If Genesi owned the rights to Amiga IP

[bbrv]

Hi Ian, before it might have made since.  Now it does not.  We do not need OS4 or any of the trademarks.  We have our own "brand" now.  We want to promote this and this is our #1 focus.  For your information, the last serious conversation (if you can call it that) we had with Bill McEwen was in June 2001.  Bill wanted $20/unit license fee and a $100,000 up front payment, plus a dongle and we had to do all the work!  We said forget it and the rest is history.  We spoke briefly to Fleecy again face to face in London in April 2002.  At this point we understood the effort to combine the efforts was totally futile.  We decided to eliminate any cross-pollenation whatsoever.  We did.

In the meanwhile, we legally purchased a few hundred copies of OS 3.9 which if we wanted to we could bundle with the Pegasos -- just to put an Amiga label on the package.  Alternatively, we could have made a deal with Cloanto...this would have done the job too.  In the end, we decided against both approaches.

When OS4 is done we can analyse the situation then, but our inclination is that we do not have the time to do this.  Hyperion can do it if they want to.  They will need an installed base of users to sell their product.  The Pegasos "Community" could be a potential market for them.

For us, OS4 is no different than any flavor of Linux, BeOS or BSD.  To tell you the truth, NewOS is the most interesting of all of them.  Anyway, we will support Hyperion when they are ready.  The people that made what they are using now are part of Genesi, so eventually it would not surprise us if everyone is happy and gets along someday...

As to the other questions...the Q-Box is a long term development (years), but that will not stop someone from partitioning their hard drive and running multiple operating systems.  There are options already.  Some JIT works now and the Pegasos will do more things as time goes on.  Any good OS is "alive."  There is never a final product -- just evolution and hopefully improvement.

Hope that answers your question.

Sincerely,

Raquel and Bill

[amimonkey]

Thanks Bill. I'm glad at least one company can give a straightforward, honest answer.

So what is the current status of the Q-Box? Does it actually exist?

Thanks,

Ian

[catohagen]

we legally purchased a few hundred copies of OS 3.9 which if we wanted to we could bundle with the Pegasos -- just to put an Amiga label on the package.

Thers a way of buying OS3.9 illegaly ? Anyway, I dont understand how bundling OS3.9 with your package makes
it an "amiga" ?

They will need an installed base of users to sell their product. The Pegasos "Community" could be a potential market for them.

I thought the owners of AmigaOne _is_ their target for OS4, together with all the CSPPC and BPPC users.
Rumours around is that A1 at this point outsells pegasos
3x, i think that the Pegasos "Community" is a minority
compared to that.

The people that made what they are using now are part of Genesi

The people making OS3.x and some of the enhancements
of OS3.5 and 3.9 are part of Genesi ? I thought they are
working on OS4 ? (mostly thinking of Amidock, FFS2, roadshow, deficons,++)

[Kronos]

catohagen wrote:

Rumours around is that A1 at this point outsells pegasos 3x

And you believe THAT rumour ? Take a good look around, and if
you still think Eyetech has sold (including those just
ordered) more than 500 boards, it would seem that you are
in need of some reality-pills ....

This may change when OS4 finally runs on the A1, but that is still
sofar away that we aren't even allowed to speculate how far
away it is  :-o  :-P

The people that made what they are using now are part of Genesi

The people making OS3.x and some of the enhancements
of OS3.5 and 3.9 are part of Genesi ? I thought they are
working on OS4 ? (mostly thinking of Amidock, FFS2, roadshow, deficons,++)

and someohow I doubt that Bill was thinking about SW .....

[catohagen]

>And you believe THAT rumour ?

well, with all the rumours around, i thought
this rumour sounded most sane :-D

>and someohow I doubt that Bill was thinking about SW .....

oh, ofcource....i forgot about the hardware :-D
sorry about that..

[zacman]

>Rumours around is that A1 at this point outsells
>pegasos 3x

Really? Facts tell me, that ComputerCity have sold
more Pegasos than they have AmigaOne preorders.

