*countable infinities only

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2012, Tom Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 06/12/2012 04:16 PM, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
>> I cannot guarantee that any particular negotiation with Lenovo,
>> nor with Dell, will succeed.  But certainly negotiating only with
>> ourselves, without even trying to negotiate with Lenovo/Dell,
>> will result in a loss for us.
>
> I'm not sure why you are assuming that we did not try to negotiate with
> hardware OEMs.
>
> ~tom

Tom, I do not doubt your claim to have spoken with various large
vendors of home computer hardware.  My post which you quote was
in response to a post by Bill Nottingham.  Bill Nottingham
suggested that we give up.  If I have misunderstood what
Bill Nottingham meant, I apologize to Bill and to all Fedorians.

I think my main point stands: talking with, say, Dell, and
Microsoft in private, without a serious legal and propaganda
push, makes Fedora's position weak in the private negotiations.
As soon as the other side made clear that their position was to
accept Microsoft's plan, Red Hat should have called a press
conference and explained the situation to reporters from the New
York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc..

Please allow me a personal remark: I too have fought one part of
a big battle so hard and so long that it seemed to me that the
part I was engaged in must be the whole battle.  I think that
perhaps the negotiators on the Fedora/Red Hat have mistaken one
part of the battle for the whole battle.

oo--JS.