It's been a really tough week. We're still having meetings about the financial models and the details therein. Here's a quick recap of this week's business;
- Monday: We got word this morning that Borland was going to retain all rights to “TObject!” This was a major blow to the process.
- Tuesday: This meeting centered around determining the incremental costs of each reference to “TObject” in the Delphi sources. Man... that was brutal!
- Wednesday: Once we came to agreement on Tuesday about TObject, our focus moved on to IInterface. The tricky issue here was having to split out the sources between Win32 and .NET. We also then realized that our estimates for Tuesday were off because of the same issue. TObject = System.Object in .NET so we can't count that! I mean we'd be licensing a bunch of stuff we already license from Microsoft! Back to the drawing board...
- Thursday: Board meeting. The board hammered the leadership team on why we haven't determined what brand of soft-drinks with which to fill the vending machines when the deal closes. We had to stand our ground on this one which caused a few moments of tension. We had to explain that we're still doing taste tests among all members of the teams. There's been a few vacations we're having to work around. After that we went into the issue surrounding “TObject.“ We tried to explain that we didn't understand what value that had to the Borland business going forward. Finally, Tod Nielsen slammed his elbow on the table and exclaimed, “Arm wrestle you for it!“
- Friday: Good news! After claiming victory on Thursday for obtaining the rights to “TObject,“ we were able to hold our regular Friday all-hands status meeting with all the Scotts Valley “DevCo“ employees and announce that we now have “TObject!“ The room errupted in cheers! There were even a few tears shed. Earlier in the day several members of the leadership team met with “financial broker who shall not be named that was already named“ to begin scoping the costs around the trademarks “Webvolutionaries“ and “Living La Vida Linux.“
Overall I think this week ended on a high note. There certainly were some tense and grueling moments. Coming up, Nigel is going to be in Scotts Valley next week were we can really begin to plan and scope the upcoming Don Johnson Look-Alike Contest slated for the end of April.
*grin*
ReplyDeleteWow. That was some week. I think it was good they put you through the whole TObject ordeal. Nothing like trying to prepare you guys for the crazy stuff in the future.
ReplyDeleteHuh TOBJECT??? How could they even think of keeping TObject? Is there anything else Borland is trying to keep? That just seems silly to me that Borland wants to sell off their development products, but yet try to keep rights to a essential part.
ReplyDelete“We tried to explain that we didn't understand what value that had to the Borland business going forward. “
Or understand any logic or basic reasoning?
As for your vending woes, you have an office full of developers, its Coffee and Mountain Dew.
Out of curiosity has any of the old Borland products actually come up in discussion?
BTW, you can thank Allen for coming thru on DevCo keeping TObject. He made the strong arguement that our planned TObjectish (currently in pre-alpha) would be more flexible than TObject and in turn far more valuable. We "reluctantly" gave up TObjectish in exchange for TObject. Thanks Allen!
ReplyDeleteThe Good fun. And you with april fools day
ReplyDeleteThis is the first sensible thing I've read about the sell-out. It's clear that as far as WinWinWin Nielsen is concerned he knows TObject about the business he's stripping.
ReplyDeleteNice 1st April's joke :)
ReplyDeleteNot in Austria, we hold all rights for any reference to an object derrived from TObject in Delphi. :-) Considering compile time only.
ReplyDeleteFor runtime fees, every reference created, we have setup a donation account in order to help you financing devco.
Mike
We've been thinking about introducing arm wrestling to settle disputes, too. :)
ReplyDeleteDevCo has an interest in the "Living La Vida Linux" trademark? Could this mean that there is still hope for a Kylix revival?
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Thanks for the update:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bsdg.org/2006/04/battle-for-tobject.shtml
Surely this couldn't be an April Fools joke though. . . .