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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!wupost!csus.edu!netcom.com!netcomsv!cruzio!aki
- From: aki@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us
- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer
- Subject: Re: Why you should get everything in writing (long)
- Message-ID: <4900@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jan 93 11:54:49 PST
- References: <4870@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us> <1993Jan10.065318.8344@netcom.com>
- Sender: aki@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us
- Reply-To: aki@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us
- Lines: 53
-
- In article <1993Jan10.065318.8344@netcom.com>, stewarta@netcom.com (Alex Stewart) writes:
- > Sorry, I guess I missed that bit of your followup posting. And "contract" is,
- > admittedly, not the right word.
- >
- > There are, however, still some people that don't get my point:
- >
- > aki@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us wrote:
- > : [some of my points listed here]
- >
- > Exactly what do you expect IBM to do? As I see it, there are two ways that
- > IBM could have handled this differently:
- >
- > 1) They could have been prescient and known that this guy was going to give
- > out wrong information before he did.
- > 2) They could have broken copyright law and given out the source code and been
- > sued by Microsoft.
- >
- > If you can manage to make either of these options reasonable alternatives, then
- > I'll start listening.
-
-
- I guess you are just pretty much unimaginative. In the world of PR
- it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do _SOMETHING_. Here
- is just a few that I could think of in a minute:
-
- 1) Call Cain, say I'm sorry but this can't work. Give him the PS/2
- which would make him happier (at a cost of $500 for the PS/2 thats
- no loss for IBM)
- 2) Talk with the guys at Microsoft, maybe even with Cain in conference
- and ask for the code (if this truly is the problem)
- 3) Tell Cain whom to talk to at Microsoft for getting the code
- 4) Offer alternatives to the code, say an other driver that IBM does
- have the rights to.
- 5) Assign a person to help Cain in producing the required code
- without the framework; you can have a person telling Cain the
- essence of the code even if you can't give him a copy of it.
- 6) Make a public statement saying how sorry I am for my mistake
- and talk about how much everyone has learned from it
- 7) If it truly is Microsoft's fault, tell the world that because
- Microsoft's restrictive practices caused Mr. Cain's problem.
-
- If you ask me, I'd go with point #1 if _NO_ code truly can't be
- released (especially since Mr. Cain brought it up). By default I
- prefer #4 and give him the source to anything that was based on
- driver source he wanted... IBM is sure to have SOME code that it
- owns and not Microsoft. If nothing else, do a NDA with Mr. Cain.
- All the other stuff is for turning negative PR to positive.
-
- Aki.
-
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