Brand respect and loyalty is earned, and the result is uptake of revenue from sales. If this was a free and open source project, done out of the curiosity or good nature of a few part-time developers who then provided the work to the public free of charge… then we could argue about hurt feelings and disrespect of the principals.
Xojo Inc. demands and receives money (and no a trivial amount) to deliver a working product to a specification (that they establish). This is a commercial enterprise, who for some time has been failing to deliver on even the core features (many over a decade old), to say nothing about some new gizmo that was promised or a new platform target.
We can run around the problem any number of ways and get sentimental about our pet product but it will not change the fundamental actions needed to recover the customer loyalty…
Xojo Core DESKTOP API and IDE needs an intensive and year long bug squashing pass. (Mac, Windows, Linux,-ARM)
Xojo Android needs to be suspended. (resume it later when core works solid)
Xojo iOS needs to be suspended. (resume it later when core works solid)
Xojo Web needs to be fixed/finished in such a way that 1.0 Users are not left holding a bag of garbage and have some reasonable transition path over time.
If they need more Devs, money or time, then they need to consider some of the following:
Xojo can raise licence fees, do community/crowdfunding ,get investors, e-beg or go partial open source, or any combination of the above… but it needs to get debugging done. full stop.
If you knowingly sell a product that claims to perform X,Y and Z and it barely produces X’ish when Jupiter aligns with Saturn, and Y is superficial or purely cosmetic, requiring endless complex workarounds, and Z flat-out does not work due to showstoppers, and your customer base reports this to you as being of the highest criticality to them, what do you do?
A) Stop everything and fix the mountain of critical bugs, making the product at least deliver what was paid for. Make good on your side of the deal and earn the trust of your customer base who needs this to put food on their tables.
Or…
B) Lets make moar Xojo targets for Apple Watch,Tesla cars, XBox and Nintendo Switch because lord knows we need more marketing targets to draw in eyeballs. After all, people don’t pay for bug fixes… they want new features right! No need to fix classic showstoppers when a new target will draw in fresh wallets.
One of those strategies is being a responsible and reliable party to a two sided financial transaction, a good corporate product/service provider and somebody we all want to continue to do business with.
The other (if this ineffective and nonsensical strategy continues, against the intense and highly passionate objections (literal pleas) of the many of the paying customers) will thereafter be a borderline fraud. A willful disregarding of delivering on your end of a business transaction. Now as EULAs go, there is no warranty for performance or fitness, so the only remedy for customers who did not receive anything close to what they paid for will be to terminate the relationship. I.e. customer collapse.
If they want to pump out whatever suits them, and the customer needs be damned… fine, but they must disclose as such before customers buy in. People here are buying a expectation of minimal delivery on the CORE specification (to say nothing about promises) and they intend to trade their money for the ability to use that product (to the published features and specification) to earn money for themselves. Otherwise there would be no need to do business with Xojo Inc.
The users have spoken, clearly. Stop the feature creep madness, fix the bugs and deliver what we paid for… ABOVE ALL ELSE. There can be no ignoring this now, or returning to the status quo without a willful and intentional signal to the customer base that, “you don’t matter”, “we don’t care if you cant use what we sold you” and finally “we are not even going to try to keep up appearance anymore, just pay and if it works, it works”
Personally, I can’t believe that Xojo will fall back on new customer churn and damage control until eventual collapse, they are better than that, and this is the rubicon moment. Everybody is watching intently now, make a massive and honest effort to fix it in good faith or admit that it is all pointless and you don’t actually care what we think or need.
Customers are pissed off, fired up and fed up because we love and need and paid for this tool for our projects, its not a fictional construct like warp drive, Xojo could and should work as advertised, Real Basic did. We don’t want to see out time investment flushed down the commode, I would love nothing more then to see this ship turned around, Apple style… Why else would I spend my time writing this (yet another plea into the void) on a Saturday night if I did not take it seriously?
What is the game plan to fix this mess? Being dismissed, ignored or swept under the rug will not cut it anymore… we need a practical, clearly defined and honest plan to get the critical bugs fixed within the next 6-12 months or this entire endeavor is doomed. Literally, take the list of customer concerns voiced over the last two weeks, the feedback database and have a emergency conference over at Xojo. Check egos, expectations and personal desires at the door, return to the remaining customer base and deliver a realistic and comprehensive roadmap to fix Xojo in 6-12 months, and a breakdown of what it will cost.
Do it, turn it around, pull it out of the fire and make it great… I dare you.
…
… Xojo is having (kind of) growing pains… 
… I complain because I really love Xojo (and without a personal phone call from you, you already earned my dedication to the Xojo platform 
)
But I can say the rest of developers where not amused to…
) must understand that.
!!!