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On 01/19/2017 07:15 PM, Merlin Büge wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jan 2017 11:58:03 -0600 Timothy Pearson tpearson@raptorengineering.com wrote:
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Sorry to revive an old thread, but as many of you are aware Minifree (Leah Rowe) contracted with us to port the KCMA-D8 and release it. We performed this work and the KCMA-D8 continues to operate, however Minifree has decided not to pay their contract on this work. We strongly recommend that no person do any business with Minifree or its founder Leah Rowe, as they do not honor their legally binding contracts.
I see that my mail does belong to this list as little as this ^
However, I just want to remind you folks that there's always two sides to a story. I've seen a lot of badmouthing of Leah, especially the last few hours in IRC etc... questionable, to say the least.
So, before you make up your mind, also listen to the other side.
Thanks,
Merlin
Since you state that the criticism is questionable, can you please indicate where you disagree with said criticism? As you say there are two sides to any story, and I have not presented a clear picture of our side for the sake of brevity and not wanting to drag the list along for the ride.
It comes down to a simple contract non-payment; no dissatisfaction with our work was registered until today when I was informed that the KCMA-D8 contract would not be paid. These contracts were originally signed back in 2015 and the goal was to make all of these systems available for sale to the community; functional sources were given to Rowe early 2016 but sadly Minifree did not list them for sale until late 2016. By that time the market had shifted further and, partially due to the ongoing controversy regarding Libreboot and the FSF, we observed a very public refusal to support Minifree further. Instead of honoring the debt incurred as part of this business opportunity, Rowe simply decided to walk away from it.
Rowe also does not have the knowledge or authority required to comment on our internal development processes regarding the KCMA-D8, including time taken, effort expended, and overall cost. The KCMA-D8 is not a trivial port in the sense of, for instance, the T400 to T500 conversion; a quick glance at the coreboot GIT repository, noting the logs referring to the C32 socket (the socket used on the KCMA-D8), will indicate that there was DDR3 initialization work required to get the KCMA-D8 operational and stabilized, in addition to handling the new layout and modified components of the mainboard itself. Our quote was fully in line with industry standards for the type of work performed.
I don't want to go into further detail on this list; this is our side and really all you need to know.
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com