[Info-vax] Terry Shannon - gone 10 years

[mcleanjoh at gmail.com]

On Friday, June 12, 2015 at 6:05:56 AM UTC+10, JF Mezei wrote:
> Another theory I heard was that the DECline of DEC resulted in a serious
> DECline of revenues since fewer were interested in paying him for news
> about DEC.  (and of course, DEC got gobbled up by Compaq and then HP, so
> that meant availability of tidbits from the new bigger company were
> harder to get since his sources were either gone or no longer allowed to
> leak to him because they leaked to "HP" heritage reporters.
> 
> 
> I know that much has been said about the hardship endured by DEC (and ex
> DEC) employees, but one needs to remember that a bunch of us had
> revenues that dependende on DEC's success and those revenues also dried
> up as DEC folded itself out of existence during the 1990s.

JF,

I think you're on the right track.

My take on the situation, based on emails with him and I think a phone conversation with him one day, is that his future financial prospects were looking very grim.  In the Digital days his income from Shannon Knows DEC (?) was reasonable but that revenue stream reduced to a trickle when Compaq bought DEC.  IIRC, not unlike many self-employed people, he had very little in savings for retirement or bad times (or he had some savings but the bad times ran too long).  I guess it all got too much.

Maybe some folk will think that he should have switched into some other profession.  That's not as easy as it sounds when you're in your late 40's or early 50's because you have to start near the bottom in most new roles.