Billsey,
I am hard-pressed to see what you are seeing as regards "truth" or "crowd-pleasing". Or the "fluff" that someone else mentioned, either. This is not Amiga Inc talking publicly about going to IPO when it was clearly illegal. This is not a company asking for handouts or community "good will".
Neither is it especially about the post-CBM Amiga community, which clearly can not sustain resellers or developers or publishers.
This is about building business relationships that can place product in a larger world. That means that Genesi needs strong partners with some common vision who can leverage their understanding, connections, and finance. Genesi can only do so much of this in-house, and one might view the GLADIATEUR thread to see some examples of what much of this statement is talking about.
Genesi is not asking for mercy sex because they don't have the cred to get anything real going (which is the approach we have seen all too often in this neighborhood for years). How crowd-pleasing is it, really, to ask that anyone who can contribute in the expanded definition of DEVELOPER begin to think of a larger world in BUSINESSLIKE terms, and to stretch out their expectations of themselves and their abilities? How crowd pleasing is it to mention much of what is said there? ... We are talking some ambitious planning and work, and stepping beyond the comfortable, the secure (a security that has been largely based on low expectations and ultimately failure), and the known.
And with that comes risk, and the need to think past noble failure in the Amiga marketplace that comes with just making an app and expecting to sell a few copies. Larger projects with wider scope built on realistic understanding of the markets and the opportunities and risks are needed for anyone to truly enjoy a long-term future.
Genesi is saying where it wants to go, and offering others a clue on how to participate for bigger stakes. There is no "don't worry be happy" here. The rewards mentioned do not come from simply sending some money. It comes from participation at a very ambitious level, and one needs to grok fully the implications to have a shot at succeeding.
BBRV's statement is not especially geared for people who want to play armchair analyst. It is for people who might consider participating at any level, and so they might understand a larger picture - one that ups the risk but also widens the field of opportunities.
As for PROFITABLE, I've said it all along: Genesi is planning for a long campaign wherein selling a thousand or few boards has little to do with success - unless you are putting those boards into more useful hands, they are wasted. The so-called Amiga market will never matter unless it is tied into a larger view of computing. Which means rethinking what methods to COMPETE are available, and what technology itself implies about the future.
I don't expect that everybody will really see those implications since the field up to now is riddled with failures of vision and commitment, and because people tend to think that what they are familiar with is all there really is to the future - only thinking that the future will be faster and cheaper.
Well, it takes all kinds of development to support this kind of a roadmap that BBRV is presenting, so I expect that developers of all levels can find something to do on a large number of OSes and distros that will satisfy them, and all of it will contribute to the larger picture.
But people who have the ambition to go farther will likely help redfine the context and the geography. I think BBRV and Genesi are working on that angle and already have some partners to get this rolling. These people rightfully understand that the way it is right now is NOT ENOUGH, or they are convinced that the risk of their financial alliance is well-considered. Again, see the GLADIATEUR threads to get an example of the synergy of partners we are looking for.
