bill mcewen amiwest interview

[System]

in this video clip (mpeg, 9megs), bill mcewen addresses the problem with amithlon and amigaxl.

anyone who would like to mirror this clip, please do!

[Hammer]

A rough transcript for this clip.
Keys
INV = Interviewer
BMC = Bill Mc’Ewen
==========================================

INV: A wonderful product that could just, make wonderful inroads into the community and others outside the community, was just a bitter war, what is going with on with that and can you tell anybody out there.

(Overlapping)

BMC: Well. Sure,

INV: Is it resolve?

BMC: No

INV: this is not resolve yet

BMC: this is just bunch of nonsense, it just pisses me off. This is one frustrating stuff  I have to deal with on a daily basis, the childish. I will like a dad so often with this people and () children. It is very frustrating.

We were negotiating a deal with a group, would I call the “Amiga x86”, they call it Amithlon, Ah

We were moving with those contracts, at same token you have Hagen Partner showing of another product, we knew nothing about.  That they developing on their own. And there was great concern that this would split the community by have two separate offering. Then there are those who felt Amiga shouldn’t offer x86 product because it was going to disrupt what was going on out there.      

And so what we did, we work out a deal with the folks… Bernie and their group, so they could do a deal with Hagen Partner. So you can have a finish solution with both products in there. We negotiate the contact in earnest, we work it out what we though it amicable agreement and it was not signed.    

???product got there at shipping, ??has not signed.

(White flash)
Bernie happens to notify me, he got rid of his other partners because they had not delivered the ??code to him. And He wanted to know IF he could have a licence directly. And the answer is; of course he is.

We don’t have licence with other people, A licence is available; what’s interesting is that he executed the exact same licence while the other guys didn’t.

This is how, It’s clean, it’s no rocket science here, you ship we get X and thank you very much.  

INV: So Bernie can legitimately develop this

BMC: Yes

INV: and we have a tangible product out there,

BMC: Yep

INV: they could build Amiga x86 systems, and, and that’s going to happen now.    

My understanding, there are some health issues occurred for Bernie, back in Australia, but he has a signed. In fact he was so worried about have signatures, just making sure he was so legal, He wouldn’t accept just the Fax.  

We had to express him the original signatures on the contract and he would trun around to express them back to us.

End of section 1… I may post section 2 later in the day.
==========================================

[Coder]

According to Bill in that video, Bernie has a legal status concerning Amithlon 2. He can ship it without worrying about being not legal. But it is not shipping. And that is too bad. And then you have the others claming Bernie is doing illegal stuff and he cannot release Amithlon 2.

I also recall some words of Bill saying that people think Amiga is poor in money and are afraid of being sued. But that is not true according to Bill.

Coder

[bhoggett]

@Coder

Two points:

- Amiga Inc is just one of the license providers to Amithlon 2.0. Since there is no problem with their license, I think it safe to assume that the delay is caused by one of the other license providers. Bill's comments were only about his end of the deal.

- 01/09/2002. I think Bill made it plain in his speech as to the significance of that date.

[cecilia]

I was at AmiWest and saw version 2 of "amithlon" (it's getting a new name).
it's in beta and is just getting cleaned up. you don't want an unfinished product, do you?

I'm just as impatient to get this because I want one too!

btw, I suggested to everyone who would listen that they should call it "cecilia's new computer", but people mostly laughed.
I think it's a good name!  

(I think all new Amigas should have girls' names. after all, Amiga means 'girlfriend')

[Valan]

Hi Cecilia,
Nice idea. I
 have 3 direct cousins called Cecilia and 1 Celia. Another one won't urt.
Although if Amiga is girlfriend then my machine ought to be called Vivian.

[bhoggett]

@cecilia

I was at AmiWest and saw version 2 of "amithlon" (it's getting a new name).

OK. First, let me state that I've had no confirmation from Bernie about any name change, and he would be the one to make that decision at the end of the day.

Any name change would have one of two reasons: legal or marketing. Changing the name for marketing reasons would have both positive and negative aspects.

(NOTE: Thanks to Lasse for the new avatar. I thought I ought to be prepared, just in case)
:-)

Incidentally, if there is a name change, I can't think of a worse choice than calling it "Amiga x86". The "Amiga" part would make it dependent on someone else's trademark, and the "x86" part tends to bring a certain section of the Amiga community out in a rash. Let's not go there...

it's in beta and is just getting cleaned up. you don't want an unfinished product, do you?

I can't speak for the version Todd had, but there is a finished version - it was 2 days from release, remember?

If the name is changed, some cosmetic work will be needed to adapt to that, at both code and visual level.

The delay is not really down to the name change, or the coding not being finished. Please take what the website says about it literally.

btw, I suggested to everyone who would listen that they should call it "cecilia's new computer", but people mostly laughed.

 :-D

(I think all new Amigas should have girls' names. after all, Amiga means 'girlfriend')

If Bernie does decide to name it after his girlfriend, it might make up for being overly grumpy for the last few months.
 ;-)

[newbee]

Sorry I disagree on one point:

Incidentally, if there is a name change, I can't think of a worse choice than calling it "Amiga x86".

I like the name AmigaX86 becouse it describes clearly what it is and what platform it runs on.

I also claim some bragging rights cos I posted that as a suggestion elsewhere:
Look under "Newbee" for my first referance to AmigaX86

P.S can someone talk Bernie into re-naming the AMithlon as it is a hard name to pronounce, perhaps with the Amiga Licensing deal it can use a more "Amiga" name like AmigaX86

Perhaps Amiga are now taking feedback from their community :-)

I think that it is a "win/win" sceneraio for Amiga (read my post to see why I think that way)

Regards
Darren

[System]

(I think all new Amigas should have girls' names. after all, Amiga means 'girlfriend')

amiga means female friend