let's support Jeff! and prevent new sad stories...

[Christophe Lavarenne <Christophe.Lavarenne@xxxxxxxx>]

Jeff,

It's a shame that you are starving, with a budget of $1.25 a week.
Your efforts to promote Chuck's work, and your obstinacy to bear
your F21 to life, until your last resources, deserves a better lot.

It seems that I am not the only one here to think that you deserve a better
support than just a few (bank-hindered) sales, and to propose to sponsor you
directly, until you finalize a working F21-powered minimal board and are able
to live on selling it.  Where/how can I send you money from France?

We, all around the planet who are passionate with minimal Forth and who believe
in misc future, who are unsatisfied with the waste of resources organized by
wintel, who are even unsatisfied with the awkwardness of microcontrollers and
DSPs, who couldn't dream of such a simple/small/efficient piece of silicon as
F21, who expect to have a lot of fun playing with it and designing wonderful
applications thank's to it, will we let this possible dream become dust, will
we let Jeff starve longer, will we wait inactively for his agony?

No, we can't, or we couldn't look at ourselves in the mirror afterwards,
we couldn't forget that we have let another passionate down when he needed us,
and we would get then less pleasure at designing pretty software and hardware.

Each one who feels appealed by these words may find his own way to help Jeff,
to contribute to his success, that is to F21 commercial birth, provided, of
course, that Jeff accepts this contribution.  For our contribution, we will
get maybe nothing but the pride to have tried to push the F21 to a commercial
reality, and if we succeed, we'll have the fun to be the first to play with
real F21's, and to realise F21-powered applications.
I personnally don't expect more: my reward will be as much to finally be able
to ride an F21, as to know that other fellows have the same pleasure, and most
of all that Jeff can continue to live his dream that makes mine possible.

I just hope that Jeff is able to avoid to replicate the sad story that I had
with Chuck Moore and iTV.  Probably you'll disagree with my opinion about
Chuck, Jeff, maybe it's due to a deep, although not immediately visible,
cultural gap between the US and european ways of thinking human relationships,
maybe they didn't even tell you the last words of the story.  Here it is.


  Late 1994, the eighth P21 run was the first (almost) working, demonstrating
OKAD potentials, and Chuck was working on the F21 on a smaller 0.8u process.
Dr.Ting had almost exhausted his investment potential in the P21 and seemed
happy with his license to replicate and sell the P21, Chuck and Jeff were not
much richer.  Thank's to Jeff promoting misc on comp.lang.forth, I contacted
Chuck and proposed the financial support of a group of small French companies
selling alarm systems, among which a Forth-skilled company that I co-funded.
  With Chuck as associate, we funded a Californian company, and Chuck let us
believe for 2 years that custom chip design was accessible to small/medium
companies such as ours, and we've payed him in '95 and '96 (around $170,000)
to tune OKAD and the x21 family layouts, expecting in return a working v21 for
on-the-fly video processing for our alarm systems, with the ability to continue
to tune it to our needs.
  But in fact, Chuck defended "his own interest only", as he confessed
inadvertantly; he probably considered us just as a temporary source of funds
and of credibility, just the time for him to convince a national (US) company:
in '96, iTV came into play, wanting an i21 for a cheap set-top-box, looking for
big capital-riskers, spending lots of energy and money (not much for salaries,
isn't it Jeff?), submitting an i21 run every month.
  Chuck secretely sold the exclusivity of his technology to iTV, who had failed
with their set-top-box project and wanted to redirect their investment on
selling Chuck's technology.  Chuck pretended that he had a special agreement
in his (secret) contract with iTV to continue to work with us, but in fact iTV
only considered us as their obliged customer, although our investment in OKAD
was prior to their.  Until the last day, I thought that Chuck was manipulated
by iTV, but he knew what he was doing.
  And I couldn't imagine that Chuck is a nationalist, but in our last talk
(may97) he said I could "give away his technology to the french government",
that "french, as russians, are reputed for copying americans" and that
"anyway, De Gaulle had put France out of OTAN"...  A french proverb says:
"Want to get rid of your dog?  Accuse it of rage."
  Our association, and the company that supported it, didn't survive this
swindle; I lost everything I invested in it: my money, my time, my credibility
with my other associates for having encouraged them to support Chuck, and my
confidence in Chuck, that I used to admire for his Forth, stack machines, and
OKAD.  It's been a big disappointment, most of all about the human being Chuck.


Lloyd, it seems that you also know (have experienced?) some bits of that story.

Jeff, have you a special agreement with iTV, to escape their exclusiveness
(and appetite) if you finally succeed in bearing F21 to life and in selling it?
Have you a strong agreement with Chuck to continue to support your F21?

My level of motivation to support you will depend on a clear answer to these
two questions.  Even if a "no" to any or both questions make it hopeless for
the future of the F21, you still deserve immediate support for your total
investment in misc promotion for so many years.

Last but not least, are you considering me the same way that Chuck does?
I sincerely hope you don't, but if you do, please tell everybody clearly
at least who may be "friend" and who may not, to prevent new sad stories.

CL
--
PS: in advance, I apologize for my probable response time to questions or
    answers to this post, because I'm overloaded and have a family to feed.
--
email: Christophe.Lavarenne@inria.fr		tel: +33(0)1.39.63.55.80
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/who/~lavarenn		fax: +33(0)1.39.63.57.86
INRIA, Domaine de Voluceau Rocquencourt		Institut National de Recherche
B.P.105 - 78153 LE CHESNAY CEDEX FRANCE		en Informatique et Automatique

SynDEx, CAD tool for distributed, embedded, optimized real-time applications:
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