🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark Perew (perew@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com) wrote:
: Given this profile of our customer base I sincerely doubt that this relatively
: minor fiasco over the use of LZW in the GIF spec will cost Unisys any
: noticable amount of market share.

I disagree. What Unisys has done is annoy a large portion of the computing
community. Unisys relies on that community for new staff and new
business. As a result Unisys will find that less people will want to work
for them (and, hence, proportionally less of the talented candidates will
apply for jobs at Unisys). The people in other companies who specify what
products to buy are often the technical staff and they will now have a
resistance to investing in Unisys products in future. More long term,
though, the people who are upset now by Unisys' actions are going to be the
managing directors and strategists of companies in a few years time (many
of them already are). These are people that might have a profound affect on
Unisys' future profitability.

Your message is another demonstration of how large companies refuse to look
beyond the end of their own nose. Your naive short term outlook does you no
credit. You might learn a lot by observing the long-term outlook of your
far-eastern competitors.

: There is no such effect.  Unisys has already announced that existing
: applications will not be require a license for using LZW.

This, at least, is true. However, this obvious attempt at back-peddling
isn't going to fool many people. The damage is done my friend.

FloYd
______________________________________________________________________________
FloYd         +44(0)61 223 1301 x2389       _|_             floyd@wg.icl.co.uk
John Arnold   My views, not ICLs       _____(x)_____  floyd@mail.on-line.co.uk