Phase5 news - pOS

[<Petr.Valek@vsp.cz>]

...sorry, trochu se to rozhodilo...

    phase 5 News

A statement about vendor cooperation and related issues
An open letter to the Amiga community by Wolf Dietrich

During the past months, many Amiga enthusiasts either asked us 
directly
or suggested in public decisions that companies which are interested 
in
the future of the Amiga and/or plan to develop products that should be
successors
of the Amiga technology should by all means cooperate to concentrate 
their
resources for the benefit of the Amiga. In some public discussions, 
it had
also been assumed that phase 5 digital products is generally not open 
for
cooperations with other Amiga vendors, such as the changing front-
runners
for buying the Amiga technology; some few even suspected that we 
would behave
arrogant or that we have a negative attitude against the future of 
the Amiga
or possible cooperations, what we feel feel sorry about as this is 
surely
not the case. I would like to take the chance to comment on these 
opinions.
phase 5 digital products was always open to share technology on a 
fair and
mutual basis with other vendors in the Amiga market. In our own 
interest
we have also been looking for cooperations with potential partners. 
As a
matter of fact, we are open to OEM cooperations as well as 
technological
cooperations with those companies who are interested in the future of 
the
Amiga and in the progress of Amiga technology or Amiga-like 
technology,
which can be supposed to replace the Amiga of today. However, we do 
follow
a certain vision, which we believe is the most innovative and Amiga-
like
concept, while others have a different idea which way to go. We have 
also
invested lots of efforts and money into our running projects and must
therefore
make sure that we continue to follow our goals and our business 
plans. Insofar
cooperations only make sense with partners who are heading into the 
same
direction, what will probably be seen the same way by other business
professionals.
I personally had only one contact with QuikPak on the Amiga Show in 
Toronto,
December 1996, where QuikPak helpfully supported us with A4000 Tower 
systems
for presentation purposes. I shortly met Mr. David Ziembicki and also 
Mr.
Dan Robinson, who informed me that QuikPak would be going to place a 
bid
for the Amiga. He also invited me - as well as many others - to a 
meeting
(should I say audience?) where QuikPak would be going to "listen what
you have to say", an attitude that can sound somehow familiar to 
everybody
who has followed the Amiga situation in the past 12 months. 
Unfortunately
I was unable to attend this meeting, and my request for a personal 
meeting
with Mr. Ziembicki and Mr. Robinson to discuss opportunities for 
cooperations
- which was one of my reasons to come to Toronto - was not responded. 
After
this, I never heard any word from QuikPak - no call, no fax, no email 
-
and therefore must assume that there is no interest in a cooperation. 
As
QuikPak indicated that they might be using Alpha processors and build 
systems
like portable Videotoaster boxes and Pentium-for-Amiga Plug Ins, I 
must
also assume at this time that our goals are quite different so that 
there
may not be a base for cooperation at all.
As ProDAD and the pOS development are concerned, we unfortunately 
have not
even seen a single byte of their pOS as of today, February 25, 1997. 
While
ProDAD in November 1996 received one of the first PowerUp Alpha 
Developer
boards, at no charge and without big NDA's and such stuff, and have 
full
access to all SW updates that are regularly provided, they for quite 
some
time tried to convince us committing ourselves to support pOS, without
providing
us even with a demo version up to now. We always had our own concepts 
for
the PowerUp OS integration, and we believe that we can't be blamed 
for not
committing to a new operating system which we had no chance to review 
or
evaluate. As for the ABOX, we believe that the demands for the 
functionality
and reliability of the OS will even be much greater; therefore, we 
are going
to use an OS kernel which will provide reliable, powerful and prooven
performance
with all functionality that is necessary for the future of computing.
We also would like to reinforce that statements which are given in 
public
discussions by persons who work for or at phase 5 digital products 
only
reflect these persons own opinion and not the companies opinion as 
long
as the statements are not confirmed officially by the management at 
phase
5 digital products. This is even more valid for logs of private 
communications
which are sometimes spreaded to the public. Here at phase 5 everybody 
does
have her/his own opinion and is encouraged to express it, even though 
this
sometimes may lead to misunderstandings. Therefore, we ask the Amiga 
community
always to refer to our official statements on our web site or in the 
print
magazines which are reflecting the companies official opinions, 
strategies
and goals.

Wolf Dietrich, General Manager of phase 5 digital products