Thank you for your contribution.
On behalf of myself and the groupies, your input to our rancorous discussion is greatly appreciated.
I consider this thread to be very valuable when industry luminaries such as you and Richard Smith post to this thread. Most of the threads of your competitors (and SI in general) are filled with the musings of people who watch stock prices and charts, quote entire press releases verbatim, and steal copyrighted material from newspapers and magazines. This is one of the few threads where people discuss fundamental issues affecting the industry and that's the reason I post my thoughts here, even though I have no financial position in Wind River stock or any competitor. Some people enjoy watching General Hospital, but I prefer the drama of the technology world as it unfolds.
Sometimes I lament the fact that we have too many lawyers and people like you are often afraid to communicate your thoughts. However, I also consider the secondary offering prospectus the most valuable info on this company and that wouldn't exist in any other country. The large block of shares you sold at less than half the current price should speak for itself, but most of the folks on this thread scoff at the government agency that tries to protect the small investor.
You've placed yourself in a very public position with your many interviews with publications such as the San Jose Mercury, San Francisco Chronicle, Fortune, and others. I hope you're enjoying the limelight, even with the drawback of being psychoanalyzed. I'm surprised you read this thread, so I'll refrain from reading your mind in the future. I hope you contribute more often.
I'm happy to hear that you'd much rather teach your kids to be good people than to be rich people. I wish the executives at Mentor Graphics could honestly say the same thing, but I consider repricing "incentive" stock options to be a theft of shareholder funds. Like Warren Buffett, I oppose stock options because it allows executives to enjoy the gains in stock price without suffering when the price declines. You should be proud that Wind River is the only technology company I know of that loaned the CEO a large amount of money to buy shares and he'll suffer alongside all the other shareholders if the price declines. I wish you'd make the same offer to all employees and remove stock options altogether. You could compensate them for the loss of the options by increasing their salaries and then we'd know whether their selling is a bearish signal, rather than simply assuming they consider options as just another part of their salary. I'd buy Wind River stock if you did that and large numbers of executives and employees accepted your offer. Since the company has $102m in cash, I can't see a valid reason why you shouldn't be able to help instill ethics in the investment community, as well as with your children.
It's also nice to hear you're proud of your involvement in Pathfinder. I wish all similar luxury projects were funded by wealthy individuals, rather than taxpayer dollars. However, your PR has increased the market cap of Wind River by $150m in the past few weeks despite only $500,000 in revenues! Could you enlighten us on the cost of the project to the company?
I hope you're not offended by the fact that I believe Allen Benn's statement is absurd that the project shows that COTS software works well enough for critical missions. My father sent the Viking to Mars in 1974 and he screamed at the government for 30 years that bad software was the bottleneck in every one of his projects. Everyone in the real-time industry has known for a long time that RTOS products are mature and stable. VRTX was invested in 1975 and it's substantially older than DOS and nearly as old as Unix. The other RTOSes are almost as old and no engineer needs to be convinced that they work. There are 3 reasons why so many projects use proprietary software:
1) The military-industrial complex exists to provide jobs, not to defend the nation in the most efficient possible manner.
2) Nearly every engineer is proud of his work and believes the code he designs and develops is the most elegant.
3) The code already exists from a previous project and there's no sense in paying an RTOS vendor for code that performs the same functions.
I used to work for Ventritex, a developer of implantable defibrillators. Their recruitment ads in the Sunday Mercury stressed that the company saved lives because they knew that engineering is a low status profession and employees take a great deal of pride in working for a company whose products could be explained at cocktail parties. I believe your company accepted the Pathfinder engagement for the same reason rather for any profit motive. Perhaps you'll mention it in your recruiting ads.
I can tell you from personal experience that a poster of the Viking spacecraft on the wall was one of the few signs in my father's house that he was an engineer. He worked and slaved his life away until he finally retired in 1996. I benefited tremendously from the greed and unrealistic expectations of technology stock investors in a stock hyped by investment banks earning their million dollar fee. I also retired in 1996.
I raise my glass to you, Jerry Fiddler. Cheers! Here's to investment banks and great expectations! Clink, clink, clink! |
