Post by unknownWhy are you being nasty to me?
What part of what I just said is untrue? TeamB visits Borland every
year. If you as a member of TeamB knew anything about Borland's
business decisions, you could not say due to your NDA.
So what's with the snotty conspiracy remark? What is your problem
with me?
I'm not being nasty. I'm just trying to point out the nature of your
arguments.
You start out with the question of what would happen if/when Borland
ditches JBuilder. When someone from TeamB responded, you then played a
kind of "gotcha" asking what makes said person believe that Borland
*is* committed to JBuilder (note my allowance for your typo).
Apart from my flippant talk-show host remark, I gave you the best
answer possible under the circumstances:
"If company X discontinues product Y, company X will gladly sell the
product to company Z if company Z offers a reasonable amount of money M
that company X feels fairly values the intellectual property in product
Y. Alternately, company X may release the product to the open-source
community if it feels doing so has some value N in either money or
goodwill."
The above is as true for Borland as it is for any other company.
You then went into conspiracy theory territory with this:
"I'm afraid nothing *will* be said until it's over. TeamB may know more
(those yearly picnics must be for *something*) but they can't tell us."
Effectively, what you're saying is that whatever answer we give simply
can't be trusted. This is standard conspiracy theory stuff: if the
people you're dealing with don't give you the answers you want, assume
that it's because of some code of silence.
I was invited to join TeamB about a month ago and all I got from
Borland was a pile of the latest software; I didn't get a binder
stamped "Top Secret" with Borland's product strategy inside. Unless
there's a probation period I'm unaware of, I doubt the other members of
TeamB have anything like that either.
In fact, my experience so far has been that TeamB gets word about
Borland's strategy the same way everyone else does: from the trade
publications. TeamB has private newsgroups of its own; I've been
through the archives going back several months and apart from the
occasional "who would like to join the beta for product ABC", all
discussions about product direction etc. are triggered by members of
TeamB based on something that was posted publicly, on Borland's web
site, in the newspapers, on ZDNet, or wherever.
All I (or anyone outside of Borland) can say with any confidence is
that Borland's product strategy today is pretty much the same as it was
yesterday and it probably won't change tomorrow. The further I get
from today, however, the less confident I get.
--
Kevin Dean [TeamB]
Dolphin Data Development Ltd.
http://www.datadevelopment.com/
Please see Borland's newsgroup guidelines at
http://info.borland.com/newsgroups/guide.html