| [Forum] Ralph Schmidt comments on deal with Amiga Inc | Link |
| Posted on 04-Nov-2001 05:00 GMT by Adam Cheesegrate | 147 comments (127k)
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'fleecy comments on morphos' thread
Ralph responds to the following
questions about the
frequently mentioned
unsigned contract with Amiga Inc
-Did the morphos team revise the contract proposal
and fax it back to fleecy?
-What was the response from amiga inc?
- did the morphos team treat amiga inc with some respect?
1. It contained unacceptable paragraphs.
These paragraphs would have led to devide the licence sums to
almost nothing depending on a short amount of "amigaos" releases
which Amiga Inc. *decided*. That would have meant a complete
loss of "control" about the sources and its wealth.
They would have also meant that Amiga Inc. could control bplan's
product release...by not releasing anything at time..demanding
"extra special hw support licences" and so on.
To make it simple..the contract was an unprofessional joke.
2. The previous agreed sum between me and fleecy were "cutted" by 80%
in the "final" contract.
Fine if they wanna play sandbox games they can choose other
people...the 5 months wasted on communication with Fleecy Moss
were enough.
3. The contract came after about 8 weeks "delay" and only because i
gave fleecy a deadline from that day we will concentrate on our
own business to get the job done.
This means we can't wait and wait for a "deal" while we actually
need to port other modules to get a product done.
Therefore i set a deadline..and since then we port the remaining
important AROS and own technology which is needed.
Otherwise we would still wait until judgement day while real
work could be done.
4. The contract was written by B. Hermans which makes the contract
invalid automaticly for this break of trust.
I heard this some time afterwards through several sources.
That`s like letting Mr. Haage writing our contracts with Amiga.
An absolute *inacceptable* issue.
5. We saw that Amiga Inc. was not able to do any project management.
o As i`ve said before..Hyperion didn`t want to support MorphOS
as AmigaOS when Fleecy told them so.
Conclusion fleecy had no control about them.
o Absolutely *nothing* happened for 4.0 development *besides*
Olaf Barthels doing TCP/IP and FFS development for *him*.
o Absolutely *no* time plans..nothing...no real work responsibilities.
Though asking about these issues i've *never* got a sufficient
answer.
o Amiga Inc. has no access to the OS 3.5/3.9 sources and though
i asked fleecy *several* times about this i never got a sufficient
answer. But planning for a new OS release the knowledge on what
you can base your work on is *crucial*.
It was also common agreement between Olaf Barthels and us that
the WB needs a *major* overhaul and that it would be best to
base it on some previous 3.5 work..asl/amigaguide/icon..stuff
which has some worth. But as Amiga Inc. is locked about these
sources they would only have 3.1 (rom and wb) left.
As we're quite close to a complete rom replacement and the
wb needs a complete rewrite anyway there was nothing left
they could offer besides the name.
o Though after several tries to discuss the RTG problem with
Fleecy Moss his standard answer was...you`re not in the gfx team,
you may be allowed to give some suggestions but that`s it.
While we knew that *nothing* really went on about "their"
fantasy gfx team P96 which didn`t even know in april what
they should do at all. Maybe the Friedens did some 3d work..so
be it..but that is *NOT* what i understand as RTG.
But as a graphics.library replacement is a *MUST HAVE* option
to even get a non amiga hw up we did our own graphics.library
replacement with cybergraphx. It would have been unacceptable
to "wait" for fleecy's fantasy team to get a graphics.library
replacement working while we wait 6-12 months until we can
get the pegasos working.
o Amiga Inc. *USA* was informed that the AmigaOne hw won`t come
in time(if ever) and that there's no real 4.0 work at
H&P by some Amiga Inc. employee which came to the IFA in
germany end august and found an obvious project GAU.
(Note..the AmigaOS project manager Fleecy Moss has obviously
never ever *checked* the project`s progress though i`ve
warned him several times about certain issue...he never
listened)
But while all this has happened i still get an email from
Fleecy Moss where he asked me where the problem is in
these special clauses....
This contract had some paragraph like...
"You must support the 4.0 VM API" while *everybody* involved
knew there *is* no 4.0. So how can we support an API for an
not existing product ? Nuts..
To me this was another sign that the guy somehow lives in
a fantasy world..argueing with fantasy work groups.
