On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote: > Do stay polite and to the point though. > > - P
Peter, As sad as it may seem, remaining polite usually means you are just easier to ignore. This holds true for both proprietary formats as well as getting documentation released. Search the msic@ archives for "HiFn" and read all of the events over the years. I was the person who remained polite with HiFn and I even went so far as to meet with their CEO and CTO about releasing documentation but nothing ever came from my actions. It took *years* of Theo (and the bulk of people around here) repeatedly generating bad press about the closed docs before HiFn finally changed their mind. Though I just happened to be the person that HiFn called when they finally decided to release their docs (more than a year after our meeting and after yet another round of bad press), who they called is irrelevant. My polite efforts actually made *no* difference at all. It was actually the annoyance of continued bad press that made a difference. For notes, Theo told me from the start that I was wasting my time but being the stubborned fool that I am, I had to give the polite route a try. In the end, the only thing that I did was prove Theo was right. As for the folks using proprietary formats, send them an invoice for the cost of MS-Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Office 2023 and the most expensive Adobe FLASH editing software, then remain resolute about expecting to be paid in full. When they fail to pay, turn them over to a collection agency to affect their credit and start a legal suit against them. Write up what you've done and post it to slashdot, reddit, digg and every other place you can think of, then encourage others to do the same. How quickly do you think Google would change from FLV to MPEG for YouTube if they suddenly got hit with a few million invoices and small law suits? Of course, you'll probably never collect on such an invoice or win such a law suit but that's not the point. The point is to be a pain in the ass, a costly annoyance, and generate as much bad press as possible. Only when changing is in the financial best interest of the company will they ever do anything about the problem, so the most expedient working answer is to make the problem hurt the company. Being polite might be a good first step but you need to accept the fact that it probably won't make any difference at all and if you really want a change, you'll need to know when to stop being polite. Kind Regards, JCR
