🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan9.080229.26489@netcom.com>, stewarta@netcom.com (Alex Stewart) writes:
> 
> All in all, this whole thing was quite unfortunate all round, but blaming IBM
> for all of it seems to me to be both completely pointless and wrong.
> 
> And the point about a written contract was a good one.  As it appears to me,
> one guy at IBM was giving out wrong information.  The red tape of a written
> contract would have confirmed that what Bob wanted was, in fact, not possible.
> He wouldn't have gotten the contract, would have been told the problem right
> out, and would have been spared a great deal of expense.
> 


I'm not going to argue about who was right, who was wrong, and who
can be blamed for what happened to Mr. Cain.  However,  I will make
a few observations.

First of all, every person that I told about this case, was surprised.
Some wouldn't believe that IBM would let such a public relations fiasco
go that far.  Don't the guys at IBM KNOW how IMPORTANT invidual
software developers are??  Out of Windows software over HALF was
made by startups of less than 5 persons. If OS/2 is ever to become
anything more than a shadow of Windows,  it better stack every card
it can find in its favor.  Right now IBM just sent a clear message
to every code cruncher on this planet:  "Don't trust us."

It can be argued that this whole affair is the result of an individual
at IBM.  However,  I would like to point out that no matter what the
company,  the employer is, if not legally,  then morally responsible
for promises made by employees.  Besides,  none of the bad-IBM-PR
hunting journalists I talked to gave the notion of "just an
employees fault" more than a split-second of their time.  When will
IBM learn:  if you are big, everyone will be looking for reasons to
pick on you.  Of course this does give IBM an excellent opportunity
to fix the damage,  if it can do so quickly enough. (any VP's reading
this looking for brownie points??).

Comments?

Aki.

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