[cap-talk] Selling capabilities programming

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 13:02 +1000, James A. Donald wrote:
> Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>  > This raises my curiosity. If you don't know any of the
>  > people involved, how do you have sufficient
>  > understanding of what happened at Xanadu to offer such
>  > a strong opinion? What is the source of your
>  > competency?
> 
> Its a fairly famous disaster, and if some people have difficulty
> perceiving the cause of the disaster, perhaps they were a little
> too close.

What I think this means is: (a) there is some amount of Xanadu folklore
out there, and (b) you have absolutely no idea what the facts are or
were.

James: be careful about drawing conclusions and/or casting aspersions
from folklore of this sort. Folklore is often wrong or exaggerated, and
the type of aspersions you are casting really tend to piss people off.

In the case of Xanadu, the only widely available sources are:

1. Various statements from Ted Nelson, who is a compelling source with
   a strongly negative bias. Ted describes what he sees, but what he
   sees is often one sided and contrary to fact.

2. An article that appeared in Wired magazine entitled "The Curse of
   Xanadu". Almost every concrete fact stated in this article is
   incorrect.

   Ted Nelson took the time to do an extensive rebuttal. It's an
   interesting read, mainly as insight into what is really important
   to Ted (which is to say: Ted is what is important to Ted).

3. An article in the Wall Street Journal that appeared on the front page
   somewhere around 1996. I cannot trace down a URL for that now.

4. An email I sent to David Farber's "Interesting People" list, which
   you can find archived at:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199312/msg00022.html

   I would like to believe that this is a fairly balanced view, but
   it doesn't address your claim specifically and I am not a
   disinterested party. I do draw your attention to the last paragraph,
   which I know to be accurate from personal experience.

> ...if some people have difficulty perceiving the cause of the
> disaster, perhaps they were a little too close.

James: speaking as the last CEO of the Xanadu Operating Company during
its active phase, and as someone who even Nelson agrees (somewhat to my
astonishment) was an effective leader for the company, I can assure you
that I have an exceptionally painful and clear understanding of what
went wrong at Xanadu.

The folklore would have you believe that Xanadu was a technical failure.
It was not. Technical overreach, while it did occur, was not the
fundamental problem at Xanadu. The fundamental problem at Xanadu was all
too prosaic: it was about control and money. Because of control issues,
the project operated without experienced software, project, operational,
or financial management for its first ~25 years. Under the conditions
Ted Nelson imposed, this was uncorrectable. After Xanadu was acquired by
Autodesk, Marc Stiegler came aboard, and did the great bulk of the work
needed to change that. I had the good fortune to inherit his progress,
and the misfortune to be unable to resolve the corporate ownership
issues and personal control issues that ultimately killed the company.

If you actually want to know what happened, send me a note and ask me,
or ask Marc Stiegler (former head of Autodesk's Xanadu division), or ask
Mark Miller (Xanadu's lead architect).

In the meantime, I will ask you once again not to make personal
comments. If you have facts to state, state them. Do not present as fact
or conclusion that which you know absolutely nothing about.
-- 
Jonathan S. Shapiro, Ph.D.
Managing Director
The EROS Group, LLC