Subject: Re: ACL 6.0 Trial Edition ships with non ANSI reader behavior. From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/11/11 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3182956634432949@naggum.net> * David Bakhash <cadet@alum.mit.edu> | while I agree with you that cautionary meansures are never a bad | thing, I am seriously starting to question _your_ ethics, and given | this information, would _not_ want to do business with any company | where you were anything but a programmer. What makes you think anyone wants to do business with _you_, David? What is the principle that drives your ethics? I think it's "be nice to people" or something equally sappy. Business ethics is not like that. You don't survive if you're nice, and you are exploited if you are too nice. I think you feel that you are being screwed because you .noscripthide { display:none; } .noscriptinline { display:inline; } .noscriptblock { display:block; } you absolutely no good in the long run. It is somewhat sad that you had your first brush with this reality with a decent company. I've had mine with real scumbags I had to defeat in court even to get paid and then there's the insanely power-crazed people who have supposedly been tasked with collecting money for the government with tactics that makes _any_ organized crime outfit look like the boy scouts. Franz Inc are not _easily_ "defeatible" in negotiations, but they also do not want to lose their customers. If the customers fail to grasp that they have power in such negotiations, who could possibly be blamed for this if not the customer's incompetent and inexperienced management? If the customer fails to realize that the world will always change in unexpected ways and is unprepared to deal with it, blaming anyone else is not going to win them any support. If the customer makes the choice not to negotiate, but accepts the initial terms because it would "cost too much" to negotiate, then that's sound business sense --></style> the most inconvenient times in our lives -- and you're judged by how well you do in precisely such situations. E.g., Franz Inc faced a new reality where server-based applications took over from shipping boxes with products, especially since they had priced the latter and not the former, but they did have the foresight to have been able to determine the conditions under which they could set new terms. Since their many customers had agreed to this, this is all a question of being able to deal with licenses and contracts. I have found (in my work) that it does not matter _what_ you do, if you cannot deal with legal issues like contractual requirements, intellectual property rights, etc. To stay within the law so you can actually win in court is not trivial, but being able to use power of the legal system is such a _pacifier_ in dealing with business people. When it comes to ethics, which you invoke a little too often for even my comfort, there is the very, very _unethical_ behavior of accusing someone falsely for something which they have not in fact done, but which you attribute to them because it would make your black-and-white ethics fit the world a little better. In my view, there is nothing worse than the willingness to engage in false accusations which have as their main effect to simplify the accuser's ethical world-view. Franz Inc has displayed a staggeringly cavalier attitude towards the standard, not just via John, but the standard is a _specification_ and the ability to program faithfully and completely to one specification is fundamental to trusting people to implement and execute any other specification, such as contract law, license terms, etc. The law is both the standard and the programming language of society, and once you start to think you can do anything you want because you're smarter than the specification or that the specification is _wrong_, you have moved yourself outside of a world of responsibility. The funny thing, relative to what you keep arguing about, David, is that Franz Inc's attitude to the standard is a much, much more serious signal that they don't really give a damn about specifications they cannot be forced to follow, but with the ones they _can_ be forced to keep, like the law and good business practices, they do comply a lot better. That's why I think their inability and/or unwillingness to base their operation first on compliance with the standard is a sign that what we see in the business area may be early symptoms of a deep-rooted disrespect for the society in which they are based. Anti-community attitudes do not start with the most serious aspects, but rather must be found in the seemingly insignificant end of the spectrum. The question must be whether they prioritize winning through building community consensus over short-range wins by exploiting community divisiveness, such as with this case issue. Yes, I'm worried, but only because so many other people seem to be missing the point, sometimes entirely. To make Franz Inc behave well in the long run and remain one of, if not the, best Common Lisp vendor, requires work on our part, too. Just as the idiots who did not keep Microsoft in check have contributed very strongly to their very, vary bad business ethics and products alike. After all, the customer _is_ always right, especially when he gets what he wants but is just too stupid to realize it in time. #:Erik -- ALGORITHM: a procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation. ALGOREISM: a procedure for solving an electoral problem in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation.