[Sunhelp] "Outsiders" update on SunHELP legal troubles

[Chris Petersen]

Well, I had a very interesting day yesterday, and I'm now in a position to
offer at least some positive insight on the legal situation regarding
SunHELP.

First off, as most of you out there know, my day-to-day full-time job is as
a Systems Engineer working for Unigraphics Solutions in our Industry
Services group (long-term implementation and consulting on our products
basically).  UG is a major player in the CAD/CAM/PDM industry, and we've got
a decent bit of Sun seats out there (we signed a 10000 seat deal with GM
back a few years ago, and I would estimate something like 85% of those seats
were Sun Ultra 60s).  As such, UG has a pretty strong (and growing)
partnership with Sun, one that is nearing that of the partnership we have
with HP (HP says UG is their largest ISV).

Thanks to my now apparently infamous letter of support for SunHELP, and some
well-placed feedback at Sun's BigAdmin site, I was able to get some balls
rolling inside Sun Monday morning.  By Monday at 3:00 EDT I had recieved at
least 2 phone calls from Sun's UG partnership representative.  I sat down
for a 40 minute phone call last night with this gentleman (a great guy, what
you would expect from Sun), and can report back some news.  Naturally, his
first concern was the $$ amounts relating to the server deals I mentioned in
my letter of support, which are actually not related to my UG job but my
side work as a system consultant to ComAuction & co-founder of
auctions.workstations.org (we're getting ready to roll out some backend
upgrades).

Anyways, what I can report:

- People inside Sun are moving rapidly on resolving the legal troubles with
  SunHELP.  I was told that the management of the lawyer and the legal
  had been made aware of the situation and were getting involved

- Sun is *well* aware that this is a huge PR problem

- It was emphasized multiple times during the phone call that we were seeing
  the actions of one employee and not the response or attitude of the entire
  corporation (and admitted that the whole thing may have been a bit
  overzealous).  As we all know, Sun is a large corporation, and this is
  just the action of one employee of one small portion of the company.

- Sun does feel that the legal situation has been resolved for the most
  part, and that things are progressing towards a conclusion of the 
  matter with Bill

- Most encouraging, there are moves a foot in the positive direction to help
  insure SunHELPs future and future cooperation between Sun & SunHELP.  I am
  aware that Bill has been contacted by at least one individual regarding 
  a positive outcome for the scenario, and it looks like things could 
  actually come out of this in a positive light.  I'm not in a position to
  share any details on this, suffice it to say that I was reasonably
  satisfied and impressed that things were moving the *right* way for a 
  change.  I'm sure Bill will share more details as soon as he can and feels
  its proper.

Finally, I made one point very clear in the whole thing:  if there is any
silver lining to come out of this cloud, it would be great if that result
was this:  That Sun & the user community would come to a better
understanding of each other and figure out better ways to work together in
the future.  As I thought ahead during the day yesterday about what I was
going to discuss during this opportunity, I realized an important fact that
had slipped my mind during the whole situation.  Unlike most of the other
major systems vendors, there really is no coordinated, central Sun Users
Group.  Digital & now Compaq has DECUS, HP has Interex, etc, but the Sun
"users group" has really been more of a grass roots community, expressing
itself through forums like Usenet, sites like SunHELP (and the old
SunSites), and through people like those of us on this mailing list.  I
don't know that we *need* a more official Users Group, but we need to
continue to find new ways to work with Sun, and I feel very strongly that
sites like SunHELP are very important to this.  I believe that this message
is being heard loud and clear by Sun at the moment, at least in some
capacity, and so as I told the gentleman at Sun, I look forward to a
positive outcome for the situation and for Sun to go the extra distance in
order to encourage the user community that this sort of thing won't happen
again.

Finally, I've obviously left some detail out here, as I felt appropriate (in
some respects, it's a shame the rumour mill is gone, because I have a couple
juicy ones now...).  Suffice it to say, Bill & I are keeping each other
abreast of what comes of this, and if I have more detail to give at a later
date, I'll make sure to get it out via the mailing lists.  In the meantime,
keep up the letters of support and feedback to Sun - as I've seen in this
case, they do really work!

Chris

-- 
Chris Petersen
Systems Engineer, Industry Services, Unigraphics Solutions Inc.
Systems Consultant & co-founder auctions.workstations.org
Email: havoc at apk.net (Personal)       http://junior.apk.net/~havoc (soon)