Original C=USA Style: Threaten and Apologize: OS News Episode Sept 2010

Source 1  Source 2  Source 3

Act 1: OS News reports C=USA existence, thanks to Amiga Inc

http://www.osnews.com/story/23753/Commodore_Gets_Rights_to_Amiga_Hyperion_Takes_Legal_Action

 Commodore Gets Rights to Amiga, Hyperion Takes Legal Action

posted by Thom Holwerda on Wed 1st Sep 2010 12:57 UTC, submitted by poundsmack

Just when you thought the Amiga world was finally getting its act together, finally making things a little less obtuse for outsiders, this happens. So, we have the AmigaOne X1000 coming up, a brand-new PowerPC computer, running the real deal – AmigaOS 4. In the meantime, Commodore USA – the one with the sketchy website – has apparently secured rights to the Amiga hardware brand, and is planning to release Amiga-branded computers running AROS. In the meantime, Hyperion, the Belgium company behind AmigaOS, who is working with A-eon on the AmigaOne X1000, claims this is a clear violation of the settlement between them and Amiga Inc., and has notified its US lawyers.Commodore USA sent out a press release yesterday in which they state they’ve reached an agreement with Bill McEwen of Amiga, Inc. (one of the two companies named Amiga) in which Commodore USA may use the Amiga hardware brand on computers running AROS, the open source Amiga-inspired operating system.“We are ecstatic to be partnering with Amiga Inc. in this new, exciting product launch,“ states Barry Altman, President and CEO of Commodore USA, „The legacy of the Commodore and Amiga trademark brand, reunited once again after so many years, and our reintroduction of the legendary All-In-One computer keyboard form factor, combined with the twenty-five year anniversary of the introduction of the first Amiga computer by Commodore International, is a once in a lifetime opportunity.“My first thought was – wait, doesn’t this violate the settlement agreement between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion, which finally settled all the legal mumbo-jumbo in the Amiga world? It appears Hyperion believes that this is indeed a violation, and as such, they have asked their lawyers in the US to investigate the matter.

„Our American lawyers will take action against this,“ Hyperion states, „This is blatant violation of the rights Hyperion Entertainment secured in the settlement agreement with Amiga Inc., Itec and Amino.“

The facts here are that if there’s two companies I would blindly trust in the Amiga world, it’s Hyperion and ACube. These are the only two companies that have kept their promises and delivered actual working products we can buy today. Everyone else – including A-eon (until they ship the X1000) – are fair game.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that my initial distrust of this Commodore USA thing was more than justified. Their website (shoddy doesn’t even begin to describe it), their rebranded products, their unilateral press releases which can’t be confirmed anywhere else but on their site… It all reeks of a massive con. Are their products even shipping, after months of promises?

Unless proven otherwise, I’m assuming for now that Commodore USA is, at best, a hoax, and at worst, a very inept con. They are properly registered as an LLC, though.

Act 2: Barron responds

http://www.osnews.com/story/23756/Commodore_USA_Threatens_OSNews_with_Legal_Action

 Commodore USA Threatens OSNews with Legal Action

posted by Thom Holwerda on Wed 1st Sep 2010 20:24 UTC

Well, this was rather unexpected. As it turns out, Commodore USA’s CEO Barry Altman isn’t particularly pleased about the article I wrote earlier today in which I placed a considerable amount of scepticism with regards to Commodore USA and its business (and website). He (not his lawyer) sent us a threatening email demanding we take down the article, post a new correction article, the whole shebang. The entire email – as an image, you’ll want the original formatting – after the break. Our reply? We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.

Act 3: Apologies

http://www.osnews.com/story/23993/Commodore_USA_s_CEO_Retracts_Legal_Threat_Apologises

 Commodore USA’s CEO Retracts Legal Threat, Apologises

posted by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Nov 2010 21:22 UTC

A little over two months ago, OSNews had a bit of a run-in with Commodore USA’s CEO, about how I felt about the company and its rather dubious business practices. This led to alegal threat we laughed away here at OSNews, but laughable or not, a legal threat is a legal threat, and it never sat well with me that it was never retracted or apologised for. Well, that changed today.I received this statement today from Barry Altman, Commodore USA’s CEO.

