From: kdenning@portal.hq.videocart.com (Karl Denninger)
Subject: Re: SysV
Summary: I'll bite
Organization: VideOcart Inc.
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 04:22:42 GMT

In article <1320@admin.mport.COM> jack@admin.mport.COM (Jack Craig) writes:
>its hard to believe whats posted here sometimes. 
>
>and karl, you're not much better. first off, there are only one or two
>of the original microport employees still at microport(and they arent
>the ones that 'earned your hatred'). secondly, for you to dismiss out
>of hand what a newly formed company does because of what it did under
>an earlier set of folks/technology is myopic to say the least.

You're not newly formed.  You're firm is the same Microport that was here
before, but for having filed a bankruptcy petition.  Like it or not, you
carry the name of the former organization, you still have some of the
original staff (even if only a few) and you folks made NO attempt to reach
out to the original customers who directly or indirectly were the prime 
cause of your existance -- today AND yesterday.

My experience with both the '286 and early '386 releases were worse than
problematic -- they were completely unusable - unless you consider "panic 
on demand" to be acceptable performance.  The distribution disks have long 
since become backup media.

I dismiss out of hand your product not because of its merits or lack
thereof, but because of your firm's attitude.  For a company to declare
bankruptcy and then ignore their customer base who paid good HARD CASH for
product which did not and still does not work, and to do NOTHING for those
people, even years later when you're no longer bankrupt, may be defensible
from a business point of view but it CERTAINLY isn't anything I want to
expose myself or anyone I work for or with to again.

The best product in the world cannot make up for a bad attitude and
non-existant customer support.  Even mediocre product looks good if backed 
by good support and a good attitude.

If Microport is interested in working with people like myself, so be it.
I'm certainly willing to take a look at current product, and be fair in my
evaluation of same.  But why should I go out and risk my own money -- again 
-- when the last time I did that (twice!) I ended up with unusable software?

As long as Microport has people like me out there who still feel ripped off
from those old actions you'll have people like myself who will never look at
your stuff and will in fact actively recommend against it -- not on the 
merits or lack thereof of the product, but on the attitude of the 
organization behind it.  That is a perfectly legitimate reason to make 
a business decision.

The choice is Microport's as to whether there is an interest in mending
these paths and demonstrating a different corporate attitude than that 
which I perceive.

>now go ahead and flame me, but then can we get back to contructive
>issues such as what doesnt work and how can we make it better?

Done.  I've said my piece, now let's get back to the issues at hand.

--
Karl Denninger 		Inet:  kdenning@hq.videocart.com
VideOcart Inc.		Voice: (312) 987-5022
Xref: sparky comp.unix.sys5.r4:87 comp.unix.sysv386:15079 comp.unix.amiga:2202