🚀 go-pugleaf

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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