Like many forum members, tech writers, and people in general, who sometimes react to statements in an inappropriate manner, I would like to:

1. retract the idiotic legal threat
2. apologize for the legal threat
3. ship something

Certainly a phone call would be considered appropriate before you print something, so you can have all the facts before determining your position.

The three points above came from me – before I would even be open towards changing my position on Commodore USA, the idiotic [my words] legal threat had to be retracted and an apology had to be made. The last point, about shipping something, refers to the fact that I believe Commodore USA should actually ship something as well.

My original opinion of Commodore USA, the opinion that started all this nonsense, still stands, and nothing has happened between then and now to soften that position (in fact, the threat only made it worse). We’ll have to see what the future brings, but in all honesty, I don’t have high hopes at this point.

Still, that silly threat has been retracted and apologised for, and that’s something I’m very happy with. No matter how silly it was, having a legal threat hover above your head simply isn’t something I particularly like.

Advertisement

Tom Wright`s C=USA in Conclusion

User info AW Net source

 

I was honestly on the fence about CUSA in the beginning. When they released the C64x, I had some real faith in them because the breadbox was very cool looking. Even though it didn’t run anything „Amiga“ OS-wise, it didn’t bother me because it looked like a C64. When they came out stating that these were going to be Linux specific machines, I was actually a bit excited because honestly, I’m a big Linux fan. I pictured something like System 76 who is loved and embrassed by the Linux community and often gives back with Open-Source drivers and such.

As of recently however, and after really looking at this Amiga Mini thing and their A1000 (sorta clone), and also after seeing how Barry responds to his customers on his own forum (blasting them and then kicking them off), I see no hope for this company. I actually feel sorry for Leo because I think his heart is in the right place… hell maybe Barry’s is also but he’s just so brash and angry toward customers and potential customers that it makes him incredibly unlikable.

…but the point of this post is to talk about why they fail so miserably as a computer company.

Operating System:
Again, I’m a huge Linux fan, so CUSA choosing Linux as an OS seemed like a great idea to me. Linux today very much reminds me of Amiga in 1990. It’s a great OS that runs circles around Windows in almost every way and the Open Source movement is just amazing. From Makerbots to Ubuntu and Blender, I truely believe that Open Source is the future of technology because we don’t have to rely on giant, multi-billion dollar companies to make product and software decisions for us anymore (but that’s another soapbox).

So CUSA release „Commodore OS“. What? You made your own distro? How bold! How exciting! How…. wait a second, this is Linux Mint.. not only is this Linux Mint but it’s a really crappy version of Linux Mint. There is a reason we have a software Package Manager in Mint… it’s because if you add all the software in the distro, it becomes crazy unruly in size and install and people won’t use 90% of the software anyway. Also, adding ALL the bells and whistles in Compiz is just obnoxious. What makes distros like Mint so cool is that you get to customize it to your workflow. All the COS distro does it take Linux Mint with Compiz and turns on all the fluff (which most adults tend to avoid).

It would be much better to use Mint or Ubuntu as they are but with support… real support like System 76 does. Make drivers and software to support your hardware and of course, make it Open Source. That’s the power of that community. If you don’t support Open Source then don’t even bother using Linux…. you’ll just be seen as someone taking advantage of the „Free“ part which is not the point of Open Source. It’s „Free“ as in Freedom!

Commodore-Amiga.org
Once again, I’m going to talk about freedom. Claiming to be a supporter of Open Source software and then having an extremely censored forum to post on goes against everything that Open Source stands for. Commodore-Amiga.org is the China of open forums. It is regulated with an iron fist. Any post questioning the decision of CUSA tends to be quickly locked or deleted and people involved tend to just „disappear“ from the forum.

There is something else that bothers me about the forum. It is the least active Amiga forum that I visit (by far)… which makes me seriously question the user stats (the number of online people there). Are they making those numbers up? I bet there aren’t 3 posts a day on that forum yet it shows hundreds of onlookers. Is this accurate? I have no idea but it is strange and this company has been known to fudge things in the past.

One of the craziest things about the forum is reading Barry’s replies to customers. I don’t think he understands that these people are the people that are going to make or break his business because he treats them with a kind of distain I’ve never seen from a business owner before. Does Barry think that having a Steve Jobs personality is going to make him a successful business owner? I’m not sure but it’s quite disturbing.

