From: gordonl@microsoft.com (Gordon Letwin)
Subject: Re: Open letter to Gordon Letwin (long)
Date: 12 Oct 92 20:46:00 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Oct7.231511.157@physc1.byu.edu> robertson@physc1.byu.edu writes:
>
>  Additionally, I read with concern when Mr. Letwin wrote about
>  IBM's strong arm tatics, but since the public response from an
>  IBM lawyer asking for addtional information about the allegations
>  has gone unanswered for many weeks.  This failure to respond leads
>  me to believe that the original post from Mr. Letwin was pure FUD
>  with no substance to his allegations.

The IBM response wasn't from an IBM lawyer, but from John Soyring, some
kind of IBM flunky.  A true-blue IBMer at that, since he
exhibitied two key characteristics of that political breed:

1) political nastiness.  Mr. Soyring's posting should have been
	a private query.  He was asking for information on the letter
	from IBM lawyers.  He could have emailed his enquirey to me,
	he has my address.  I'd have gotten the mail in an hour or so.

	Or he could have phoned me.  He knows my phone number.  He could
	have had his response in a couple of minutes.

	But instead, he POSTS this query of his, and he words it in such 
	a way that it clearly implys that I was lying.  He posts this
	to some obscure forum without even any assurance that I'd ever
	see it.

	In fact, I never did see his posting.  A friend forwarded me a copy,
	so I learned of it indirectly.  It never appeared on Microsoft's
	news server.

2) Mr. Soyring shows another key IBM attribute: incompetetance.  Not only
	was this letter sent - the one he couldn't find after such an 
	exhaustive search, but I sent a very memorable reply to the
	IBM lawyer.  I *know* that those lawyers remember me very very
	clearly. :-)  It looks like Mr. Soyring didn't do a very good job
	in his research.  That's the IBM story; you don't need to have 
	any technical capability, you just need political skills. 

So Mr. Soyring's game is very clear - you POST a private communication
onto a public forum, word it carefully to imply that your corespondant
is a liar, and then sit back and grin.  If you're lucky he'll never see
your posting and your slander will stand unchallenged.  At worst, he sees
it a week or so later and you've gotten in that much damage.  It's this
kind of behavior on the profession and personal level that
caused me to refuse to have any further involvement with IBM personel,
nearly 5 years ago.

Mr. Soyring posts private correspondance over the net.  But not being
an IBM politician I emailed my response to him, giving him details about
the letter.  He somehow forgot to post his own reply acknowledging the
existance of the letter.

I have refrained from posting the IBM letter because I feel that it's unethical
to post a private communication.  Here's my challenge to Soyring:
EMAIL and POST your permision, as an IBM'er, for me to post this letter
to the net.  I'll do it as a GIF file so that everyone can see the letterhead
and the signature.

This is the part where IBM always lays down - they're big on writing nasty
and misleading things, but they're really weak on actually backing up
the talk with deeds.

I'm waiting

	Gordon Letwin
	not a spokesperson for Microsoft