BTW..also for my friends at Hyperion..at that time we already
had our own VM we only added for your "future" games.
-> conclusion..it`s *impossible* that amiga inc. could organize
any amigaos development and that this development would be
ready for our HW. Then we decided to continue on our own
with our partners and focus on our own product.
6. Early September Olaf Barthel(in the name of Amiga Inc.) saw the
Pegasos running here in an early beta and we discussed the whole
situation with him and told him our opinion of the situation.
He mostly agreed about the project management issue and that
*nobody* is even close to our state.
He also thinks that the whole situation is just plain ridiculous.
He informed Amiga Inc. *USA* about it and our opinions of the
situation but we haven't heard anything about them until sometime
mid October. Then it was clear that B. Hermans talked Fleecy into
that he is able to fix his AmigaOS PPC "problem" to safe both
people's faces. Now it`s only a farce...
A lot things have already been said...some may be new to you but
this should be enough for now and at least clear up a lot of issues
concerning our decision. And before the name believes attack me
again, better read this *twice*. |
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Ralph Schmidt comments on deal with Amiga Inc : Comment 66 of 147 | Posted by Ben Hermans/Hyperion (213.224.83.38) on 04-Nov-2001 17:15:33 | In Reply to Comment 59 (Johan Rönnblom):
@ Jonathan Rönnblom.
You've always struck me as a sensible guy so I will take the time to post one final reply here.
>to Ben Hermans: I guess my comment about the difference between
>you/Hyperion didn't come out straight, what I meant is that until now
>I haven't heard much from Hyperion on this issue except of what you've
>said so I can't tell what is you and what is Hyperion.
I'm the head of the company but I rarely if ever put forward positions which are not shared by our developers.
>Now let's look at your problems with MorphOS: First the legal issue. I
>don't see how this is relevant to a cooperation. If you cooperate,
>there would certainly not be any legal issue whatsoever. You may be
>convinced that there would be one if there isn't a deal, but that's
>irrelevant - you're not supposed to be working with RS as a lawyer but
>as an OS developer. Any disagreement about certain highly complex
>international legal issues is moot.
No, it is not. We cannot decide to cooperate with anybody unless Amiga agrees. The failure of Amiga Inc and the MorphOS team to come to terms is in part due to the fact that Amiga wants to assert their ownership and intellectual property rights over the Amiga OS (for which they paid 4.5 M USD) whilst the MorphOS team happily continues to refute those claims (whilst recompiling OS 3.0/OS 3.1 source-code).
>Then the question about RTG. I think it's unlikely that the MOS team
>would enter a "cooperation" where they are kept totally out of
>anything related to graphics. Can you see that happening? I can't. If
>you prefer the p96 people, then I'm sure it would be possible to
>achieve a cooperation. I don't see in what interest all the experience
>of the CGX people should be ignored, when they're there willing to
>participate.
You miss the point. If Fleecy says P96 needs to be used, that's what is going to be used. That's one of the privileges of ownership. The intent was to have the MorphOS people work on the low-level stuff and certain other OS functions with other parties like Hyperion doing other work.
>Then the power issue. Your opinion is that AInc should have total
>power because they own the name and some of the sourcecode. However,
>they won't pay for the development, so I think you're in for some
>trouble with this attitude.
Not really. A financially satisfactory solution was reached for all parties involved.
> If AInc orders Hyperion to do something that goes completely contrary to >Hyperion interests (let's say, they want to adopt a 3d system other than >Warp3d), would you accept that? I doubt.
Again, you miss the point. First of all, if somebody would come up with a better solution than Warp3D with more drivers available for it, we would certainly welcome that because frankly, doing drivers is boring and extending API's to keep track of new developments in 3D graphics boards is very demanding.
People complain that we need so much time to develop our games. What they forget (apart from the fact that we do a lot of contract-work) is that we always need to extend the available technology during development just to be able to do what we want to do.
Secondly, this question is again related to the ownership issue. If Amiga orders us to do something which runs contrary to our interests, ofcourse we won't do it.
That's not the point. The point is that if they do so, this does NOT give us the right to disregard their intellectual property rights and do whatever we feel like.
In closing, I agree with your ideas about how to solve the conflict of interest (I'm glad you understand there is one maybe somebody should explain the MorphOS team).
Unfortunately, this was one of the stumbling blocks with the proposed arrangement.
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