Commodore Amiga Mini
I don’t even know what to say about this product. It feels like CUSA believes that any product with the name „Commodore Amiga“ will sell well no matter what it is or how much it will cost. Don’t they read the posts people make in the news forums? How can they see this as a successful venture? I just don’t understand.

CUSA Self Image
CUSA tries so hard to make themselves look legitimate that they end up looking foolish. We’ve seen this MANY times now. Why try and make yourselves out to be something you are not unless you are purposely trying to mislead customers. Is this in fact what they are attempting to do or is this Barry saying „I’m big and important“? I don’t understand the need to be perceived as a large corporation. There is nothing wrong with being small… it’s actually very popular to be small and hip in the tech industry right now. The only result of their attempt to deceive is to be seen as deceptive.

Chances of Survival
At current course, not a snowball’s chance in hell. I can see no way that this company will be embrassed by anyone other than the incredibly niave. Unless they make drastic changes to their business plan (and quickly), I predict that they will be completely gone within 5 years.

I realize that people have been talking about CUSA for awhile now but I tend to not read those threads because people get emotional about anything Amiga and I wanted to come to my own conclusion about this particular company… so I’m sorry if this is a repeat of what others have said. I am non-partial to any Amiga camp at the moment (I do not consider CUSA as an Amiga Camp by the way… only AOS, MOS and Aros). I actually feel that all the current Amiga camps act with great poise and professionalism when it comes to business and customers. I’m very impressed with them.

Published with a permission of author

CommodoreOS Beta 9 is Mint … C=OS Fusion is MINT 13 that you can download and install free at 1GHz PC 1GB

8:10 to learn how to steal from MINT, 8:50 to see why people say its not AMIGA … and why there is no video 3?

Download real MINT now at no cost! Works on all Laps, PeeCees and is really supported

x86 32 bit and x64 unlike C=OS elitist x64

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

 

PPC

http://mintppc.org/

ARM soon come!

One love from Serbia!

And how do they respect MINT dem a steal, pirates and lowlifes!

Hi,

They contacted us and we talked about a partnership initially. Then we didn’t hear from them anymore so we assumed they weren’t interested in doing anything with us.

We’re still happy to see our OS used by others and I don’t think there’s any problems in regards to licensing. It’s just a missed opportunity for them and for us to establish what would have been a very good partnership.

Regards,

Clement Lefebvre

——-

There has been much criticism of the company CUSA because of its hype and claims of creating a „new operating system for our computers“ and then simply skinning an existing linux distribution. Critics of CUSA and several linux experts have stated that COS development time has been less than 2 weeks time to write some scripts and replace standard mint graphics files with their own

CommodoreOS Beta 9 uses AROS Kickstart

Another episode in „Abuse someone elses work““, this time AROS Barron has previously spitted on.

Added C64 ROMs and AROS ROMs for Amiga emulation (The ROMs are not 100% compatibile but are close). The C64 and AMIGA emulation are now launched full screen. If clicking on a C64 game does not work you may need to tweak your emulator settings to enable either full screen or windowed playback.

Another point well taken: they will just abuse someone elses work and never countribute even by bounty. What they would do if there was no Debian, MINT and AROS? Make a Windows free software under Commodore Windows with blessings from M$?

and I do remember they promised partnership with Amiga Forever, but instead they installed ripp Amiga Forever „“feature“
http://www.commodore-amiga.org/en/fo…-the-community

Note: Amiga Fover is oldest legal Amiga  emulation package for Windows and Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Forever

AROS Kickstart bounty is result of a lot of work and bounties CUSA hasnt contributed 1$

http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/5

http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/6

Might not be ilegall, but is immoral

Another Big Ausie Liar`s lie

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=35684&forum=33&start=60&viewmode=flat&order=0#664554

And just to elaborate on my response. Cloanto just wanted to know if we were including their product in Commodore OS and wanted an explanation of what we were doing.
They were fine with it once they realised we weren’t including their product, and in fact were promoting their product to Commodore enthusiasts.

