Joseph,
At 12:57 PM 6/12/01 -0500, you wrote:
>On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Jay Armstrong wrote:
>
>> >Sure, I can understand this -- good thing we have orionsupport.com, which
>> >isn't affiliated with Ironflare. This is why I've never been willing to
>> >advertise anything on orionsupport, and why I'm not directly affiliated in
>> >any way with Ironflare - because I want the freedom to some day post
>> >something like "Orion totally sucks in area XYZ" (not mentioning anything
>> >like JMS, for example, am I?) without worrying about receiving a warning
>> >from the Swedish Mafia.
>>
>> You see, Joseph, it's this kind of humor that makes people think of waking
>> up next to their favorite racehorse's head.
>>
>
>Not sure what your point is, here, pardner. After all, I was saying this
>is why Orionsupport isn't directly affiliated, so that we wouldn't have to
>worry about that in any case... and then you say something that leads me
>to believe you took the exact wrong meaning. You've been doing that a
>lot; this kind of dedication takes a peculiar sort of effort.
My point is that some slow people, like me, can't always tell right away
when you are kidding (remember "A Swedish Idea"). Mafia->Godfather
I->horsehead in movie director's bed. Get it?
>> >> "The buck stops here" sign is on Karl's and Magnus' desk, right? I hope
>> >> they don't usually ride in the same car together all time. :)
>> >Well, I didn't know they HAD desks - I can see Satan doing all his work on
>> >a futon for some reason - but at this point, we don't know how much
>> >responsibility Oracle has taken. *shrug* We'll see.
>> They may not have desks yet, but they can probably afford to order big,
>> hand-carved, mahogony ones now.
>
>I hope so! They deserve them. At any rate, I have a little more
>information about the deal now than I did; your dire warnings are, IMHO,
>unfounded. Sure, there are some nasty implications for those poor souls
>still waiting for Godot^WIronflare to provide Oracle-level support for
>Orion, but even those are merely implications and not a fomral reality
>yet.
Okay. Somehow, I don't think Karl is going to ever teach me the secret
Ironflare handshake.
>> >From your previous comment about looking at Oracle, let me cite an example
>> about supporting integrated products. A couple of years ago, I found an
>> error in Adrian Cockroft's book, "Sun Performance and Tuning" regarding the
>> formulas for shared memory and semaphore settings in etc/system. Of
>> course, Adrian (creator of the VirtualAdrian tools) is a god and I'm just a
>> troll (as someone recently pointed out), but even trolls get lucky now and
>> then.
>
>Are you a BLIND troll, that's the real question.
>
>[snip, snippety snip snip snip!]
BLIND and DUMB. You're slipping, not snipping, Joseph.
>> My point is that the dance between Orion and Oracle could be just as
>> complex.
>
>Sure, could be. But isn't. :) I'm not trying to hold some special knowldge
>over your head, and it's quite possible that what I know is public
>knowledge, but until I confirm that, I ain't saying.
Secret handshake and secret decoder ring...
>> Karl/Magnus have not, apparently, hired the people on the Ironflare side to
>> free them up to address such questions. Just because Oracle has a support
>> infrastucture, call center, help desk, etc, does not mean that Oracle has
>> anyone who can deal with the really tough problems.
>
>Doubt THAT - the whole reason they licensed Orion is because they found
>that they were getting the real tough problems and their lousy
>infrastructure wasn't set up for it. Not a matter of THEIR SKILL, mind
>you, but of the original thought that went into their misbegotten app
>server crap.
Maybe so. What about Karl's pledge 6 months ago that "hiring the right
people" was Ironflare's first order of business? They've hired one
recently, or so I've heard.
>> Before getting flamed again, I am NOT picking on Orion/Oracle here. I
>> believe orion-interest and orionsupport are more responsive and accurate,
>> generally, than the big companies. I would still have great confidence in
>> just about any Orion/Oracle combination. We shall, as you say, *shrug*
see.
>
>You sure? Why do you?
I have confidence; however, most of my major (Fortune 500) clients have not
shown confidence in products where the only two people in the world who
understand the guts of it live 8,000 miles away and might get hit by a bolt
of lightening at the same time. Something like, "Oops, we regret to inform
you that we cannot support your $30M startup because the only two people
who can answer that question are unavailable."
You seem to have inside knowledge about this. Does Oracle (or anyone
besides Karl and Magnus) have a copy of the Orion Server source code?
>> I would like to see Oracle at least attempt to hire some of the people
>> around the world who contributed their valuable time to debugging Orion
>> free of charge. NOT ME. I'm not looking for a job with Orionacle.
>
>Me either... but I'm not sure if this is your actual gripe. If it is, hey,
>um, wow... you're over-reacting by a lot, IMHO.
It's a big part of my gripe. There's some sort of idea that there was/is a
"quid pro quo" between free use of Orion and free testing/debugging by the
user community. I don't agree with that, but let's say there is. Well,
the game has now changed, that is, big bucks from Oracle.
All righty then, so let's spread the wealth. I'm guessing there are some
contributors who don't have six-figure, five-figure or even four-figure
incomes. I'm no saint, but I would like to see them do more than send out
an email saying, "Thanks for making us rich. Have a nice life..." Again,
not for me. I'm sure they'll never answer my emails. Oh wait, that's
already happened.
How about Orionacle offering a job for one of the contributors to write a
reliable list server based on Orion? I mean a paying job, this time.
Jay
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>Joseph B. Ottinger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>http://adjacency.org/ IT Consultant
>
>
>
