First off, I appologize for writing a thesis here, but it's hard not to in response to this communication from Amiga Inc.
In recent weeks, our being quiet has been interpreted as weakness or an open invitation to attempt harming our business relationships and opportunities with partners and customers.
I've been suspicious about your quietness because of this:
http://www.amigaweb.net/index.php?function=view_news&id=612 and what seems to be a lack of answers for so long. I'm not sure which questions from those offered were chosen to be sent, but I think we're still waiting for answers there...
Some people are also untrusting of Amiga Inc. because of things that Mr. McEwen has said to us, and who we know about they claim to be working with.
We've been told that "every" (McEwen's quotes) inquiry to Amiga Inc's defined technology licensing email address to learn abotu licensing OS4 for hardware porting was answered. I sent a number of such emails to that defined contact address and never received any response of any kind whatsoever. No questionairre about my employer's revenues or anything else said to have been part of that. Nothing. At all. Period. We've seen others posting here that they tried contacting Amiga Inc. inquiring about a 3rd-party Pegasos license to port OS4 to Pegasos but they never got any resposnes either. So I do not believe Mr. McEwen's claim there to be true.
He also chose to work with a hardware vendor that has earned itself a poor reputation with many members of the Amiga community. Numerous failed deadlines spanning across years of delays, complete and total lack of proof that anything claimed to exist does, and holding users' AmigaOne machines and money against their will for years insteaad of just returning them if he can't find time to work on them. Heck, even Helgis has begun to show cracks in his unbreakable faith in this.
Amiga Inc. left the Amiga community feeling neglected for quite a few years. Especially when you gave us special contacts to discuss business dealings and then ignored them. Sorry, but you've earned a good bit of our distaste through your own actions. Partnering with another "company" that has also earned itself a less than ideal reputation in these circles did nothing to help you rebuild your own. You can't blame everything on Hyperion. Hyperion told us to get an OS4 license before we could talk seriously with them about such things, and you ignored a number of people that tried to do the right thing. Perhaps your OS4 revenues wouldn't be so zero if you'd actually been willing to do OS4 business, not making us feel like that offer was a total sham. I honestly do not believe these claims of 3rd party OEM/ODM discussions.
Claims that DiscreteFX's inquiry to purchase Amiga Inc. were not bona fide, you'll have to do some mroe convincing there as well. Very few of us see any significant value in Amiga Inc. these days. I don't know or care how many rounds of venture capital you've been seeking out, or how much cash that may be. An offer to purchase is largely based on what the item purchased is seen to be worth. Look around us. The public us long forgotten what Amiga is. A number of people I work with never did know it to begin with. People laugh at us for still being interested in that, telling us we should let that dead horse alone and move on. That does not inspire significant brand value in my opinion. What I can perceive in brand value has shrunk since Commodore, since Escom, since Gateway, Amino, Amiga Washington, itec/Kmos/Amiga Delaware. The Kent thing has surely done nothing but weaken the brand and cause a number of people to hold a grudge against "Amiga", further devaluing the brand and company. There's no current revenue stream from AmigaOS, for anyone that I know of. Considering your current reputation with the nanoscopic potential market for your only known product, I'm sorry, but it's hard to imagine Amiga Inc. being worth much of anything. You may feel you're worth a heck of a lot, but realize that many observers are laughing at you and strongly disagree.
For years, most of us have seen you as nothing more than someone that must provide a license allowing other companies to do what we want done, and we a;so see you as refusing to do that much. You've shown us that you aren't even willing to do nothing mroe than cash a royalty check every now and then, else why have you avoided such responsibilities so thoroughly?
You tell us here that the independent OS4 contractors need not worry about their IP rights, how many of these people have you contacted to reassure them, discuss re-licensing their work yourself, or even to ask just what the heck is their current deal with Hyperion in order for your supposed offer to pay all outstanding balances to be seen as remotely legitimate? While my contribution may not be core or critical to OS4, I haven't heard from you about that... Who of the OS4 development crew HAS heard anything from Amiga Inc to discuss their work and OS4 asfter the lawsuit? Anyone? Anything at all? If not, then McEwen needs to stop preaching to us here and DO SOMETHING.
If Amiga Inc. wants to rebuild its reputation hre and its relationship with this community, you need to do more than come in here and tell us we're wrong to support the only company we've seen doing anything at all with Amiga stuff. (Most of us here do not consider DE or Anywhere to be "Amiga stuff") We've not seen you doing anything for or with us for a very long time. Last we saw that was, in OUR opinion, Amiga related, was your announcement of the SAM440 board last year, which I think a lot of people were confused to see that deal go south.
What about the rebates and coupons? We were promised these by Bill McEwen of Amiga Inc. What does Bill McEwen of Amiga Inc. intend to do abotu those today. Many believe the $50 offer on ACK's boards for that coupon is a sham, as they believe the ACK boards it is based on are a sham. If ACK fails, then we're still out our $50. And then what of the $100 rebates for AmigaOne/OS4 for buying the AmigaDE PartyPacks? I bought both the Linux and Windows flavors of that, and Bill McEwen's promises owe me $250 total. What of that will I ever see? After all these years, I've resigned myself to believing I've been defrauded. Stop preaching to me and convince me that Amiga Inc. and/or Bill McEwen's word is worth anything today, because I myself place very little value on those.
I'm not saying that everyone other than Amiga Inc. is perfect. We've seen complaints about Hyperion's old hardware repair service, and we all know how well they have met the OS4 scheduling from days past. But they did eventually release something, and something relevant at that. Regardless of imperfection, they've been seen to do something, anything at all, and that's more than we've observed from Amiga Inc. DO something, and preferrably something on-topic in OUR opinion.
Anyway... Amiga Inc needs to begin rebuilding its relationship with we the community. That's going to require effort, discussion, and real results, not lectures and unfulfilled promises, from you or your new partners. People in the community have demanded proof of any of ACK's products for years. Why not encourage that to happen, lest we continue to believe it is all complete B.S.? Why not begin some dialog with the OS4 contractors about their work, and making sure you will have any legal right to distribute it should you win your lawsuit?
You don't have to share all your business secrets with the community, but you do have to start acknowledging our existence, talk to us, work with us, and earn our respect and trust back. You can't continue to stay quiet, and if you do then we'll continue to believe you're mostly irrelevant. Your post here may be a first step in rebuilding relationships, lets hope so. Now, go answer those questions from amigaweb that you promised to do a few months ago. And don't just go away again, because we have lost patience with you, and very few remaining Amiga fans care to chase after you these days. If you want us, if you want our respect, our trust, then start earning it. This task is on your shoulders, not ours.
Thank you for your time and patience in all that.