One day dem a partners with Cloanto, other day Amiga Inc can give dem ROMs, third day thieves and liars

And yes … InI forgot Leo`s stance on AROS

Sent: 1-Nov-2010 8:04:08

---

to BigBentheAussie

Quote:

OK, you could donate 1$ or 10$, 100$ if your Commodore USA Amiga`s are going to use AudioHD since driver would benefit you too and you would have it in several months waiting for others to give their contrib (like AresOne does)

We are still on the fence regarding AROS because we are waiting to hear back from A Inc’s lawyers regarding Hyperion’s threats. They’re taking their time.
We won’t be releasing any Amigas until next year so we’re in no rush.
We are not going to spend a single cent until we know where we stand, what we can do, and what we can’t do.
The drivers therefore ARE NO BENEFIT to us until we are 100% sure we’re not going to be sued.
On top of that, given the the many months of negotiation regarding this driver with Stephen, where he attempted to play us, and then brag to everyone that he nearly did, and you can see that we have less than zero intention of bowing to his ransom demands.
Demanding us to spend our money on a community that has shown such open hostility towards us is not the way for you or the community to get what they want.
This is political, and I guess it is something you cannot recognise from your armchair analysis of the situation.
Look at it from the eyes of a company that is attempting to be more than a backyard operation and you will see that there must be absolute certainty regarding all things because the stakes are too high.
This amount was a drop in the bucket of what we were prepared to spend to attempt to raise the status of AROS to that of a mainstream OS.
The reaction because we didn’t jump when the self appointed kings of AROS demanded we should does not exactly instill us with confidence in investing in AROS.
We don’t like the direction these people are pushing AROS nor the IP issues they are hell-bent on creating in future.
And based on their behavior to date and the various threats they have made we certainly don’t want to work with them.
Maybe you haven’t seen the nonsense we’ve had to put up with both publicly and in private.
Our will to try and accommodate the community regarding AROS is steadily declining.
The community doesn’t buy anything anyway, and is so fragmented it’s a lost cause.
The AROS community should be trying to gain our support rather than just annoying us, because our support would have been FTW!!!
They’ve looked a gift horse in the mouth.

Special guest: original Leos Triple boot promise

Barry: the Cable guy – an fake Amigan background

Aside bussiness is also furniture
http://www.homecraft.us/vanity_about_vanity.html

Style of website also indicates similarities with original CUSA website (the sketchy one)

Interview where he first speaks of love for Amiga and than spits on it, WARNING EXTENSIVE PROPAGANDA

Click to access CEOCommodoreUSAInterview.pdf

Official bio
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Corporate.aspx
Barry S. Altman is the President and CEO of Commodore USA, LLC, B. Altman & Co. and Homecraft, LLC, all headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Spanning a 25 year career in the bleeding-edge electronics and satellite / space telecommunications industry, Mr. Altman founded and served as CEO & President of Cabletech Satellite Systems, Inc., U.S. Cable Technology, Inc., The Cabletech Satellite Network and United Broadcasting Co.

This group of companies have built cable television head ends for cable companies throughout the United States, and have designed and constructed the uplink network operation centers for such companies as Viacom International, Warner Amex, Viacom and MTV Networks.. They directed and produced the domestic satellite telemetry downlink for the Live Aid concert for MTV, which was at that time the largest world wide deployment of a live satellite television broadcast. Cabletech has designed and installed systems for Grumman Aerospace, The United Nations, government and private industry, and over 45,000 TVRO C& Ku band satellite systems for consumers nationwide. Cabletech was a developmental partner with General Motors & Hughes Communications in the small aperture DBS system that later became DirecTv.

And back to his past …

 

Follow Barry on Tweeter

Follow Barry C64 on Twitter

Great CommodoreOS support for their free Mint Beta

• Commodore OS Vision is available for free download by the general public.
• Commodore OS Vision is beta software under continual development and improvement.
• There are no warranties whatsoever regarding its usage or applicability for any purpose.
• The focus is entirely on the system working well on Commodore hardware and usage on other systems may vary.
• Commodore OS Vision is 64-bit software only, to make the most of the latest technology.
• Commodore classic ROMs are provided with our machines or purchased media only (coming soon).

And only purchasers of CUSA machine can even be beta testers officially, even everyone in fact is beta tester.

