cmcmanis@stpeter.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (03/21/90)
Rumor mongering, the passing of unsubstantiated information relating closely
to a privately held fantasy, is dangerous.
Did you ever wonder why Companies keep some things secret and announce other
things ? If so then you should have asked yourself what the implications of
exposing that secret might be. Lets take for example the stuff about Lotus.
[This is all fictional and an example only, none of this has really happened]
Let's presume that some enlightened engineering types at Lotus bought some
Amigas and were playing with them at home. And those same same types decided
they needed a spreadsheet so went out and bought the best the Amiga had to
offer, Maxiplan (maybe it isn't the best but it is representative). They
would quickly get disgusted at the crappy charts, the frequent crashes and
some of the other bogosities that seem to plague Amiga spreadsheets. But
the user interface has some pluses and the Amiga sure makes some things
nice like printing and recalculating at the same time, Gee it can talk too?
So these engineering types decide what they really want is 1-2-3 for their
Amigas but Lotus doesn't sell it. But heck they're engineers so they get
a copy of the source fire up their favorite compiler and get the basic
system limping along. The project looks feasible from an engineering point
of view and their enlightened manager realizes that gee they aren't getting
any sleep this way, and if he could let them work on this part time at
work it would be good experience for them. (The rule is everytime you port
a piece of code you find at least 2 major bugs in the original)
So they are havin a good time and some marketing dweeb walks by and sees
the now famous 1-2-3 "look" on some renegade machine and has an apoplectic
fit. "Who can we sue for this!" the dweeb demands. The perplexed engineer
chuckles and says "Oh we hacked that together, thats the real thing."
Now little (very little) dollar signs appear in the dweeb's eyes. It's a
whole new market, "What's the compeitition like ?" To which our engineer
shows him his copy of MaxiPlan and the dweeb runs from the office shrieking
laughter.
At this point the seed is planted for Lotus to make some overtures to
Commodore to make a "deal." All sorts of things go on in these deals
and all of them involve money. But let's say that some Amiga fan has
a roommate who's sister is dating the brother of one of these engineers
who lets drop the fact that Lotus is working on an Amiga version of
1-2-3 since his brother said something about getting it running on an
Amiga. The fan sends some ill advised rumor out to wide distribution
attributing it to a source within Lotus which of course they can back
up because they know the name of the brother at Lotus. Now it gets
really twisted, lets say this rumor is discovered by some stock analyst
who is always looking for a good deal, and "confirms" it by calling
Lotus and asking for this engineer and getting connected (at which time
makes up some excuse about it being a wrong number) and thinks to
themselves "Gee, is Lotus so desperate that they have to court some
2 bit has been PC that I in my all seeingness have never heard of ?"
The analyst comes to the conclusion that if they are that desperate
then a bundle can be made short selling Lotus, so he sells a whole
bunch of stock short. Other analysts ask him why and he tells them and
they sell off a bunch of Lotus too. Now this negatively effects the
price of Lotus which causes senior management at Lotus to ask "What
the hell is going on?" To which the analyst tells them that they "know"
about the Commodore deal and how desperate they are to which the
senior management replies "There is no Commodore deal, never was,
never will be." because they weren't involved yet in the fledgling
"deal" that was being born in the above paragraph. Of course at the
same time senior management sends down the chain of command that
in spite of rumors there is no Commodore deal. Which means, "if you
are talking to Commodore, shut up and sit down." And our marketing
dweeb stops calling Commodore and figures it wouldn't have worked
anyway.
The end result is that what started as an excellent opportunity for
Commodore and Lotus becomes an impossibility because someone talked
about the possibility before any sort of agreement could be reached
and before the dweeb had a chance to present it to senior management
as an opportunity that they could have used to deflect the analysts
when they eventually found out. Score Rumor Monger 1 Everyone else 0.
There are two reasons why rumors grow like this, the first is because
the people passing them on want desperately for them to be true and
often embellish them in their fantasy and pass on the embellished version
rather than the original. And two, an overpowering urge to "know" the
"inside scoop" which makes some people feel superior and props up their
selfesteem for a moment or two. (Generally why they are "passing it on")
Don't think this stuff never happens, I've seen it happen too many times
where I could trace the entire path of the disaster. So, be careful and
don't spread rumors. It is better for the Amiga in the long run.
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: <none> Internet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"If it didn't have bones in it, it wouldn't be crunchy now would it?!"