thompson@PAN.SSEC.HONEYWELL.COM (John Thompson) (06/04/91)
Well -- it's out. Finally. Whew.
First off, thank you to all who helped out in the writing and editing of the
letter. Thanks also to those of you who sent in signatures supporting these
issues. Finally, thanks to everyone who lent moral support to the letter.
I wanted to add some comments to the letter, but since they are my opinions,
I didn't feel it correct to put other people's signatures on them. Therefore,
I'm adding them in here.
o Some people felt that I/we were attacking HP engineers. In my opinion,
we were most definitely not (and I told them this). I'd like to think
that we weren't "attacking" at all, but I realize that this is definitely
an offensive action. I would hope that this letter does not result in
HP/Apollo-bashing, but instead results in additional dialogue, and some
changes by HP/Apollo management and marketing to recognize the needs of
the "Apollo" customers. They'd like us to all be one happy family, but
they can't yet treat us as one. The merger has been (mostly?) completed
in the financial and organizational senses, but the customers still think
of themselves as owning Apollo systems (at least I do).
o This letter was a lot more work than I had imagined. Especially as it
got later and later in the signature process, things got more and more
hectic. Part of this was due to the normal crises that occur whenever
things get busy, and part of it was due to my spending time with my
fiancee (did you hear - I'm engaged ;-) A lot of it, though, was the fact
that this was just plain a lot of work. (No, I'm not looking for "thanks",
even if it sounds that way. HP's response will be thanks enough.)
The long and short of it is that the letter went out on 6/3, when I had
hoped to get it out on 5/28. Obviously, HP will not have a formal response
by June first, as they promised in _Unix_Today_ -- somehow, I don't think
we should object.
o There were 61 signatures to the letter, which was fewer than I had hoped
for. Perhaps this is an indication that people didn't agree (I doubt it);
perhaps it is an indication that we've become apathetic; perhaps people
considered the letter to be a "DN10000 issue" only. (Perhaps I mis-
remembered -- I just talked w/ Paul Krill, and he said that there were
76 sigs on the first letter (I had thought there were > 100.))
o If you _didn't_ sign the letter (for lack of time or whatever) but you
_do_ agree with it, please feel free to print it out and send it to
your local reps with a cover letter stating your support. If you _did_
sign the letter, you still might want to let your local reps know how
you feel about it.
Thanks again to everyone who had a hand in this thing. Let's hope the reply
from HP was worth the effort.
-- jt --
John Thompson
Honeywell, SSEC
Plymouth, MN 55441
thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com
When in danger, when in doubt --
run in circles, scream and shout.