn and Theo De Raadt went public with the PR disaster that was the OpenBSD Pegasos project.
At the moment they are trying to turn around the fortunes of the company, and these developers are some of the eggs that are having to be broken to create the omlette.
Rumoured solutions include using Pegasos as Blade servers, clustering, using Pegasos kit in low horsepower 3 tier installations ( Sony Europe has one Pegasos mysql server installed by one of the people who posted in this thread who is an ex? Amiga fan who now works for MySQLAB ). Selling boards to Freescale Semiconductor ( who according to William Buck on morphzone.org have not yet paid ) who have given them away, put them on desks at Freescale etc.
Just FYI. Feel free to correct me, its just a potted history for those reading this thread.
At least 1000 people are willing to pay for the new AmigaOS. Yes, I wrote “new”. AmigaOS 4.0 is a leap forward in the Amiga history.
It’s a leap you could compare with the difference between OS 3.1 and OS 1.3.
Now the question is: are you interested? You, probably not, but me and at least 1000 Amigans are.
AmigaOS 4.0 is the first step to make Amiga live a long time…
Your timetable is flawed. Viscorp tried to buy the Amiga assets from ESCOM (who got them in 1995), not from Commodore. They went to Gateway in 1997.
Also, Thierry is Raquel’s brother, not son.
Sad news but I think that is an AMIGA way. Good things never last.
Maybe the MorphOS could be open sourced?
Think about Aros
The last time I try it, it’s look great
Aros is opensource, and run on cheap hardware ( aka cheap cpu et motherboard ).
the only thing missing is a 68000 emulator, but maybe some one reading me, will write it
give it a go … (and forget the other)
Christophe
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1996/961116-sassenrath.html
Use with google searches, such as:
Google: “William Buck” AND “Viscorp”
Google: “Carl Sassenrath” AND Amiga
That’s just too hilarious–not for the unpaid programmers/developers (they should be paid), but for the appearance that Genesi has practically become what it hated: Amiga.
I suppose the reds will now berate the blues in the same manner as the reverse occurred awhile ago. Tables turned and all.
–EyeAm
(singing) “Mirror mirror before my eyes, make me what I so despise. I hate the poor ones, and those who don’t deliver–and the liars really make me shiverrrrrr…”
That link gives only one side of the story. See http://www.phinixi.com/tiki-index.php?page=OpenBSD-Peg+Wrap-up for a more complete view: specifically, responses to claims, and a retraction of some claims made against Genesi at that time.
It is hard to know the
truth these days,
I think time will tell
what’s happenin’
with Morphos. Hopefully
things will work out
soon if there really is
a problem.
hopefully all the problem will be solved one by one
the world problem right now, i think is worst than this genesi problem. and i am confident this problem will be
solved very soon.
🙂
Company financial problems does not change the main thing!
MorphOS is a remarkable Operating System.
It came to the point that Linux programs can be compiled into MorphOS and run them natively much faster then the Linux it self.
MorphOS is the only Operating System that has something to offer to the market.
And because of the plethora of the OpenSource programs will survire with or without the MOS Core Developers.
And the reason is that the MOS Community is surround it with talented Developers.
Seriously,
Steve Lambrou
[Pegasos Owner and MorphOS 3rd Party Developer.]
Hello.
As I’ve been asked to do so, and also for I hate being lied at,
I want to clarify things. I left the Morphos team because my work was
finished there. And also.. Here’s my story. Of course, it’ll be ruined
by fanatics everywhere, but please consider that I try to tell the
facts as straigt as I can.
Someone from the Morphos team, in early 2002, asked me if I wanted to be
part of something I’ve had hardly hear about before : Morphos. Of course
I took it as the chance of my life and accepted gratefully.
I began “working” for morphos in april 2002. At that time i had no ppc and
it took me 6 months to afford a ppc and bvision for my A1200 in order to be
compatible.. My real work started in october 2002 for morphos , as a GUI
graphist mostly, although I did many things alongside. Just like every
Morphos fan out there I suppose. Apart from Morphos became my life.
In between, bbrv came and offered us to finance the project. As he had
already some bad reputation in France, I couldn’t resist to comment about
the choice, but I had no responsability in Morphos whatsoever, so I
thought… Who cares ?
The 15 may 2003, i’ve been taling with bill buck and told him i had no
work to the question ‘what are you doing as a living?’. He wasn’t
interested by my graphician skills, but since i had Spanish language and
website coding knowledges, he offered me money or a contract if I could
come up with a full spanish website for the 17 may.
There was some big investment made by the spanish government into linux
boards and applications, and he wanted to benefit from these. The 17 may,
the site was ready. Written from scratch, without any website builder or
php engine.
Pleae note : bbrv asked me not to mention amiga, for it could have been
dangerous to gather these spanish funds.
