Valid Arguments: There are some valid arguments that have been posted to this list IF you use the assumption that Amiga Inc. is "holding out" information on you guys. In truth, we have set some very tough delivery schedules for ourselves and we are determined to adhere as closely as we can to these schedules. Dates may change, surprises like early deliveries or added value products may well happen. We rule nothing out. From this list, suggestions are taken as they arrive and are talked about internally. We added a manual from suggestions here early on. Everything was going to be .pdf's or readme's only. Our "last minute surprise" at the Nuess show seems to have backfired and rather than people saying "Wow, 5 months to an SDK", some of you have gotten upset over the surprise. Keep in mind that our ACTUAL delivery date is posted as the 19th through the 21st. There are some people here who are German dealers who might tell you that at the last minute they were still sending inquiries as to whether or not we would make the surprise happen as we did. I am not sure if Bill even got the SDK's at the very start of the show as we were doing tracing on the shipment at the time he was supposed to already have them in hand. Information Delivery: Our "mode of general delivery of information" to developers will be from our mailing lists and from the amigadev.net site. Users will have info posted to amigadev.com. User groups will see their info posted to amigadev.org. We may also post some of the same info to amiga.com That will be done on a case by case basis as the com site is the corporate site and some information will be designed to be more support specific. Links are being set now to the sites I just mentioned from the amiga.com site. Because of legalities, some information will not go on the support sites until we have the proper statements from attorneys and since we have been making changes to how we intend to aggregate information for you and us, these statements have just recently changed. I met with attorneys just yesterday to go over the changes. I should have statements in hand as soon as they can get them to me next week. We also have promised openly and more than once, that no general announcements would be made by us until and unless set in concrete. On this list, we have violated that promise a few times (the change from NVidia to Matrox was one such pre-announcement). The Amiga community especially and other communities represented here have been lied to and led along for too many years already. So, yes, we are hesitant to release info until we know we will deliver. Had we been positive of the surprise at Nuess a few weeks ago, we would have announced a few weeks ago. I hope this clears the air a little better. I will be happy to pre-release information, but we do not intend to release things we are not sure we can make happen. If you see pre-release info, understand that it may well change. We are a development company 5 months into concept, design, and delivery. License Fees and Support Fees: We intend to open source a lot of things for open source programmers who wish to participate in our Dream. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the open source community who wants to work with us. We want their help as well. We intend to let them shine and show what they can do with as few restraints as possible, where we can. Open Source developers will pay no license fees, no certification fees, and will be treated with all the support we can give them for free. Any open source software, drivers, tools will be so designated when certified by us. Commercial developers (and our users) must be protected from errant software and poor coding. Licensing helps do that as does certification. Remember that IF the license fee is 10% and you make nothing, you pay nothing but your software is still licensed and certified. We do not think a commercial developer will be hurt by any normal industry licensing or support fees they elect to opt into. If the system is good and the software is good, people will buy it from you. We think it is important for users to know what software has been designed and certified to run on their systems and believe that this will enhance rather than hurt sales. Privacy Information: We are having, as I stated earlier, new privacy, copy right, trade mark, and license statements made for the web site. I just obtained a ruling that allows us to accept faxed NDA's as legal documents so this has been taken care of. Amiga Inc. paid millions of dollars for the trade marks, copy rights, licenses, etc. We do intend to protect them to the fullest extent possible. This does NOT however mean that we intend to force normal support sites or users who have Amiga news sites to pay money. But they will have to follow standard, legal, trade mark and copyright provisions, licensing included. Our protectionist stance also allows us greater leverage in closing down sites which might pirate commercial developer applications and allows us to protect what we have paid millions of dollars for. I think Bill and I have made our intentions clear on this matter in several forums. The MAC (NIC) address is being used by us as a means of getting developers registered to our dev site so that we can have databases of information that will help YOU find developmental help, beta testers, programming partners, and maybe other areas of assistance for developers. We will also ask user groups to log into a database so users anywhere can locate the nearest user groups. Users buying registered developer software will have a place to log their purchases if they so choose so that registered developers can readily check for comments and suggestions much easier than they can now. We do NOT intend to sell or distribute this information. Our sole purpose is to assist you do a better job at merchandising and finding the help and assistance you need to become profitable regardless of the size of your company. Amiga Inc. Surprises: While we have schedules we will be announcing and adhering to as closely as humanly possible, look for some surprises from us from time to time. These surprises are not designed to disenfranchise anyone. They are designed to create excitement and energy and to show all of you that we are not standing still. We reserve the right to make these surprises happen when we can without pre-notice to anyone. We will also be posting calls from our internal development group to this and other lists as well as to the support site. These calls (like the audio call a day ago or so) will be to allow any of you with talents in a particular area to participate by contract (in most cases) with building the Dream we all have. Some of these calls will be covered under NDA and others will be totally open source calls. We will make sure you know which it is when we make them. We want participation, not lock-outs of as many of you as possible. General Information/Sales Information: All sales related information should be sent directly to randy@amiga.com All general information requests should be sent to friend@amiga.com, developer@amiga.com, or direct to me or my support staff. We are seeking a Marcom/PR type person who will begin handling some of the requests once on board. If you know of anyone with experience in this area, send them to us please. Support Sites: The basic design of the support sites is what you see there now. Amazing as it seems, we received one complaint and the balance of respondents liked the new style. I will be lightening the header color and darkening the text but these are the only changes we have been asked to make. You will begin seeing more structure and information happening with the support sites late this weekend and next week. There is a lot of work to do there. So, please, bear with us as we try to make them as easy to navigate for you as possible with as much text content as possible. Support email addresses for things which should not be on the list: Gary Peake Director Support gary@amiga.com Gotz Ohnesorge Support and Research gotz@amiga.com Ray Akey Support and IT rakey@amiga.com Jonas Gustavsson Support and 3D/64 bit jonas@amiga.com Hope some of this helps ... Sincerely, --- Gary Peake gary@amiga.com Director Support Amiga Inc. 425-386-5660 ext 233 425-396-5671 fax The Amiga Dream Team --