PS: Michael Boehmer of E3B must be very very rich
if A1 sells so good

[mahen]

cato: it must depend on the places... Here in France, I know about 15/20 pegasos users, and 1 person who ordered and just received his A1.

Maybe it's different in other countries. In the USA probably ?

[sTix]

I'm not saying that I know that there's a lot of
A1's out there but the activity on the A1-mailingslists
is getting really high and if it will continue like the last
two weeks then my e-mail account will be flooded in
the next two weeks.

[IonDeluxe]

Well this does answer my question bbrv.

We have our own "brand" now. We want to promote this and this is our #1 focus.

The Genesi product is not an Amiga...it is a seperate product with a seperat OS that just happens to share some capabilities of the Amiga.

Bill wanted $20/unit license fee and a $100,000 up front payment, plus a dongle and we had to do all the work! We said forget it and the rest is history.

This does not seem excessive, the user ends up paying for it in the end anyway and if the consumer wanted a Genesi branded amiga I am sure they would pay for it.

When OS4 is done we can analyse the situation then, but our inclination is that we do not have the time to do this. Hyperion can do it if they want to. They will need an installed base of users to sell their product. The Pegasos "Community" could be a potential market for them.

This I don't think I get completely.Why would hyperion enter the hardware market?Or are you saying they might alter the OS4 software for use without a dongle?
Are you also saying that you may change your stance on this issue in the future?

One last question I have is: Why dont you promote your product as heavily on the Mac\linux user forums as you do in the Amiga forums?They have alot more users and one would think from this that they would have many more prospective customers to offer than Amiga.

[zacman]

>One last question I have is: Why dont you promote
>your product as heavily on the Mac\linux user
>forums as you do in the Amiga forums? They have
>alot more users and one would think from this that
>they would have many more prospective
>customers to offer than Amiga.

You might have noticed that Genesi was also
represented at several other non-Amiga fairs (from
small ones like BeGeistert (two times already) up to
the bigger ones like CES and CeBIT. Next non-Amiga
fair will be CeBIT Australia next weekend.

And yes, Genesi is also active in other forums, for
example at golem.de, osnews.com or slashdot.org.
There is also discussion about Pegasos in PPC
Linux forums (search google).

[sTix]

I recently read something about an attempt to port
AROS to the pegasos. Is there any chance that we
will see AROS on the A1? (a question that probably
millions (?) have asked before)

And another similar question: Is there any chance of
seeing Morphos on the A1? I read that Genesis were
depending on the sales of the pegasos in order to be
able to develop Morphos and in that perspective I
understand that they might not be so keen on porting
Morphos to other hardware. But hey! I believe that
there's quite alot of people who would be willing to
pay a descent amount of money for a port of
Morphos, atleast I would. But I guess it's not just
a question of meny is it? Which is a shame because
I'm really intressted in both AOS and Morphos and
I can't afford two HW-setups (which ofcourse also
is a shame :-D )

[KennyR]

The Genesi product is not an Amiga...it is a seperate product with a seperat OS that just happens to share some capabilities of the Amiga.

After Commodore died and took Amiga Tech with it, nothing new is an Amiga, even if you slap a boing ball sticker on the front of a PC or PPC. So there's no point in arguing semantics with this one - A1/OS4 is as far away from the original Amiga as Pegasos/MOS is, and that's a fact.

[sTix]

a question of meny?  :-o  :-D  :-P

[IonDeluxe]

@stix
I would like to see that too.I would like Genesi to have an AmigOne product.
@kennyr
Does not matter if you like it or not, AmigaOne is an Amiga. Just because it has changed hardware does not make it less so.It has the trademarks the IP and the copyrights, and\or the lisences required.

Using your reasoning a Mac is no longer a Mac, it is nothing like the classic Mac's.

Is there any chance that we
will see AROS on the A1?

If you send me an A1 board I'll port it for you! :-D

[sTix]

@mdma

Well, if I had lots of them I definitly would send
you one  :-D , in other words: if I were Eyetech
(although it doesn't seem like they have LOTS
of them  :-) I would, and a couple of them would
go to Genesis aswell,

Being generous is quite easy  :-D ,
but then, business is not my cup of tea  :-D