Re: Virtual Repeater

[mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com>]

Stephen, you can't say things like     1, 2, and 3, are way off base.  without offering some insight into the situation... were you there? I respect that you do seem to know something about Peter Toms role than I did (actually I was disapointed to hear that he has no stake - coming back to this point****) It seems like that from the outside, which is where we are, what Jeff described is EXACTLY how it looked.. I know noting of 3 different owners (well I do - but it hardly excuses them from a customer point of view) They have a very great product but its is a very poor brand, or BECAME a very poor brand I should say.

I can see that as a real lover of Repeater Stephen, you want to applaud their achievements rather than trash them, and I agree. 

*** So who DOES have any stake inthe remains, who currently owns the software, either the Hardware OS... Or Any virtual Repeater...?

Does ANYONE have the answer to this??? Who OWNS the software??? It must be someone who wants to earn back a bit of cash surely?

Mark

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:09 AM, S V G <vsyevolod@yahoo.com> wrote:

 Jeff wrote:
 <<If it was "almost ready" then
it doesn't take hundreds or even tens of thousands of dollars to
finish and distribute.  If you've got programmers committed to the
project they'll make it happen.  Sales weren't going to give Adam and
the other two principals a nice salary but what the heck, get it out
there and recoup at least some of your expenses.>>

    Makes sense, though we'll probably never know enough of the story to even make an informed opinion.

 <<This is of course pure speculation but something is fishy.  Some
likely possibilities:

1) They never had anything and did the classic vaporware play hoping
   for an enthusiastic response they didn't get.

2) They grossly underestimated how hard it was going to be to
   port firmware designed for custom hardware to a general
   computer OS with all the associated UI, performance,
   plugin hosting, and latency issues.  It wasn't even half done.

3) They outsourced the development to relatively disinterested
   programmers with no financial stake in the product's success.
   Once the contractor money dried up, there was no one left
   that knew how to finish it.

4) There were really almost done but ugly internal politics
   shelved the project and the code rights now reside
   with one of the principals that doesn't know what to
   do with it.>>

    1, 2, and 3, are way off base.  I don't know if 4 is close or not.  I do know that they would have finished it and sold it if there were any possible way to do it.  Without going into any kind of speculation here on this marvelous Interweb, I will say that's it's pretty much all a moot point.  It's not available for sale, nor is it available for an outside person to 'finish up'.


    And to address a few other points that others brought up, no Peter Toms has no stake in the company, nor does he currently have any control over the sale of the OS software.  He only has a stockpile of parts and is one of the few repair shops that actually owns schematics to the entire line.

    There were three different owners (or groups of owners) of the Electrix brand.  Each one failed to communicate well with the public, though to lump them into one large group is to miss the individual characteristics that each owner (or group of owners) brought to the table.  Each one had a different style of communicating with Peter Toms, some more readily available, some not so much.  None of them did well with the public side, though they weren't connected with each other, nor was there a master plan passed down from tribe to tribe to keep the rest of us in the dark...

    I still have three of them, they serve me quite well, and though I've owned (and still own) several other types of loopers, nothing does it for me (and my style) as well as the Repeater.  May its creators know that they are appreciated...

    Stephen

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