Between may and until the beginning of august 2003, I had no news from
the contract/money, but one offer of 500 francs (75 euro) wich i found
ridiculous at that time provided the amount of work me and my friends,
Juan Marcos, Doraemon and others, translators, writers, a real website
team did. I removed my stuff from the morphos ‘secret’ FTP as a kind of
warning, since nobody cared, and most thought I was boring to ask for
stuff i was promised. I closed the website too. bbrv had money at that
time, and i couldn’t understand why he never signed or offered anything
better than 500 F.. I put back the site a day or two after. Along with
my Artwork. And it had a benefit ;
Mid august : I received an antidated contract for july, august and
september. I had to give back 900 euro to the unemployment help
provided my work officially started in july. My contract implied 1000
euro per month. I had more when I was working as ruling my marine shop,
but the temptation to work in the amiga world was too strong.
This contract was a reward for the Pegasos España website, and it was
supposed to be nothing more. But bbrv came back and we talked about a
japanese website and a portugese website. I can’t recall the reasons
now, but i’m sure there was some good ones. bbrv is a smart man.
End of july, bbrv leaves France for USA.
Finally I started to work on some Portugese website in september’03,
and some PHP web engine in order to automatise the website creation.
At the end of september, bbrv told me that he kept me in the company.
During september and october, no money was wired. bbrv used to pop and
tell us it was nothing big, that Pretory USA had problems to wire the
funds to Thendic.
In mid november, we received the money for september. Not much, 1000
euro. I started to eat my economies to afford a car.
At the end of November I was told by Thierry Velasco, that ruled Thendic
France, that i had a contract (?!) for the months of October and November.
I said that i wasn’t aware such thing and that I never received the
contract.
When no contract is being etablished in France you automatically enter a
long time worker state, so I wasn’t afraid and was pretty confident in
bbrv and thierry velasco. He told me that i would receive the contracts
soon, along with new contracts for december and onwards. I thought well,
okay, it’s no big deal. I tend to prefer short term conotracts, to keep
my freedom.
December 2003, release of Pegasos Japan. A full PHP driven, website,
with forums and every necessary feature for a usergroup, all in japanese,
based on my web engine. Translated by a nice man, that left the community
since then, unpaid, too. He only wanted a board.
In december 2003, Thierry Velasco started to be really vulgar in Paris
offices. He told everyone that I would never receive my contracts, and
also told in front of several persons that we only were a bunch of ass
hair. You cut one, there’s another one growing behind. I’ve been told the
stories by three different people at different times. The same story.
I pass the details.
The 23 of december, bbrv came by and told us the money we were awaiting for
october, november and december was wired. It was a great day, I afforded
everything for my family and my gf. The 25 i received my Pegasos 2,
before everyone. Another great day. My new version of the pegasos España
website was almost ready for release and betatested. Then someone from
the offices in Paris, some Mos related guy, called me the 27 and said
‘sit down, please. We’ve been fooled. no money was wired. nothing.’
I was ruined. I’d bug bbrv for money before, but never had the feeling
that I would end in the street. This feeling, I hope few people knows it.
My parents are ill, my gf had no job and I had no money. I was stuck.
And without any papers to claim my unemployment rights .. for The french
government I was employed and had money. It’s like that, our system is
very strict. If I decided to let down everything, I would have lost all
my money for my work between october and january. 3500 euro. Maybe nothing
for you, but for someone that was paid a month over two during ages, it
was some treasure.
Some global action in front of the law almost started a month ago, but
someone in the offices wanted to wait some more, just to be sure he would
get unemployement help. It takes 6 months of work before employement
helps starts here.
I went to see a lawyer in mid january, I still had no papers, and it
became evident that Thendic-France would close soon.
(according to my friends in Paris, Mr Velasco looked very exhausted. he
was often away, and talked very few). It was hard times for all of us
I suppose. I don’t blame him for the insults in my back, I’m sure anybody
in that situation would have become nervous.
The lawyer asked me why i didn’t came before, heh. Around the 20 of
january, I finally receive my contracts… For october and november.
I refused to sign that, provided It made me lose december and january, and
for it’s higly illegal to sign such a contract, (a contract ought to
be signed the seven days past it’s beginning at MAX.)… Since I kept
doing my job.
[ And well I was offered in december a ‘new contract for ‘december and
onwards’ at the end of the one i never saw, recall it ?
(TO be precise, I kept working even after Thendic closed, until the end of
april, with the strange hope that everything would return back in order
sooner or later. We had the product. We had the best men, and some nice
advertisement (‘propaganda?’) almost everywhere.) ]
Finally, I am not unemployed. Thanks to my coding skills, and the fact that
bbrv pushed me into web coding, I was able to survive. And also pasta. Loads
of pasta, during all these months. BUT I never was able to claim for
unemployment heps, or any help related, since my contract was never ended
correctly. The french state considers that i’m still working… for a dead
company.
