An increasing number of people are expressing their interest in my future job.
Although some of them (my real friends) are sincere, most of the others are
hiding their true concerns under a veil of hypocrisy. They send me network
fatherly taps in the back, hope that everything is going to be great for me,
and oh by the way what about LISTSERV, don't you think it would be a good idea
to sort of transfer itw ownership to EARN and/or BITNET, or, well not really
transfer it, you could still sell it of course, but sign a contract to kind of
let them do whatever they'd like, I mean need, to do with it. After all the
network is the place where it belongs, if you leave you won't be able to have
fun any more improving it, at least this way you'd be sure someone is
cherishing your "baby" (more taps in the back), etc.
Let me tell you that this is exactly the right attitude if you want me to (1)
leave EARN without regret and (2) do my best to "make your life interesting"
as far as LISTSERV is concerned. I am not opposed to discussing the problems
that may arise if I leave, but I am opposed to hypocritical taps in the back,
camp songs, and the like. I also see NO REASON why I should transfer the
ownership of LISTSERV to EARN, BITNET or, even worse, 'University of XYZ'.
"What will happen to LISTSERV if you leave?" The answer is quite clear to me.
The license agreement gives you right to use the PRESENT version of the
software for an unlimited duration, as long as you stay connected to
EARN/BITNET and you don't break the few rules listed in the license agreement.
However the contract clearly states that "maintenance" (ie fixes and upgrades)
may or may not be provided, and in this case they would obviously not be
provided since I would not be on the network any more. Thus if some day I make
my own company (which, to answer your question, I don't want to do now because
I'll have to interrupt my work for 16 months in 2-3 years) and sell a LISTSERV
version 43.51, you would, a priori, need to pay to get it (I might also decide
to give it to the network for free, but the contract doesn't force me to do
so). Or, if I sell it to 'VM/XYZ Software', nothing forces 'VM/XYZ Software'
to send you the last version for $0.0, which seems perfectly normal to me.
Finally, I will no longer be there to issue free software licenses to new
nodes, ie to send out new copies of the software to new nodes. Whether or not
I delegate this authority to someone else remains to be decided. If it were
only for the back-patters, I would be awfully glad to stop issuing new
licenses right away. But there are also some good guys there (hopefully the
silent majority).
The back-patters usually also ask for my job plans. Although this is none of
their business, I really don't care about this sort of things, so I'm
enclosing an edited copy of the "jobs" file I have created to make sure I
don't forget any "pending" offer. The 'EARN' columns indicates whether or not
I will still be on the network if I accept the job. Wherever you see
asterisks, it means I have been explicitly or implicitly asked not to name the
corresponding thing. I have put an asterisk in the salary column whenever the
company name was not masked out, except when the info is "public". Salary and
interest are rated 1-5, 5 being the best and 1 the worst. The 'S' column
contains '>' when the offer is confirmed (ie I could sign after discussing the
details), '?' otherwise. Jobs are in the order I would take them if all the
pending problems got solved (mostly sorted by 'interest' as you will see). The
second part of the file lists some of the jobs I have refused. You will notice
that EARN is so afraid of losing me that they are making 2-3 nonsensical,
completely uninteresting offers a week (various sources). Their 'EARN staff'
offer is interesting, but it's not before 89, God knows where it will be, and
the salary is, as I expected, very low (but they are working on it). Finally,
everybody seems to want to turn me into a millionaire provided that I write
some *PC* or *MAC* software for them. I have received very, very little offers
to work on VM (all of them are listed in the enclosed file).
Eric
S # Who? Where? What? When/How long? Interest Salary EARN?
- - ---- ------ ----- -------------- -------- ------ -----
? 1 ***** Europe VM Dev ?/? 4-5 * N?
? 2 IBM(3) USA VM Dev ?/2y 3-5 * N
> 3 DEC Europe VMS Dev Aug/2y 3-4 * N?
> 4 ***** Geneva Boredom Aug/2y 2 5 N
> 5 ETH Zurich VM Sysprog Aug/2y 3 * Y
? 6 ***** USA Networking Aug/2y 3-5 1-3? Y
> 7 EARN(7) ? EARN staff 89/1y 3-5 1-2 Y
(...)
- CERN Geneva VM Boredom Aug/6-9m 2 4 Y
- IBM(1) Switz. SE Aug/Any 1 3-4 N
- IBM(2) Germany OSI Aug/2y 1 3 N
- EARN(1) ***** PC+VMS Aug/2y 2 ? Y
- EARN(2) ***** VMS Aug/2y 1 ? Y
- EARN(3) ***** MAC Aug/1y 1 3-4 Y
- EARN(4) ***** UNIX Aug/? 1 2-3 Y
- EARN(5) ***** OSI Aug/? 1 3 Y
- EARN(6) ***** MVS+VMS+VM Aug/6m 1 2-3 Y
- Various PC or MAC 1 4-5 N
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