They plan to sell it and have just imagined CommodoreOS FUSION  …. no body knows what it is, another Tesla weapon

Btw, Mint 11 and Debian Wheezy can be installed on amigaOne boards and they are final and more advanced

Complete parody

http://sinclair-uk.weebly.com/sinclair-os.html

SinclairOS 2.0  Astigmatism beta 49.857

We are pleased to make available to the entire world, Sinclair OS 2.0 Astigmatism (currently and always in beta, it’s an excuse for it not working right).Screenshots will be uploaded shortly.Astigmatism is an optical defect in which vision is blurred due to the inability of the optics of the eye to focus a point object into a sharp focused image on the retina., when downloaded burn the .iso file to a CD and boot, it’s easy.  the root password is sinclairuk, there is no password for the user account named fanboy.The software is supplied with no warranty and only supported (not really) on official SinclairUK hardware but you are free to try it out on any x86 compatible computer at your own risk.It really is a real bona fide working linux live cd created just for this site and can really be used, no install necessary.Click download and enter your email address to receive a link for the file (close the advert that opens, don’t worry, it’s safe)
Downloador  download using bittorrent, click the link below, load the .torrent file into your favourite bittorrent client.

sinclairos_astigmatism.torrent

Download File

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Introducing Sinclair OS

Sinclair OS Beta booting.

Sinclair OS is a community driven Linux distribution for Sinclair enthusiasts that is designed to unleash your creative potential as well as enjoy your computing experience to the fullest. Sinclair computers were well known for their text based operating environments, so we seek to do the same, by providing a distinctive, ugly, primitive and frustrating operating system experience. Intended for pre-installation on all future Sinclair hardware, Sinclair OS comes pre-loaded with dozens of the latest and greatest productivity, creativity  and education software the open source world has to offer. Featuring dozens of exciting  games, the latest web browsing technology, a Microsoft Word compatible Office Suite, advanced graphical manipulation programs, 3D raytracing software, advanced software development tools and languages, photo and movie editing and sound and music composition programs, there is no task too big or too small for our new Sinclair computer to accomplish.Feeling nostalgic? Sinclair OS will provide functionality that will allow it to be classic Sinclair compatible, with integrated features to launch classic 8-bit era software via emulation easily. Games and demos for the Sinclair Spectrum, ZX80, ZX81 and QL  can be launched effortlessly. No need to bother with cassette tapes or microdrives, as many games can be legally puchased and downloaded from the internet directly on to your computer.All the computers we sell come with a version of Ubuntu and Canonical can be contacted for software support since we don’t know how it works. Our machines are also capable of running Microsoft Windows (sold separately). Windows can be launched either from a multi boot menu at startup (installed by Sinclair OS), or seamlessly integrated within Sinclair OS itself. This flexibility allows you to easily access the strengths of each operating system installed on your new Sinclair machine.To create the authentic sinclair experience, Sinclair OS is based on Ubuntu with the graphical user interface removed and only the text console for input, we have also changed the colour scheme to black on white just like the old machines.Nearly all features mentioned above are what we eventually plan to have available in SinclairOS and may not be available in the currently released versions mainly due to us not knowing what we are doing and possibly not having the rights to use roms for the emulators but it’s still SinclairOS so shut up.See below for a video showing a beta version of our new Sinclair Brasso web browser that makes every web site look like it would on an original spectrum (it’s not real, we found it on youtube and liked the idea so decided to use it to make us look like we’re capable of doing useful things). 

Sad thing: Amigans supporting fake Amiga company

1) Fake Commodore Amiga domain owned by CommodoreUSA

Nothing to do with real Amigas, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS with extreme censorship

Every criticism or anything Amiga related get deleted and users get banned for it

Other faked Amiga resources owned by CUSA

CommodoreUSA Web Page

Commodore USA Facebook

CommodoreUSA Twitter

CommodoreUSA You Tube

CommodoreUSA forums

All under EXTREME censorship!

2) DiscreetFX hosts Barron interview where everything Amiga is sipitted on, all the brave ideas of innovation

3) AmigaWorld.net has Amiga Inc discussions in basement and tolerates their promo

4)  CommodoreUSA Wiki page we fight for less propaganda (also: Talk page, COS page)

5) Amiga4be fake Amigan pages You Tube and Blog

6) Example of CUSA threating people that expose the truth

7) List of C=USA promoters that rarely do help AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS and yet claiming to be Amigans

8) Barry Tweets

Follow Barry on Tweeter

Follow Barry C64 on Twitter

As opposed to Real Amiga resources