Boycott Gibson, not everyone

[Doug Wyatt <doug@sonosphere.com>]

(I wrote this after Kim's last post on the subject, sat on it for 
awhile and didn't get to sending it.)

a week or two ago Kim Flint wrote:
> - Business is not warm and fuzzy. welcome to capitalism. Just because 
>it's
> the music instrument business doesn't make it pretty. These same things
> happen everywhere.
>
> - The average business people in the music world seem to be stupider than
> most. They have knack for vastly overestimating their own importance and
> wealth-generating potential, getting very greedy, then doing foolish 
>things
> and getting themselves sued by entites who actually do have the power 
>they
> thought they had.
>
> - Opcode had screwed themselves over long before Gibson came along. They
> were blinking out fast. Seems to me that Gibson kept a terminal patient
> alive one year longer than they would have lasted anyway. It baffles me 
>how
> people see Gibson as the bad guy here. I guess conspiracy theory is 
>always
> more fun.

Look, there's no shortage of blame to be placed on Opcode.  And 
Gibson, as Opcode's owner, can make all of the cold, heartless 
business decisions they like, and I accept that.

What I have a problem with is the way Gibson implemented its 
decisions, abusing the legal system and treating their employees and 
customers like shit.  These are not the actions of a good company to 
work for.

Kim, just talk to your friend John Cooper, who now has the dubious 
honor of having been sued by Gibson twice.  All he's guilty of is not 
having quit Opcode the day it was acquired by Gibson.  I'm sure he 
thought about doing that.  Our defense attorneys specialize in 
employer relations cases and yet they were shocked at Gibson's 
behavior.  Gibson was playing hardball until our lawyers advised 
Gibson's lawyers that they would seek sanctions for having filed a 
frivolous lawsuit.  Suddenly Gibson wanted to settle.  Then they 
reneged on the agreement to pay our legal fees and we had to go to 
court to get them.

Have you ever been sued?  Did it feel like an exciting adventure, or 
did it feel like your entire life was in limbo?  Deal with Gibson 
long enough and you've got a better-than-average chance of finding 
out what it feels like.

Does Gibson deserve to have any good software engineers working for 
them?  I say they don't.  Go ahead, call me bitter.  I am.

Do Opcode's users deserve to be fed false platitudes about the future 
of the software which is their bread and butter (in many cases), the 
software which must be continue to be maintained if people are to be 
able to access their past creative output?  If it is an obsolete and 
unprofitable technology, why not discuss selling or licensing it to 
other companies that are interested in it?  Gibson apparently would 
rather see it die than sell it.  (I know of two serious potential 
purchasers that have so far been rebuffed; I am not making things 
up.)  If Vision is so worthless, why won't Gibson talk about selling 
it?

Do the other Macintosh music software developers who incorporated OMS 
support into their applications deserve to be left in the dark about 
OMS's future now that Opcode clearly can no longer maintain it?

Yeah, it's all capitalistic big business, it happens everywhere, all 
the time.  So should I refrain from saying it sucks?


> - Events with Opcode are mostly unrelated to the Echoplex. We (Aurisis
> Research) have had a reasonable business relationship with Gibson for 
>many
> years. Our deal with them is simple and clear, and we try not to be 
>idiots
> about it, so it continues to work.
>
> - I say "mostly" because we wasted a bunch of time getting opcode set up
> for echoplex production, while they went back and forth on it and 
>couldn't
> decide what to do. If they had run with it, they would have had at least
> one product making money and maybe still be around, and echoplexes would
> have been available months ago. If you want to blame somebody for lack of
> echoplexes right now, try the geniuses at opcode. That whole event pissed
> me off a lot, but in retrospect it is better. I like the current 
>situation
> for the Echoplex a lot more, and new units are indeed on the way.

It could be that they were too cash-strapped to put a production run 
together, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was corporate 
indecision at its worst.

Again, I don't disagree with much you're saying about Opcode.  I do 
disagree with your tendency to apologize for Gibson.  In the last 4 
months I've seen a number of Gibson apologists change their tunes 
(including Henry's subordinate who had to deal with me and my 
colleagues when we were being sued). So I admit, I tend to think that 
Gibson apologists are in denial about who they're working for.

I've heard that the turnover among Gibson executives may be as high 
as 75% a year.  Forget warm and fuzzy; is that a healthy, normal, 
capitalistic business?

Hey, maybe it is.  I choose not to be involved with it, and I feel 
strongly enough about this that I suggest that others consider making 
the same choice, both as consumers and as potential employees.


At 18:07 -0800 11/7/99, Kim Flint wrote:
> I still don't get why opcode fans are peeved at Gibson, when opcode was
> going out of business anyway. Are you pissed that Gibson didn't want to
> keep sinking money in a losing operation? Doesn't seem like such a crime 
>to
> me. If Gibson never got involved at all, opcode would still be gone, so
> what's the point? Maybe y'all should have organized a campaign six months
> ago to buy more opcode software, then opcode might still be around and I
> wouldn't be getting all these whining conspiracy-theorist emails 
>forwarded
> to me.

No, we're pissed that Gibson's actions so far indicate that they 
would rather kill the technology than sell it.  I will eat my many 
words, and praise Gibson for doing the right thing if they find new 
homes for OMS and Vision, (or by some miracle assemble a new 
development team to take care of them competently).  But until then 
Gibson needs to be pressured to do the right thing.

Five years ago, I learned some appalling things about Microsoft's 
business practices.  I began wishing that Microsoft would get its 
due.  So today I'm encouraged to think that maybe Gibson, too, will 
eventually get what it deserves.

I freely admit that I am on a mission to publicize Gibson's actions. 
Hopefully this will minimize the possibility of Gibson acquiring and 
killing any more companies.  They seem to *like* to do that, for 
whatever reason.  It could be that they are more interested in 
acquiring brand names than the technologies behind them, or that they 
regard all MIDI-related technologies as needing to be destroyed (to 
help hasten the age of GMICS?), but yes, these *are* just theories, 
attempts to explain facts.  The *facts* remain however, Gibson 
acquisitions don't tend to thrive for very long or in anything 
resembling their original form.

Kim, if Gibson offered to buy out your company for a big chunk of 
change, would you sell?

Doug

-- 
Doug Wyatt                             doug@sonosphere.com
http://www.sonosphere.com/