Conference thebay::joyoflex

32.0. "Commitment and Contract" by NY1MM::SWEENEY () Wed Dec 19 1984 15:19

There's a lot of DEC culture buried in the words "commitment" and "contract" 

"Commitment" When my momma taught me this language I never heard that word. The
word I learned was "promise".  Then I learned "pledge" as in "I pledge
allegiance..." It wasn't until I came to DEC that I heard "commitment". 

"Contract" This word I picked up from television.  Probably from one of those
movies where a poor soul makes a contract with the devil.  (You remember
watching "The Seventh Seal" at the age of seven, don't you?) 

Now, I committed to give you a tie-in for this into the DEC culture.  Here
goes: 

A "commitment" is easily broken.  Why?  Because in DEC this word has been
debased to a mere declaration of intent.  Because of the absurdity of saying we
"very strongly intend" to do such and such, we now say with the same meaning we
"commit" to do such and such.  We ask, "Are the resources in place?"  We answer
"The resources are committed" or "We are committed to obtaining the resources" 

A "commitment"'s bottom line is that it's one-sided.  "I will give you
something", that's all it says.  There is no second party, no meeting of minds,
no exchange of value. 

When a "commitment" fails.  No one is accountable since "commitments" are
declared to all and are obligations to none. 

A contract on the other hand is quite a different animal.  A contract is always
between two consenting parties.  It's specific and precise. Value is exchanged,
and usually, but not always penalties are outlined for default.  We don't
"commit to sell a VAX" to a customer and he doesn't "commit to pay in full",
these are handled by contract. 

When I using this language and ask by a sales rep "Do you commit to give this
customer an ETHERNET presentation" and I answer "I do so commit",  I'm really
obligating myself to the customer, if I fail to hold my end of the bargain I
risk the sales rep or customer informing my manager of that broken commitment.
Yes, it's a very indirect link, but I'm honorable. 

The kind of commitment that I'm distressed over is the one that is made to be
broken and then so easily excused, as if there existed a broad set of
mis-statements that had DEC's official approval.  The most obvious being, of
course, our "committed" delivery dates. 

I'm sorry I've strayed from the Joyoflex, but I guess I've just made this
entire file work-related. 

Pat Sweeney 

Pat, that's all very true, but I don't think you should be complaining
about the word "commit."  A commitment is indeed a unilateral promise
(although the other side may well depend on its being carried out).
People either take their commitments seriously or they do not.  If
they do not, I doubt that they'd take a contract more seriously --
it is not as though we have legal recourse within DEC when such a contract
is broken.

So let me complain about the (purely Digital?) word, "decommit," as in:

  "What ever happened the xyz component that the ABC group was supposed
   to deliver to us in November?"

  "Oh, they decommitted that..."

And here we are back in Joyoflex.

JP

That reminds of the DECUS presentation where the non-features of a product were
listed in such elaborate detail that a customer brought the house down with the
exclamation "Gimme the non- product that implements the non- features". 

Pat Sweeney 

The ASCII standard phrase that applies here is "no longer operative."

(Tangent - As I look at what I've written I see that if you remove the
quotation marks the sentence's meaning changes radically. With a little
work it could be made properly reflexive. Time for a new note?)

Rob

That should be the ANSI standard phrase.  It doesn't matter what coding 
set you use to represent it.  It works as well in EBCDIC as in ASCII.
Or, in S.F.B.Morse's code, for that matter.

Dave C.