Fleecy responds to criticisms about Amiga Inc Link
Posted on 02-Nov-2001 01:21 GMT

Fleecy Moss explains the troubles and issues regarding their PR/information policies and regarding AmigaOne/OS 4.x development.

"regarding publicity, we initially took the very sensible decision to not announce anything until something was ready. This worked well for a few months until we were innundated with rumours, misinformation and angry complaints from the community that they wanted to know what was going on. We then tried to let people know what was going on, but no business anywhere can publish details of business projects, schedules, delays and problems. Unfortunately, everytime a show came upon us, we were faced with the situation of having a lot of people wanting information and there being no information that we could really give. Trapped between wanting to only give pertinent information and being asked to give all the information, we could only give peeks, and the danger with that, as Gary pointed out is that it both never tells the whole story, and people will fill in between the lines.

I am not making excuses, but a bit of insight into our situation may at least explain.

As to the idea that there has been no work on OS4, that is rubbish. The AmigaOne board itself has had lots of work done on it, not to the point where it could be released on the 3rd Nov, but enough to have it ready to ship early next year. For OS4, we have been planning, and work has been going on - anyone who has tested the new stack and file system will know that.

Eyetech, Hyperion, H&P and many other groups and individuals have been working on OS4 in many different capacities over the last several months. That it has not come together as we had hoped for when we had hoped is due to many reasons, and I cannot share them with you.

However, I will give you the same answer I gave the companies who sent us emails saying that we have obviously given up on the AmigaOS, so why don't we just let them take it over?

The AmigaOS is crucial to the future of Amiga Inc and with improving resources and revenue streams now appearing, it will get the attention that this importance warrants.

I don't enjoy sitting here typing this email to you on Windows, with Outlook crashing every day or two. I want to be doing it in Yam on my AmigaOne with OS4.0. Unfortunately things don't always go the way you want them to when you want them.

I have personally been very quiet for the last few months because I firmly believe not saying anything until we have something to say is the right way forwards. This doesn't mean nothing is going on, far from it, but what it means is that you, the community get a blank wall. Magazines and websites get no news, people think the Amiga is dead, and the worst is assumed.

The St Louis announcement stating Nov 3 was just such an example. At that time, everything looked good for that date. No malice or misinformation was intended. Once the difficult times engulfed the computer world, and us with it, we were very conscious of not wanting to get into a monthly 'boxer like' announcement of more delays.

We should have made a single statement when we knew for sure that we could not hit those dates, but it would have been of the form. 'Work is progressing but it will not ready on Nov 3' That in itself gives no dates, but how would that go down?

I am not trying to be flippant here, just trying to share some of the problems we have in giving out any information." (A1 mailing list)

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