Mike Ajemian wrote:
>
> Agree with you, simple is good. This is getting a little blown out of
> proportion. My points are as follows:
>
> 1. Inprise JBuilder, sitting on top of JDK that Inprise authored.
> Good brand. Not involving Blackdown as the market might perceive
> that as a dilution (I know finance folks who would view the
> relationship as a major liability.) That's it. It's not
> specifically about the JDK, that's a component in the solution.
> It's about the packaging of Java tools from Inprise and selling
> those tools to (especially) corporate buyers who are still twitchy
> about Linux. For the corporate tools builder (IT departments are
> potential customers who stand out to me), they might want Linux if
> somebody supplied all the Java tools and supported them, too. So
> Inprise supplies all the tools and supports all the components,
> too. I know corporations that make decisions this way and it's
> not a bad thing. Integrated components, one point-of-contact.
> The market assigns a lot of value to that.
Perfectly rational. I don't agree about Inprise's motivation for being
in the JDK business - but if we can agree that it's not about trying to
"take away" the Java/Linux franchise from Blackdown, we've made all the
progress we need to on the point.
>
> 2. I don't think that forking the code is a good thing. In fact, I
> think it's such a bad thing, that, if I was in charge of this, I
> would have flown the blackdown reps to my office (or vice-versa)
> to find a way to work together with them. It would be different
> if the blackdown folks didn't want to collaborate, but that's
> not the sense I get from some of the postings.
The interesting thing here is how an agreed-upon set of events
(Inprise's attempt to talk to an unresponsive Blackdown representative)
have led to wildly different interpretations. Blackdown says Inprise
wasn't persistent enough, Inprise says Blackdown wasn't responsive
enough. At this point, neither side is likely to change its
interpretation.
I have no doubt that Blackdown wanted (in retrospect) to collaborate.
But there's still the matter of the terms of that collaboration. As a
corporation dealing with the usual pressures and deadlines, Inprise
needs a reliable partner. They had probably seen enough to seriously
question Blackdown's reliability - it may have been one person's
problem, but it reflects on the organization. Chasing down someone
willing to talk to them may have increased the chances of working
together, but would it have increased Inprise's confidence in
Blackdown's reliability? Not likely.
Sure, a code fork is bad. But an unreliable partner is a disaster. Maybe
Inprise didn't give Blackdown enough of a chance. But if I were an
Inprise stockholder, I'd say, based on the evidence, that they made the
correct, lower-risk decision.
Nathan
>
> 3. Without a clear representation of the dialogs that took place
> between Blackdown and Inprise, all the discussions about how this
> came about and why are based on heresay. I read the blackdown
> response to Paolo's comments about Inprise contacting them. It
> sounded like there was major miscommunication there. My feeling
> is that Inprise had an incentive to work closely with Blackdown
> (faster releases, potentially more stable code, more mindshare.)
> It suprises me, from what I've read, that it appears more wasn't
> done to open communication with the Blackdown team from Inprise.
> I fully recognize that they had no legal obligation to do so.
> It's just something that doesn't sit well with me.
>
> Appreciate your patience and your dialog. It sounds like I'm having
> difficulty getting my point across in a clear and cogent manner.
> Hopefully, this mail gets more to the point. I look forward to your
> response. Points #2 and #3 are far more important to me than #1. In
> fact, if people in the know (read: direct experience) from both sides
> want to comment about how the communication really went down, I would
> really appreciate it since I don't want to dialog with scraps (I have
> big feet and don't like the taste of them, if you know what I mean.)
>
> cheers,
> Mike
>
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