From: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: Unprofessional Posts from Brian S.
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 17:46:01 GMT

In article <7551@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
>
>What he said.
>
>I'm on the beta test list for a piece of software that Brian's written for
>OS/2. It's an impressive piece of work, and fills a definite need. Even so,
>I've quit using it, not because of problems with the program (Brian's done a
>great job of fixing those reported to him), but rather simply because I have
>no confidence that Brian will carry it on into the production phase: it's
>obvious that working in the OS/2 arena is not something that he wants to do
>any more.

Well I'm sorry to hear you believe this.  I've repeatedly reassured
the beta testers this won't be the case, so I don't know what more
I could say to you.  Even though OS/2 does not appear to be doing
all that well, I'm confident of enough of a Big Blue shop market
to make producing the product for OS/2 worthwhile.  If I was
not serious about delivering an OS/2 product, why would I be going
to the OS/2 developers conference next week?  (As usual with my
dealings with IBM I had to sign up twice, they lost my registration
the first time.  Is signing up twice not a sign of dedication? :-))

>
>I met Brian at Usenix in June, and at the time, he was really in favor of
>OS/2. I don't know just what IBM did to him, but his reaction appears to be of
>the same magnitude as someone who got screwed by the Microsoft abandonment and
>got stuck for $2600 personally. I'm sorry to see it.

I really cannot conceive of a developer dealing with IBM w.r.t. to OS/2
not becomming upset.  The developer tools are bad, support is bad, 
IBM marketing has been attrocious.  In June I started a campaign in
comp.os.os2.programmer to get the developer tools fixed.  Contacts
developed during that campaign, while nearly always good as individuals,
convinced me that IBM as a whole, really was as incompetent as it
appeared from the outside.  At the last minute, I decided to go to
NT developers conference.  Microsoft was the opposite: organized,
listening to the developers, etc.  On coming back from the conference
(July 7) I receieved the letter saying my upgrade from 1.3 to 2.0 was
delayed as I had forgotten to mark the diskette size (I sent in the
upgrade form in early April).  This was the turning point, IBM
had basically picked the wrong time to screw-up yet again.
Actually I guess it was really that a continual string of IBM screw-ups
finally fell at a time I couldn't ignore it anymore.

>-- 
>Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
>jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
>    Vote for a REAL change on 3 November: Throw out the check-bouncing,
>  tax-and-spend Democrat Congress! (obviously, not an opinion of UTHSCH)


Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
University of Utah                             United We Stand
Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))