Jon Paris wrote:
On 15-Feb-08, at 8:27 AM, wdsci-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Otherwise it's George
Farr and Todd Britton saying there will be an upgrade, and you saying
there won't be, and I think I'll put my money on the people who
work at IBM.
By selective quoting you just put words in my my mouth Joe. Your
quote ignored all of the rest of my note where I said (among other
things) that I was working for a change and hoped to see it. I was
merely pointing out that people at IBM telling you what their plans
are does not constitute "official" particularly until prices and
details are announced.
I think if we asked most folks on the list, they would say that you
don't think there will be an upgrade. I don't care how cleverly you try
to word your stuff, it's the intent of the words that matter. And
actually I was trying to be somewhat nice by not quoting the nasty
bits. But since you want to keep complaining, here's the ugly part that
I didn't quote, but I will now:
I worked for a number of years in the IBM Lab and lived daily with
the IBM pricing and packaging process. These things once set in
motion are not that easy to change. George could say that he was
going to make the change tomorrow and there are still many, many
other approvals that would be required before it happened - and
that's not even counting IBM legal!
In my opinion, you're spreading FUD, because your long-ago experiences
at IBM clearly have nothing to do with today's Rational group. They
weren't considering a trade-up until we brought it to their attention
less than 30 days ago, and they said they would do so. Your paragraph
above clearly implies that you don't think it's going to happen.
This is the part where you come up with yet another round of
double-speak about how that's not what you meant, but really, I don't
want to hear it. Go ahead, I won't reply.
And in case anybody missed the point, it's simple: IBM *will* provide a
trade-up. They said they would, I believe them, and now they've said it
offiicially.
I'm not on the rah-rah train, here folks. You know me, I call them as I
see them. And those who know me know I figured Rational would dump the
System i faster than you could say "flipping burgers". But the truth is
that for some time now I've seen nothing but a concerted effort to try
and address the issues of the System i community combined with an
agility typically unheard of in a company of IBM's size, and there
hasn't been a thing said to me by the Rational management that they
haven't come through on. In fact, they've been careful not to
over-promise; there's still one really big thing that I think they need
to come through on, but I can't discuss it until they make a formal
decision one way or the other. But they didn't just promise it to me to
shut me up; they said it was a good idea and they're working on it.
I've also been on the Rational beta team, and I've seen what they do to
work with the System i community. And I've spoken at the Rational
developer's conference and talked to the people there -- you'd be amazed
how many people care about our little platform. So at least right now,
Rational has lots of credibility with me. If April rolls around and we
don't see a good trade-up plan, I'll eat some crow and we'll move on,
but for now, I'm going to bet on IBM.
Joe
midrange.com
