Did ITJungle say Common was a waste of time?

Is, should COMMON be a user advocacy group?

from http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh032706-story01.html

"...As I prepare to fly out to Minneapolis to attend yet another
COMMON iSeries user group meeting, I find myself pondering how iSeries
shops could bring their collective weight to bear on IBM to compel it
to behave in ways that the user community desires. Because the iSeries
does not have direct competition, IBM doesn't price and package the
iSeries in a way that many of us believe it ought to so it can compete
against Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms. While IBM has a large
customer advisory council, COMMON, and regional user groups all
feeding in requirements and offering advice to Big Blue on how to
improve the iSeries, that is not the same thing as having the power to
actually compel IBM to change its behavior. ..."

"... Like many people in the OS/400 community, if I have an argument
at all, it is almost never with IBM's Rochester labs, where the OS/400
platform is created and manufactured, but rather with IBM's Somers
offices, where the marketing and sales plans are hatched and where the
pricing and packaging decisions are made. Getting Rochester to listen
is easy, since the techies aim to please. Getting Somers to listen is
hard, since the marketeers aim to make as much money in the shortest
term with the least possible amount effort. They do this because
that's what marketeers at public companies do.  ..."