Duplicated across all posts so far on this topic:
It is not me the consumer, but the development team that has made Sibelius great. Its success among the great composers of Hollywood, theatre, symphony and pop as the world's most intuitive and popular scorewriter results from their unequivocal commitment and unique talent. Shutting down the nerve centre of this confluence of genetic brilliance is an act of such banality, expedience, and corporate vandalism, that by this act, Avid has proven itself unworthy to marshal such a resource into the future.
While the board of Avid has been busy shutting down Sibelius, with all that connotes for the staff in human terms, its CEO has meantime quadrupled his salary without a scintilla of frugality. There is only one conclusion to be drawn. This board are feathering their own nests while presiding over the destruction of one of the greatest software accomplishments the world has ever known. Their blandishments and appeasements are to be entirely disbelieved, like the mendacious Bush's notorious "read my lips, no new taxes".
Before Avid got hold of it in 2006, Sibelius had won the Queens Innovation Award; its founders, the Finn twins both received MBE for their achievement. Along with television, penicillin, tarmacadam, anaesthesia, the railway engine, and Alan Turing's computer - the very machine that it lives on, Sibelius is a uniquely British creation. It cannot be transplanted in Kiev or Asia, with all its development team pensioned off. Even if retained, staff clearly are not going to uproot themselves with all the family commitments they surely will have.
When you consider that this brilliant and dedicated team have been told their place of employment is being shut down, what else have they to do but immediately begin seeking employment elsewhere? Such talent will obviously find alternative employment in a heartbeat, and maybe they already have for all I know. Therefore, even if Avid now relent, this decision whose effects have barely begun to be realised by our vast, worldwide community, has proven to us "by their deeds shall ye know them".
Make no mistake: under Avid, Sibelius is doomed. The bestoutcome will be a sale of the asset while it still has value. As the world's best selling scorewriter, Sibelius may well be a cash cow for Avid right now, but once the development team have departed, it will implode, suffering the fate of its forebears, MOTU Composers Mosaic, Encore and Opcode Vision.
I therefore propose that pressure on Avid should now focus solely on persuading them to sell this enterprise. It will be attractive to buyers with vision and a conscience, and it can be a tax write-down for Avid. No-one can retain confidence in the Avid company that through bylaw, has progressively insulated itself from its shareholders, repeatedly posted losses, all the while quadrupling the salary of its top CEO to $4.8 million per annum. People like this surround themselves with obsequious yes men, and have no understanding of their staff as human beings. To such executives, people are mere servants, machines to discarded just as soon as they can be replaced with slave labour offshore.
Profit is a perfectly acceptable motivation for any business, but profit without vision is a Highway to Hell. That's where Avid is headed in my estimation, along with its reprehensible self serving policies and the directors who dreamed them up.
I encourage anyone with with the means, knowledge and power to move in the direction I advocate above, to act swiftly before Avid assassinate the goose that lays the golden egg. They are not to be trusted.
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Derek Williams
www.derekwilliams.net |