Theo de Raadt says Pegasos Bad

[hirschma]

takemehomegrandma wrote:
(Someone actually registered a new account here on amiga.org just to
bring us this "news item". I find this somewhat interesting. And
touching. An "exodus individual" that has come back home perhaps? ;-))

I guess I could be called an exodus individual - I ran a business on Amigas back in the '80s/'90s. Put myself though school doing graphics for local car dealership commercials.

I'd love to have a new Amiga platform - hell, I'm toying with the idea of recreating my old Amiga desktop - but the Pegasos was particularly interesting to me since I'm a big OpenBSD supporter - and Genesi identifies it as one of their major OS's.

So, when someone that I greatly respect, and who is widely respected, for his OS work, I figured it was newsworthy. Yes, Theo De Raadt may be consider an a-hole by a lot of folks, but he's smart, he's dealt with all the weirdness of the PC world, he's accomplished a lot - and when he makes such charges, I think that we all should at least take note. He's earned that much, IMO.

I wouldn't read much more into it. I'm not affiliated with any of the pretenders to the Amiga throne. I just like cool computing.

Jonathan

[iamaboringperson]

In any case, I am quite confident that there are almost NO WORKING machines in existance -- and we've got some mail that makes that clear. Apparently there are only a handful of working G4 cpus in North America...

Oh, give us a break!

No working machines in existance? I have an old peg-1 right here, and I'll be getting a peg II real soon. (And I know plenty of others in existance)


Just a FUD spreader.

[Batman]

@iamaboringperson

Theo de Raadt is not the kind of person who spreads FUD for the sake of it.  :-(

[kgrach]

Quick comment here that is probably going to cause me to get attacked.

But here is my comment take it any way you want.

This thread is about Theo BSD and Pegasos boards.

So why has so many people on this posting gone out of their way to drag Mai and AI into this when they have NOTHING at all to do with this.

So my suggestion is talk about how great your platform is.
 leave the mud slinging to the Politicians.
It is not needed or appreciated by anyone.


maybe some people here see conspiracies because they think about what they have done and what they are doing now.

A dishonest person trust's no one.

Kgrach

[iamaboringperson]

BTW, if Linux can be ported to the thing, I see no reason why BSD can't be ported. :-)

[JKD]

"So why has so many people on this posting gone out of their way to drag Mai and AI into this when they have NOTHING at all to do with this."

I think people (myself included) were trying to speculate on the cause for dis-satisfaction as no-one could reconcile the functionality opinion with their experience.

"So my suggestion is talk about how great your platform is.
leave the mud slinging to the Politicians."

Well, as the thread started with flamebait of almost troll like proportions why are you surprised?

"It is not needed or appreciated by anyone. "

Actually....you are dead wrong on this unfortunately, there's a vocal quantity of people who find it both necessary and fun  :-(

Every single person on here has an agenda, some are out there up front, some aren't ... some are more sinister than others...lets not forget this plus the old classic 'opinions are like arseholes...'

Have a better day,

Steve

[deichert]

JKD wrote:
SNIP
Back on topoc = I thought BSD was integral to the ShopIP Guardian product...so this guy could be important, at least to that effort?

Steve

The last thing I'd heard was that ShopIP was looking at other hardware besides Pegasos.

Wow, I never thought e-mail from me on the misc@openbsd list would get linked from an Amiga site.  Hmmm, where to start, there was more to the relationship between Genesi and OpenBSD besides Genesi loaning the OpenBSD project a couple of boards.  So if you can't provide a developer the docs required to provide kernel support for the ENTIRE board then why did you commision them in the first place?  Oh and who needs GigNIC support, what a bloody stupid question.

The OpenBSD requirement that they not sign NDA's to get access to programming info is very well documented, that is if you're tuned in to the OpenBSD world.

To this day I can not send e-mail to the genesi-usa domain from my work, it always bounces.  I always have to go through bbrv.

Too be very honest I wish everything worked the way it was supposed to.  I had this great idea for a small PPC cluster using the Peg2 boards using OpenBSD, but alas ....

[gary_c]

If I were Genesi, I'd consider this a very important problem to deal with. I wouldn't know how to resolve the issue of the Marvell NDA, but at least Genesi should let it be known that they're a serious hardware vendor and should correct the misleading picture that some important developers may have now. Genesi should work on improving the information flow to and from developers, it should make damn sure email isn't bouncing from any of its offices, and where changes need to be made, they should be.

If there are issues with Peg II hardware or firmware that preclude OpenBSD support, Genesi should proactively outline them, to avoid situations like this. It seems otherwise it will be impossible to win the confidense of outside coders.

Well, it's easy to make suggestions like this in hindsight, but there've been communication and organizational problems with Genesi on various levels since the beginning, so something like this breakdown isn't exactly a huge surprise. The important thing is to make constructive use of it: fix what's broken internally, correct outside impressions that are inaccurate, etc. Just my two cents' worth.

-- gary_c

[Floid]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

I have a hard time understanding his issues here. As an OS programmer
he should not be unfamiliar with the fact that different firmware has
different characteristics, and certainly he must have seen changes
made in firmware before? What's the fuss about?

I'm going to assume Theo is really down on the hardware world right now, having just burnt bridges with Sun over excessive NDAing... IIRC, they used to be his favorite.

