So I posted about Omegabundle for Xojo 2013 on Reddit, and someone is already digging in on the “proprietary basic” nature of Xojo. Any help or speaking up about this would be appreciated. Open source fanatics are quick to jump on anything proprietary.
I didn’t read it as a digging, the poster wrote:
‘To save the next person having to google it, it’s a $400 bundle of add-ons for a proprietary version of BASIC.’
Seems like a reasonable statement to me, Omegabundle is $399 (he/she got the price wrong by $1)
and
Xojo is a proprietary version of the BASIC language.
Language bigots (if indeed that is what he/she is) will never come around and they will be missing all the features (and fun) that we have with Xojo. I wouldn’t worry about it, any response will just incite a flame war and your post will get buried beneath it.
Carl, for the most part, I agree. However you do get a lot of folks who take it without giving it much thought - less so a “proprietary” language, but as a proprietary closed source product that uses BASIC.
I tossed in a few upvotes but frankly when too many people pile on in one direction it takes on a fan boi circle-jerk quality. Probably best to leave it with Geoff’s well stated explanation.
I’m honestly worried about evangelizing Xojo. My competitors might find out how I’m using Xojo to produce Windows, Mac, Linux, Web applications much faster, with less payroll and the same consulting hours.
I’m not a fan boi of anything, but if gets the Job done faster with fewer bugs, then I’m in. I’ve evaluated XE4, Free Pascal/Lazarus, Xamarin and many more…and as far as I’m concerned Xojo is the best x-platform development environment available right now.
Looking at the most popular articles in programming, it seems that this section is full of people who like OpenSource and don’t want to pay for software. Paid products seem to get knocked down pretty quickly.
Maybe it’s is the wrong place to be punting Xojo and paid additions.
[quote=29259:@Sam Rowlands]Looking at the most popular articles in programming, it seems that this section is full of people who like OpenSource and don’t want to pay for software. Paid products seem to get knocked down pretty quickly.
Maybe it’s is the wrong place to be punting Xojo and paid additions.[/quote]
While I wouldn’t generalize that they don’t want to pay for software, I’d agree Reddit (like most of these generic forums out there related to programming) favors open source projects. It’s easy to understand why and not a all bad, free always attracts more people and if free isn’t of bad quality this people will stay and prefer it. Some would pay for software but can’t, or welcome not having to. Xojo understands this now (and has in the past, when it treated the Linux version differently) and offers a free way to try and test Xojo.
It’s just that, as you say, it’s not a good place to promote Xojo or, even worse, proprietary paid additions to a proprietary platform.
The hostility is tough to deal with. Ive sold a lot of different types of products, and selling to developers is about the hardest - no matter where are you trying to sell. Plus anonymity doesn’t exactly bring out the best in some people. It is a disruption of tribal mentality.
The thing with /r/programming you have a very large gathering of developers who wouldn’t otherwise know about it. That makes it worth it.
To be fair, the post is a dupe (which is usually a “no no”) and says “super cheap” and implies that without that expenditure, the (to them) already-expensive Xojo isn’t good at cross-programming (something most of them already believe they have for free in a acceptable alternatives). The way it’s put, it was bound to cause bad reactions. I’m actually surprised it was so few.
On the other hand this one got a lot more comments than its dupe from days before, so perhaps it was for the better 
The problem is that the attitude is negative, which provokes defensive posts, which feeds the negative attitude even more (as it becomes defensive itself), then people otherwise smart sum up the thread unfairly as:
And everything you do after this literally confirms this summary for people just coming in.
Yes, r/programming is a place for programmers to gather but, to be frank, it’s like going to the greatest reunion of beliebers and trying to extoll the virtues of Jimi Hendrix. You might be right, and these people under different circumstances might pay attention to you, but not there nor with their friends watching.
(not saying Xojo is Hendrix nor Redditors are beliebers, you can switch the names around and the result is the same).
[quote=29393:@Eduardo Gutierrez de Oliveira]
(not saying Xojo is Hendrix nor Redditors are beliebers, you can switch the names around and the result is the same).[/quote]
The term that often gets used for open source software zealots is freetard
Some have taken free open source software position to the extreme.
If someone use open source or proprietary software doesn’t matter as long the job is done.
About Xojo, for my purpose it never let me down. I used many development tools, Basic together with assembler, Logo, Forth, Pascal, Visual Basic 4.0 until 6.0, C, Visual FoxPro 2.5 until 3.1 for Mac, then 6.0 and 8.0 for Windows and RealBasic (now Xojo). I always could made the job done with any of them.
It is not the tool in use but the talents of the person behind it which determine success or failure. When the end user needs are satisfied, he/she will not bother about which tool is used. I find the “mine is best” discussion rather silly.
When our marketing and sales person is discussing a project with a prospecting customer, she does not discuss the tools we use but what exactly the customer needs and wants. We never came in a situation where a customer said “no” because we are using Xojo. The customers requests, the deadline and the price of the project is much more important. The rest is up to us.
There is nothing to defend on Reddit. People have different opinions and we have to respect them even when we think they are wrong. In this Reddit case you will never convince them about Xojo the way you did. Geoff Perlman made a very good reply and even that reply did not even convinced them. Also their negative remarks on Perlman’s post did not impresse me, while if I would be Geoff Perlmans opponent we would have a more indepth descussion.
