Re: ANN: Retiring from A2 world - Good Bye All!

["Gary R. Utter" <utter@syndicomm.com>]

In article <3d06999a@news.svn.net>, Paul Grammens <grammens@svn.net>
wrote:

> Well, if one person can wipe you out that way, you're in the wrong business.

Being in the Apple II software business WAS probably not the best
choice, but that's not the point. It's not Toms job to go around
teaching people that they are in the wrong business.

> You're crying over milk spilt a decade ago.

I'm not crying over anything. I'm explaining some history to you which
you clearly don't understand. Tom hurt a lot of people, some in minor
way, some in a major way. Toms personal behaviour (over and above the
piracy issue) was loathesome, and the only reason he wasn't prosecuted
for a lot of it was that the law had not caught up to the internet yet.


> I'm not insisting that it didn't happen, I'm suggesting that even if it 
> did, you should get a life.

I've actually got a life, but that doesn't mean I can't remember things
that happened way back when. 

> I'm sorry, but the reality is that Apple stopped making the Apple II. Some
> time before that, it was in decline. 

Tom and his ilk were one of the reasons it was in decline, not the
major reason (that was Apple), but not an insignificant reason either.
And the climate of hatred that Tom fostered here did a lot of damage to
the Apple II COMMUNITY, not just to the software market.

You think it doesn't matter, and, these days, it doesn't. But when it
DID matter, Tom was there, making trouble for honest people for his own
aggrandizement.

> Anyone who was trying to make money on Apple II software was going to fail,
> Tom or no Tom.

Sure, but we didn't know that then. Some people had gotten damned rich
writing Apple II software, and for many years, it was a decent market.
By the time Tom started his shenanigans, it was slowing down, but it
was not obvious that the end was coming. (And in fact, at that point,
not necessarily true. Apple was still developing the Rom 03 at that
time, and continued with the Rom 4 that was never released. One of the
big contributing factors to Apple killing the machine was the weakness
of the market, and part of that falls on Toms head. He probably is not
solely responsible for killing the platform, but he is not blameless
either. (I don't mean to suggest that this was his intention, and as I
said earlier, I'm not even sure he was responsible for his actions, due
to his mental problems.)

> I can believe all that, except for the lethal part. I think he enjoys the
> attention. But he had very little to do with the economics of programming
> for the Apple II.

You can think what you want, but I was THERE.  Tom and his little crew
quite literally drove away developers (a lot of them hobbyists, yes,
but developers nonetheless). (And I'm not including Nathan in this, in
the end, it was me that drove Nathan away, but he had mental problems
of his own.)

There are people that REALLY HATE Tom, and I know one or two that would
quite literally kill him if they had the chance. (These are people that
he has actually attacked off line, with mail bombs, harassing phone
calls day and night, "anonymous" threats, false accusations to the
authorities, etc.)

There are a lot more people that just hate him, and all he stands for,
in a lowercase way. These are the people you see in here from time to
time speaking ill of him in scatalogical and obscene language. (The
style they use is the style that HE used in the old days, and I've seen
him use it more recently. If you've missed it, that's on you.)

What it really REALLY comes down to is this. You don't know what you
are talking about. You have walked in here well past the middle of the
movie, and while you think you know what's going on, you don't.Those of
us who have been in the Apple II world since the mid '80s think you're
pretty much of a fool. That doesn't make you a bad person, but it
doesn't get you a lot of respect either.