The main reasons we do not share our list of items-in-progress
are (1) legal, and (2) competitive. Disclosing future plans
would be a form of security breach. I do not doubt for one minute
that our competitors also monitor this list. And in a competitive
market, I'm pretty sure that IBM is not the only company that
keeps its future development plans under wraps.

In cases where we do share information about up-coming function,
it because we are close enough to general availability that there
is no real threat to security, or your company has signed a
non-disclosure agreement, or Marketing and Legal have decided that
sharing the information would otherwise pose no threat.

Regards,

Andy

Andy Raibeck
IBM
Tivoli Storage Manager Client Development
e-mail: storman AT us.ibm DOT com
"The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked."

=> On Mon, 28 Feb 2000 07:17:47 -0700, Bill Smoldt <smoldt AT STORSOL DOT COM>
said:


> They certainly can't share the list and they're doing the best job they
can
> at prioritizing wants vs. new features.  Keeping the GUI was expensive.

Baloney they can't share the list.  They can share vaporware and call it
"pre-sales marketing", why not share vaporware and call it "customer
relations".

While I'm definitely in the "native GUI provides function availiable
nowhere
else" camp, I would probably feel better if I knew that Tivoli was working
on
that toenail-polisher feature I'd been agitating for.

I'm guessing they "can't" share the list because letting us know what
they're
working on will not help; i.e. we'd be irritated at their internal
priorities
just as we're irritated by their announced priorities.