I’m now fighting against the liquidator for him to give me the bless papers
i need and the money everybody received in Paris…but me. I have no
particular social help, and i’ve been publicly insulted several times on
forums. I tend to ignore forums. My reputation went >NIL: of course. When
bbrv said that I was abusing the social helps, it wasn’t true. When my
action will be finished, my right for unemployement helps will be outdated.
SO no, I don’t abuse my people, my country.
I’m not the man that financed a computer with our National Company security
funds. Not even the one that forgot to pay the 532 Pretory people between
april 2003 and for some, until now. Many families, with childs. Just for
a bunch of silicium I don’t even fully own the rights.
That person may faint not being aware, I’m sure I would be very aware of
everything that happens into a company I own 93% of.
Nowee
BB, RV,
We all knows that its trivial. Having OS4 is not a technical problem but a legal one. If Genesi is willing to pay a licence to have OS4 running on Pegasos and if it give all necessary technicals docs it could be done.
Of course you’ve to talk to KMOS (Gary Hare) about it and sign a contract. (like done by Eyetech for the AmigaOne)
It seems that you lack of money so I suppose that its not going to happens. Then having a hacked version of OS4 running would of course be illegal…
Maybe you’re more interested in stuff like OS4onMorphos (like MacOnLinux…)
Whats your option ? (Adam Kowalczyk is not the one who decide there…)
Regards
kml
>As for OS4, we think the development is great. We have been >in touch with one of the key developers, Adam Kowalczyk, who >has informed us that getting OS4 running on the Pegasos was >”rather trivial.” BTW, we fully expected this to happen. We >may have an interesting situation developing with Adam that >could bring the Amiga “community” back together. That would >sure turn a few heads…;-)
It should be made clear that this story is the experience of somebody who calls himself Nowee, not of AdmV himself who just copied the story across from another site.
See also
http://www.nowee.org
“We all knows that its trivial. Having OS4 is not a technical problem but a legal one. If Genesi is willing to pay a licence to have OS4 running on Pegasos and if it give all necessary technicals docs it could be done.
Of course you’ve to talk to KMOS (Gary Hare) about it and sign a contract. (like done by Eyetech for the AmigaOne)”
The last time Amiga Inc signed a contract with BBRV, it ended in a court case. I doubt if they will want to do business with Genesi again.
“The last time Amiga Inc signed a contract with BBRV, it ended in a court case. I doubt if they will want to do business with Genesi again.”
Amiga Inc and KMOS are different companys. Amiga Inc gave the rights of OS4 to KMOS. But I think Amiga Inc made sure that KMOS can’t make OS4 for other systems… (in the sales conract)
“Amiga Inc and KMOS are different companies.”
One is a wholly owned subsidiary of the other. The court case was still current news when KMOS took over Amiga Inc. I would be surprised if either KMOS or their subsidiary had any interest in doing business with Genesi again.
Why would they go looking for more trouble?
“Amiga Inc gave the rights of OS4 to KMOS. But I think Amiga Inc made sure that KMOS can’t make OS4 for other systems… (in the sales conract)”
I think you are inventing things there. Have you seen the contract?
read carefully
“I think”
And they really have reasons for it, or?
Both of you wrote “I think”, now didn’t you? Want to know what I think? I think you are speculating and that such conditions in a sales agreement would hardly be valid from a legal standpoint or that such conditions would make it a license agreement rather than a sale. I mean, we’re talking about the transfer of an intellectual property and as the owner of such, noone else but you could ever dictate the terms for using it.
Yes, I’m speculating. That’s what I said… It’s only the way I would do it as a manager. But ok, I’m only someone who is still learning economy-practices.
And well, u can’t really own code which someone made for you or someone else. You can only have the right to do things with it. The copyright always has the programmer of the code.
Yes, you can own code which someone made for you or someone else, atleast according to U.S. law:
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html
Oh, I didn’t know about the us-law. I’ve read a article about the german copyright mentioned what I said. But sorry, I don’t have the link know.
I always thought the copyrights don’t differ much from one country to another. That irritates me somehow. If the copyright isn’t the same in Europe and US how can you make contracts that apply to both Europe and US?
interesting..
bbrv reply to comment 15:
” To quote Petro Tyschtschenko, former VP of Amiga Tecnologies; “He was all bills, and no bucks.”
bbrv arguing, posted this url: http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv02/020417_interview_bb_pt.shtml
in this interview, you can see:
thendic france -> now dead
coyote flux -> now stopped all activities with genesi and pegasos. they don’t want to hear anything about pegasos right now
a bit like the openbsd devs and a lots other devs that fleed genesi ..
so we could add: he was all bills and no bucks, and made devs to flee at sight?
lol