[Asterisk-Dev] Re: Asterisk Book Reviewer

[dking at pimpsoft.com]

It doesn't matter who or what connection he has with that company. The fact of the matter is he was directly linked with a company that cheated people out of money and is thus guilty by association. In the same way you can not prove outright that we can not prove he is responsible for this you can not prove that you are not.

The only way to get people to trust anyone with knowledge of this is for the parent company to do the right thing, anything else can only be seen as a attempt to get good public relations, just like how your company set up a email address just for contacting this list; if you really wanted to do the right thing and be in good with the public you would not be actively trying to circumvent outside communication, for example.

On 22 Jul 2004 at 11:02, asterisk at packtpub.com wrote:

> Your response reveals another two misleading and misinforming aspects of
> Bruce's articles that I did not address because they would not occur to me
> because of what I already knew.
> 
> First, Packt and PI are not companies of equal or even remotely comparable
> size. PI had hundreds of employees; Packt has only a few, not "a lot of
> the old staff," and it is not an "identical company," as you understood
> from Bruce's articles. Packt is very small. PI in comparison was a massive
> company. When Bruce's articles were published, Packt was even smaller. The
> money that runs this small business has not come from PI. The money that
> runs this business could have done absolutely nothing to solve PI's
> problems.
> 
> Second, Packt is not being run by "the same management team." PI had tens
> of managers, and Bruce was one of them, thought I do not recall whether he
> was still a manager when the company went out of business. Packt has none
> of those tens of managers other than Dave Maclean and myself. Dave was the
> Managing Director of PI, and I was a Managing Editor at Wrox. In the
> hierarchy of PI, this means that I had a small editorial team. I did not
> manage managers. The worst that I could do to add to PI's woes was to
> influence my team to publish books that did not sell well. I am sure I
> also contributed to the failure of PI, but that was in my limited
> capacity. The implication of Bruce's articles that Packt is being run by
> "the same management team" of PI is just untrue.
> 
> As you say, you are an outsider, so I understand why you do not know any
> of this. However, Bruce and anyone who knew Packt and PI knows these two
> simple facts. Articles that can generate this kind of misunderstanding can
> only be described as misleading, which is what I am trying to say. The
> demise of PI and the staring of Packt were not an exercise of "shut down
> the company and then start a new one with the same management, staff," as
> Bruce's articles have suggested to you.
> 
> Let me repeat again that I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of
> justifying or defending mistakes. These were made and many people lost,
> and I accept these facts. I am just trying to separate facts from untrue
> and unfair allegations.
> 
> I am not asking you to trust me rather than trust what you read in a blog
> article. I am saying check the facts. Everything that I have said here and
> in my previous message and may say in any future message can be checked
> with anyone who knows about PI and Packt, and there are many of them.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> 
> Louay
> 
> 
> > asterisk at packtpub.com wrote:
> >> The other misleading aspect of Bruce Lawson's articles is the attempt to
> >> treat Packt and David Maclean as one and the same. David Maclean is the
> >> MD
> >> of Packt, but he is not Packt. Packt consists of people who used to work
> >> for Wrox, so they are people who lost their jobs, salaries, bonuses, and
> >> other benefits like the rest of the staff of PI. In fact, the losses of
> >> each one at Packt was probably a lot more than what each of most authors
> >> lost.
> >>
> > Perhaps that explains why the company was reportedly $3M in debt.
> >
> > Reading this thread as an outsider, I see it like this:
> >
> > If a VoIP company suddenly went bankrupt with a massive debt then
> > it's possible that some/all of the customers could lose their prepaid
> > balance.  If, a couple of months later, the same management team
> > started up an identical company, with a lot of the old staff, they
> > should not be surprised at the hostile response they'll receive if
> > they contact their old customers to pitch for their business.
> >
> > This all seems to be a case of "trust us - we know you lost money, but
> > you probably won't this time - honest."
> >
> > I could be wrong, but this seems to me as if the old company went
> > bankrupt simply to avoid having to pay off the massive debt it had
> > managed to run up;  It probably expected to be able to simply shut down
> > the company and then start a new one with the same management, staff,
> > authors and a clean slate.  If someone advised the management team that
> > that trick would be easy to pull off then they were sadly misinformed.
> >
> > --
> >    _/   _/  _/_/_/_/  _/    _/  _/_/_/  _/    _/
> >   _/_/_/   _/_/      _/    _/    _/    _/_/  _/   K e v i n   W a l s h
> >  _/ _/    _/          _/ _/     _/    _/  _/_/    kevin at cursor.biz
> > _/   _/  _/_/_/_/      _/    _/_/_/  _/    _/
> >
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