As for the unreachable documentation for the Gigabit Ethernet, which
is one of the main features of the Pegasos board, this could certainly
be frustrating, but hey, it's only one feature after all. Frustrating,
 yes, but it should not be a reason to get so upset on a personal
level to such a degree to write a public letter in this tone! And why
would a compiled binary file (for that feature only) be so bad?

1. OpenBSD.  You'd trust the security of your suitcase nuke to someone else's binary?

2. You can't "Linuxulate" a kernel module.  Someone offered OpenBSD binaries?

"More closed than PC", yeah right. Why so impatient?

It'd be nice to know what exactly in the firmware cheesed him off.

As for Genesi's finances, corporate structure, and the price of the
motherboard, heck, what does that has to do with anything? He is an OS
programmer!

Open source guys often get paid, or at least they try to.  Maybe he's trigger happy with startup_wanting_OS_for_free after losing the ARPA grant last year... Or maybe Rahn's gotten into some sort of 'difference of opinion?'

---

Edit:  I should note that, even if I'm a bit grumpy at the predictability of it all... Well, gary_c said it.  Pegasos doesn't appear any deader than BSD, yet, but it's a wake-up call that was going to have to come sooner or later.

[Waccoon]

Looks like more politics.  From the small bits I've read off his website, Theo seems pretty stubborn and independent.  Such is not a good example of a good programmer.

I urge everyone to spread the news far and wide that the Pegasos powerpc platform vendor ... is quite simply, a con-artist company.

Give us some proof, first.  Requesting people to spread FUD is not good practice.  This first sentence alone destroys his credibility, IMO.

the machines are SLOW and will be expensive

How can you say "the machines" are slow in the present tense, and say they will be expensive?  Either they are or they aren't.

In time, Dale or I may post some mail to show what has really gone on between them and us.

Better sooner than later if Theo doesn't want to look like a total jerk.

In any case, I am quite confident that there are almost NO WORKING machines in existance -- and we've got some mail that makes that clear

Which, of course, cannot be made public for any number of reasons... including the fact that this guy is all too willing to call a company a fraud long before any rational evidence has been compiled.

I sure wouldn't take this guy seriously, no matter how much code he writes.

[itix]

I mailed Theo de Raadt and got reply today. I can understand his attitude.

In my opinion it is up to Genesi to fix this situation now. If MorphOS developers had to work in similar fashion would it work? I doubt...

[CodeSmith]

Theo seems pretty stubborn and independent. Such is not a good example of a good programmer.

I beg to differ.  For example, Fabio is a pain in the ass to have a discussion with (being very "stubborn and independent"), but I have a lot of respect for his programming abilities; his work on Aros speaks for itself.  I think Theo is a very similar sort of person.

About the licensing issues with BSD, I for one am not at all surprised.  If Bill Buck didn't want to license the AmigaOS, why would he want to license some Unix variant?  I think he's generally averse to licensing anything.

[gary_c]

Dale Rahn has posted his side of the story at ann.lu (http://ann.lu/detail.cgi?category=news&file=1080281455.msg). Anyway, I assume it's really him; certainly seems authentic. I've spoken up for Genesi in the past because I think their intentions are good, and they have in fact gotten products out, but this kind of situation is really hard to take. First, the apparent obstinance or indifference of bplan and others that don't let outside developers have the information they need. And also the gall to not only not pay a guy but not be forthcoming about things, and even to try to charge for boards that were supposed to be -- I thought -- provided without charge for the porting work.

I think things have to be straightened out if Genesi intends to continue to do business. (And before "the other side" jumps in to further take advantage, let me just say that I still think Genesi management is well-intentioned but just screws up badly on the details, or those working under them do. And anybody supporting a platform that was secretly sold 11 months ago really has no basis for throwing stones about management integrity anyway IMHO, so I'd suggest not getting into things on that level.)

But there's definitely a lot of work to do to build trust on all sides, so let's see what happens. Just my two cents' worth, written impulsively after reading Dale Rahn's post.

-- gary_c

[Jope]

itix wrote:
I mailed Theo de Raadt and got reply today. I can understand his attitude.

Same here.

However, I still stand by my previous statement that he should have worded himself differently + points go down for arrogance and exaggeration..

Now I just get why he's ticked off, as the story has unfolded a tiny bit.

I hope Theo releases what he was talking about in the posting, I'd like to see how he was treated.

Ah, how I so love my classic Amigas. NO company politics can make or break them any more.. Who can kill a dead platform again. :-D

[DaveP]

And before "the other side" jumps in to further take advantage, let me just say that I still think Genesi management is well-intentioned but just screws up badly on the details, or those working under them do.
( snip attempt to deflect criticism and take pot shots at Amiga Inc )

Gary

I have said similar about intentions of Amiga Inc in the past and gotten liberally flamed for it. I suspect you will get treated differently by the people that flamed me, but I do hope that people on the red side show a bit more class and restrain themselves from reacting in a similar way to this litany of unpaid employees speaking out as others have in the past.

Now is the time to see what we can rescue from this situation, namely MorphOS and Pegasos.

Dave.

[Floid]

CodeSmith wrote:

About the licensing issues with BSD, I for one am not at all surprised.  If Bill Buck didn't want to license the AmigaOS, why would he want to license some Unix variant?  I think he's generally averse to licensing anything.

You don't have to license BSD.  You just have to get it written in the first place.