DEC is no worse than anyone else - Apology

[Richard Kuhns]

In article <1002 at ttrdc.UUCP> levy at ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>In article <668 at scc.UUCP>, steiny at scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
>>	I am sorry that I got mad at ULTRIX.   I lost a $75,000.00
>>contract because my software, which allegedly worked or 4.2 (it does)
>>did not work on ULTRIX.  The reason it did not work is because
>
>(Why couldn't your code be easily patched to account for the ULTRIX dif-
>ferences, however?  I presume that if it could have been it would have
>been.)

I can't, of course, speak for Don, but I can easily imagine the following
scenario (actually, I don't have to imagine it -- I've sat thru just such
a meeting):

The senior management of a medium sized company requests demonstrations
of a certain type of package from several vendors (say, a database
manager).  One vendor produces a package which was designed on a Brand X
computer, which our company happens to have.  It doesn't have quite all
the features we want, but it runs without a hitch.  Another vendor,
who designed their software on a Brand Y machine, was lead down the
garden path by the vendor of Brand X, who claimed complete compatiblity
with Brand Y.  The software provided by the second vendor comes much
closer to what our company wants, but it bumps into a few
"inconsequential" differences between Brand X & Brand Y, which cause
said program to die ocasionally.  Senior management says "Well, if it
would die once, it might die right in the middle of something important."
Our hapless (2nd) vendor claims it's a minor discrepancy, easily over-
come.  Senior management says "No thanx -- if you found one discrepancy,
you'll probably find another, and we don't want to spend our money on a
product we can't trust.  We'll sacrifice a few features for reliablity."

That's how a (relatively) minor discrepancy can cause the loss of a
sale to an inferior product.
-- 
Rich Kuhns		{ihnp4, decvax, etc...}!pur-ee!pur-phy!mrstve!rjk