Desperate plea to FP Tech...

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2006, Dennis Malen wrote:
>I just had a chance to read John's plea. All I can say is WOW!!!!!!!!!!
>
>John's analogy was brilliant. Right on point!
>
>I believe that in most of our heart of hearts most of us want to stay with 
>filePro. The most important point is that Bud needs it also. For him to 
>remain competitive in his own business he probably needs the same things we 
>all need. I think that is an important point to keep in mind.
>
>As many people know, I just purchased 5.0 from 4.8. I will definitely 
>purchase 5.6 when I feel the list is comfortable with it.

On can infer from this statement the importance of the FilePro mailing
list, and its independence from FPtech.  Technical mailing lists that
aren't run by or supported by vendors provide a forum for unbiased
commentary and support of products.  They may not always have things on
them that the vendors want to hear, but they sometimes can get vendors to
listen (some people may remember my brow-beating the Tandy modem buyer into
committing to supporting standard Hayes modem codes at a TCBUG meeting in
Fort Worth :-).

Several people on this list have been active in this type of independent
mailing list going back to TCBUG/Tangent, The Compuserve SCOForum, the
independent Caldera Linux mailing list, and many others.  Hmmm.  Looking at
that list, they all share a common trait -- the vendors largely ignored
what their users wanted and have largely disappeared.

Back in the days when Doug Michels was at the helm of SCO, he was active on
usenet and these mailing lists, and encouraged SCO people to be active as
well.  IMHO, the beginning of SCO's downhill slide was shortly after they
went public, and the bean counters cut off usenet access to the engineering
staff.

$DEITY knows that I, and many others on the FilePro list provided feedback
to Tandy, SCO, and other vendors, not because we wanted to attack the
vendor, but because we used and liked their products, and wanted them to be
successful and continue to improve.

Unlike some usenet groups and some mailing lists, the Filepro list doesn't
have a Larry Snyder or others who post only to trash the vendor.

Bill
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