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To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (22802)	2/28/1999 9:51:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Good article with legal 'strategy' discussed. seattletimes.com

To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (22802)	3/1/1999 12:54:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

<< Your views as to Bill Gates' motivations for the reorganization of the company (which Ballmer, not Gates, actually instituted) and personal stock sales paint him in an especially bad light. >> Gates says jump, Ballmer says "how high." Why would you say I am painting him in a bad light? If I am right, he is behaving logically, in fact brilliantly. << "Cherry-picking" the good people or products for his own company and deliberately leaving the others under funded or under capitalized would violate those fiduciary obligations. >> Who said anything about underfunding? Not me. I said he would try to get all the gravy bits - meaning the key technological resources, in this business, as you should know, but apparently do not, given your (and Borks) stance that all of these companies could simply share the same technology, which makes me chuckle. This includes people, who will be free to work for whomever they wish. That negotiation will take place after some official delineation of the split has already occurred. Therefor there is no abandonment of responsibilities. Rather, it will be his job and the job of those other new CEOs to negotiate for the rights to use or outright ownership of everything they need technologically to have a viable product line. As far as sources, well, I am just painting a scenario out of what I see as the most likely bits of outcome in different areas. It's not like there are so many options. They will be broken up or not. If broken up, they will have leaders, and they will negotiate over the technological resources. In a software company, there is nothing else much to negotiate over. Share of cash and so on will probably scale to share of employees, revenues, technology resources, and so on. What matters is what tech each company ends up owning, and what resources they have for further creation of tech, or purchase of tech. They cannot end up owning exactly the same tech. That would be incredibly stupid from either a technical or a software business point of view, Bork notwithstanding. In fact, if they did that, I would expect all of the divisions to almost immediately go broke. Clearly this is a suggestion from folks who have never run a business, let alone managed inside a software business environment. I suggest some reading on market segments, product differentiation, brand recognition, and technical development. Try "The Soul of a New Machine", for instance. Try "Market Segmentation". I don't have a recc for branding strategy, but I can assure you that any new companies will have to differentiate their brands or be commoditized down to zero pricing. Read a little history of the copyright and patent system, and ask yourself why the ownership of technical assets have to work the way they do. Ask yourself what the lesson of current Linux development strategies is for shared software. Lawyers: Sheesh. Let 'em run your business - if you want to go broke. Just ask IBM. Chaz