Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 750 from 2003/2/14
From: Earth
@azazlin -- That was a good attempt, but for the sake of accuracy we will now edit your post as appropriate:
So from reading lots of threads this is the situation sketch:
1) bplan had Pretory and Thendic-France (100% subsidiary of Pretory) to generate revenue through development contracts. Thendic-France was a customer of bplan and had an agreement to preform as the worldwide sales and marketing organization for the Pegasos. Thendic-France bought and resold Pegasos machines. Then, it is discovered by bbrv that Pretory appears
through a sub-contractor to be funding illegal activity and potentially even terrorists. bbrv report their suspicions to the FBI and the French Police. bbrv take back over Pretory as they controlled the Board of Directors (this took time) and clean it. Unfortunately, the decision was still made by the French Government to close the Company. bbrv cooperated with the proper authorities as required. bbrv had started Pretory in 1997 after they left VisCorp and had funded it through Pretory USA since inception. They were two of the three founders of the Company. The plan was to have Genesi purchase all the assets of Thendic-France to compensate Pretory for the investment made in Thendic-France, but this became impossible because Thendic-France was also forced to close because it was part of Pretory.
2) After Pretory and Thendic-France there was little money generated to pay non-employees -- only the sale of Pegasos machines generated revenue and this was not even enough to fund the production of the Pegasos which must still be financed by bbrv. So where could funds be raised? From what entity? bplan? Genesi Sarl? Genesi-USA? bbrv were spending their personal money.
3) A choice was made to only keep the relevant parts of the business operational to prevent the whole effort from going bankrupt. Almost all external things are on hold (many people external to Genesi were still paid to do things or for things that had been done: Andre Siegel (now considered an insider), Martin Bloom, David Gerber, Jacek Piszczek, Andreas Magerl, Christian Kemp, OSNews, PPCNUX, Felix Schwarz, Treveur Bretaudiere, David Holm, Gunne Steen, etc.)
4) (No deals fell off -- this was before) A sale is finally made to one of the PowerPC producers. Their focus was on Linux. As expected in business, this requires investment (to produce machines) and payment comes 60-90 days AFTER delivery of the complete systems which also have to be assembled and financed. To make the machines (hard drive, memory, cases, PS, graphics cards, shipping testing, etc.) most of the money is used. There is not much money to pay external developers.
5) As of late last week, Genesi has been paid for 98% of all machines delivered. It took longer than expected because the customer made a small error in their accounting system. They took two weeks longer than expected on one payment and a few days on another.
6) External workers are waiting on their money. bbrv have made it clear since January 2004 that there may not be more money and that they would do the best they could. This was the only "promise" that they would do their best to pay any amounts owed -- even debts from Thendic-France -- but this depends on the survival of the company. bbrv continue to finance bplan and the team still working. The required amounts are STILL in excess of the profits made from the sale of machines.
7) Some external workers are unhappy about the situation and want money. "They have a family to support as well and bills to pay" (Which ones are those that have families to support? Most of the developers in question live with their parents, nevertheless, they still need to earn a living which is why we suggested everyone go find work in January 2004.). They have not shown CVS logs about their work though, so it is hard for Genesi to see what they have done. Also Genesi had been in survival mode, and deemed this to be a lower priority.
8) Comments were thrown first from ONE developer and then this created a need to respond. Of course this is not a good thing. I do not believe both parties want this, so a sense of calm would be best so the parties can still negotiate.
We tried the first day afterwards and have terms with Stefan, but will not do anything until a 1.5 release date is set.Resolve would be that as soon as Genesi has resources, that developers of MorphOS show their CVS log to Genesi, get paid in part and deliver binaries, get paid in full and deliver sources as well. Both sides should drop their claims once this is done and continue working on their projects professionally and forget what has happened and make clear appointments on how things like this will go in the future, and hopefully the interest in MOS 1.5 will attract more users.
That sounds good, but Genesi will not pay for months of idleness. Genesi will only pay for results. There were no contracts and we have seen no proof that any work was done. Certainly, something was done from people like Jacek, Harry, Grzegorz, Michal and others. So we ask and have some reports. We want more and we want to set a release date for 1.5.Note I am in no way affiliated with any of these people, but I read so many different threads I think it would be useful for others to have a summary. Note that most of my summary is one of statements by BBRV, I did not see many (any?) posts by the developers of MorphOS but tried to read between the lines.
It was a good attempt. Nothing we are posting is without the complete knowledge of Ralph. He is trying to sort out a solution. We hope he finds one.Hope it gets resolved professionally by both parties (forget any grudges and make clear appointments), because I want a nice Pegasos 3 with a dual core processor, MorphOS 1.5 and MUI/Ambient, not some other thing.
We do too![Edited azalin's post by bbrv]
[ Edited by bbrv on 2004/11/21 15:10 ]
Targhan