From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Open letter to Gordon Letwin (long)
Summary: long reply: Gordon wants to call IBM bad names and not get a response
Date: 13 Oct 1992 01:47:38 GMT
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Oct12.204600.27469@microsoft.com> gordonl@microsoft.com (Gordon Letwin) writes:
>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.

Why should he have? In particular, you posted a very serious accusation - one
designed to evoke a very negative response, given the net's cultural hatred of
lawyers - to this very forum. John Soyring chose to defend his organization in
this same forum. This is an entirely reasonable action.

>	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.

Obscure forum? NOT! After all, you've been an active participant in this very
forum in the past, and the forum was the same one you'd used to post your
accusation in the first place.

As for clearly implying you were lying, the best information he had led to
that exact conclusion. His tone was considerably more restrained than yours
when discussing IBM and OS/2. His response was measured, restrained, and
appropriate.

>	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.

[I am mailing this to Gordon, just to avoid the possibility that this posting
doesn't arrive at microsoft.com. Of course, the vagaries of news propagation
never crossed Gordon's mind.]

>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.

Oh, good grief. Read my .signature.

If you make accusations in public, expect them to be answered in public, and
to lose credibility if you do not resolve the issue in public. With all this
in mind, why did you make the accusation in the first place?

Personally, I'd be honored to work with IBM personnel, especially with those
in John Soyring's organization, on the development of OS/2. My experience as
an IBM customer for the past 11 years is far better than my experience as a
Microsoft customer over roughly the same period of time.

>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.

A response to a public accusation is not private correspondence if the
correspondent does not wish it to be. If you'd wished this matter to remain
private, then you should not have made the accusation in public. You're asking
for nothing less than the right to slam IBM in public without any basis for
the complaint and not get called on it.

>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.

If you do not wish to post the letter, for whatever reason, I'll be happy to
email you my fax number so that you can back up your accusation. I'll even
pledge that I'll burn my copy after reading it, if you'd like.

>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.

Of course, when you're called on such an accusation, you don't want them to
defend themselves...

>I'm waiting

As am I.

>	Gordon Letwin
>	not a spokesperson for Microsoft

If not, you're the closest thing to it, besides Bill Gates.

-- 
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)
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.advocacy:7677 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:2480