Many people prefer Open Source over proprietary software because… it is free. That is their only reason. But free does always mean good or best. However in Xojo’s case, they do not know what they are talking about. Between now and a year, things will be very much different for Xojo. On this moment Xojo suffers from first release bugs but once they are out, it will be a much different story.
At acra-endeavours we experience a speed loss compared with RealStudio. Nevertheless we continue using Xojo because we believe in its future and the features it has in store for us. On this moment we using only the Windows desktop version but like to develop for the WEB and the Mac between now and a year.
The best public relations for Xojo and for us, is a succesfull developed application which satisfy the customers wishes and needs. Personally I have some applications created in 1984 and still in use today (originally written for an Acorn BBC-B 32K, rewritten in VB6 in 1995 and again rewritten in 2007 in Xojo). I tell you, it is quiet an accomplishment of which I am proud of and very good public relations.
Keep positive and passionate in life and you will accomplish great and amazing things! Like commander Chacotay said “be creative” when his spaceship was under attack of the Cardassians. I say the same to you now!
And some, like Xojo Inc, have taken the opposite extreme by imposing purpose restrictions in the license, restraining the use of useful framework features, and seeking to obtain software patents.
I find this ironic considering that the Xojo framework itself makes use of open-source software. While I’m sure there are other examples, I know that at least the Crypto module uses the Crypt++ library. Indeed, I’d wager the liberal license terms were a major factor in the decision to use Crypt++: Xojo didn’t want a proprietary solution.
[quote=29448:@Andrew L.]I find this ironic considering that the Xojo framework itself makes use of open-source software. While I’m sure there are other examples, I know that at least the Crypto module uses the Crypt++ library. Indeed, I’d wager the liberal license terms were a major factor in the decision to use Crypt++: Xojo didn’t want a proprietary solution.
[/quote]
You need to look up the definition of “irony”. If the developers of Crypt++ had a problem with it being included in commercial software with restrictive licenses, they would not have placed the source code in the public domain and used an attribution license for the compilation. No moral obligation is imposed.
And I implied none. The irony I was pointing out was Xojo’s apparent disdain for open-source in the context of their profitable use of open-source code.
Right back atcha.
What apparent disdain? Please cite. And at any rate, it’s still not irony. It is at worst a contradiction.
[quote=29448:@Andrew L.]And some, like Xojo Inc, have taken the opposite extreme by imposing purpose restrictions in the license, restraining the use of useful framework features, and seeking to obtain software patents.
[/quote]
You can use the framework in any of your apps.
What restrictions are you referring to ?
The CEO of ANY firm (software or otherwise) has a fiduciary responsibility to the board & shareholders.
This often involves protecting the intellectual assets of the company.
In software firms this amounts to software patents.
Failing to do so is a failure in that responsibility.
[quote=29448:@Andrew L.]
I find this ironic considering that the Xojo framework itself makes use of open-source software. While I’m sure there are other examples, I know that at least the Crypto module uses the Crypt++ library. Indeed, I’d wager the liberal license terms were a major factor in the decision to use Crypt++: Xojo didn’t want a proprietary solution.[/quote]
I don’t find any irony in using open source.
We use open source software where we can / should and make appropriate attributions. Apple, MS Adobe & many others do as well.
Where possible we will even contribute back to them.
We do specifically avoid certain license types as they are destructive to our business while others are not.
Protecting you IP is possible without patents. Europe doesn’t allow patents, yet we have a thriving IT sector. I talked with people at the conference, and I guess when you work in an ecosystem where everyone uses patents, you don’t have much of a choice but to use them as well. In Europe the European parliament decided against software patents, because you should not be allowed to patent ideas. After all there are only so many ways you can for instance get a computer to calculate 1+1. If you allow people to patent that, you’ll have no software industry before long.
Just my 2 cents.
Not really in the US. Hopefully this wasn’t the case and I bet a ton of people engaged in patenting wish they didn’t have to do so.
The argument I don’t see any logic in is the conclusion that since Xojo doesn’t release anything as Open Source, that they have a disdain for it. I can’t follow this logic or find where both things meet.
Xojo’s position is not extreme. In this context, extreme was written to mean that some open source zealots disdain (here it’s correctly used) any and all proprietary software in some categories.
Xojo has absolutely nothing against open source, doesn’t discourage nor disparage open source and all restrains in license and framework (it’s a single thing, really) are not related to open source but to business models. Xojo wouldn’t be any closer or further from open source if they had a single product tier so this argument is wholly unrelated to “being extreme” in any point of the “Open source discussion”.
It would, indeed, be ironic if a proprietary company disparages open source products but uses them itself. This is not the case.
Wowzer - all I can say is that reddit don’t impress me much, most of the comments received about the Omegabundle were just argumentative. They even started picking apart that some of us had joined reddit initially to support the Omegabundle and Xojo. I for one had started to participate in other sections.
I had also posted links to some of my developer tools, only to find them downgraded to a point where they don’t show up (-4) or lower. Reddit users seem like such a warm and welcoming bunch .
Anyone familiar with reddit and the /r/programming subreddit could have predicted this outcome. It was stupid to post the omegabundle there. It was even more stupid to rally people to defend the product there. It hurt the image of Xojo more than it helped sell the Omegabundle.