Some clarifications...

I know… this is going to be ‘another one of those threads’; however, I feel the need to make some very distinct clarifications here. First of all, some of you may or may not have been keeping up with the Brad fiasco. He continuously bashes Xojo and its employees on his personal blog… the late of which is an issue he has with Greg and the sslSocket (more specifically, a blog he created detailing the configuration of such). Early this year, after some personal trouble with Firefox complaining about my security certificate I found an issue where Xojo was not properly relaying the intermediate certificates. I published my findings on the forums, and filed a feedback indicating my findings (with some resistance). I thought nothing much about this afterwards, until I seen Greg’s recent reply in the thread stating browers he has tested ‘appear to be working fine’ thus validating there likely isn’t anything wrong with the socket. This, along with no forward movement on my ticket got me upset, because in my feedback submission and forum posts about this… I thought I made it very clear that you can’t test this issue using solely the brower’s response, and gave multiple tools to test with (any one of them takes a few seconds, and will let you know specifically what the SSL certificate issue is… which was clarified by how quickly Travis was able to verify the issue). My ‘rant’ had nothing to do with Brad, his feelings about Xojo, nor do I agree with his remarks… although I can understand PART of his frustrations.

That said, I enjoy using (for the most part) Xojo, and will likely continue to do so… baring that these kinds of resistance on possible bug entries aren’t quickly to appear. We’re encouraged to submit bug reports (and I feel the lack of doing so has been the focus point on regressed issues by employees in the past [ie. Why hasn’t somebody tested this before and filed a report?]). I have a regressed bug filed (linux distributed console applications will not run ANY threads except the main thread if .isDaemonized is used; therefore, my application will only run properly when appending & to the filename and removing any .isDaemonized calls within the code) that has been sitting in feedback for weeks without even a review. If you want us to submit these tickets, don’t be quick to give us resistance that we’re wasting our time ‘because it’s not really a bug’ without even taking the steps to verify it first. If I have to take my time to put as much information to replicate an issue, along with tools to test the bug, multiple times… and they get ignored… I get pissed, as I think anybody else would. It makes me wonder why I’m even bothering and wasting my time submitting.

Unlike Brad, I think Greg was quick on the draw and made an honest mistake (I don’t think he intentionally lied or misdirected anybody). Whether it be lack of experience (we’ve all been there, and still are… I’m all the time making stupid mistakes and learning things), or some other issue… I think it’s very clear he’s an asset to the Xojo community, and appreciate his support in the forums.

And now, a quick message to Brad… because I know he’s lurking. I think what you’re doing is, at the least, borderline childish. You’ve toyed the line with free-speech and have, very clearly, over stepped that into defamation of character against Greg (and possibly other employees). I would advise you to stop, but don’t think you will. Just know, anything you say and do can and will likely be used against you. You can tell yourself that there’s no way that could/would happen; however, your intent is very clear on what you’re trying to accomplish… and that’s to give Xojo and it’s employees a bad rep. Stating facts about a product or service, or an issue you have/had with it is one thing… but intermingling it with personal attacks makes it defamation. Is your dislike worth the risks?

@ Eric: sounds like you went through some frustration because of the way your efforts on reporting issues was (not) responded. And if I get you right, then you are also able to imagine and understand the situation of the Xojo employees and you would not like to be put in the same category as Brad. At the same time you probably do not want to just swallow that frustration but rather would like to be heard how you feel about it, right?

Now you have not asked for advice and still this is the only thing I can say now: Never forget to ask.

Ask with a simple and short sentence what exactly you would like to get, right now, when you write such a long text. Who can do what so that you get what you want?

The main reason why our needs and wishes are not getting fulfilled is because we do not ask. And in particular we do not ask for concrete, feasible actions.

And then before asking, it may help if we put ourselves in the situation of the other and try to imagine what we would need, being Greg, or Joe, etc.

Just my $ .02

Could I get some verification from somebody in Xojo about when a fix for the SSL problem may be? My feedback (#34263) was originally filed in June 30. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to get this much attention, or even a fix anytime soon w/ all the work going on… but it’d be nice to know for future reference.

Looks like it will be in the next release
We would have avoided it for 2014r2.1 as this is a bit of a larger change than we’d normally put in a point release

Awesome, thanks Norman! I really wasn’t expecting a fix that quickly (especially with all the iOS stuff going on), so definitely appreciate it.

I’m off topic from Eric’s post a bit, but what rock have I been living under?

Brad’s gone off the deep end? He has always been such a good contributor on things in the past. If I may ask - what happened?

Like I said, I think I’ve been living under a rock…

Brad seems to be doing all he can to denigrate the company, it’s president and some of it’s other employees, and to get people to abandon the product…

I think one can safely say he does not do anything in half measures… He was never one to simply agree to disagree.

There were some bitter exchanges and very strong opinions expressed between Brad and others. While I could have done without and do not regret the bitter exchanges and all the bad blood (that is apparently still going on), I regret not having Brad around here to provide expert opinions. I like many others benefited from his solutions and his excellent knowledge.

Passionate people will love passionately, and sometimes fall out of love just as passionately. Herewith is a live example.

I will chip in my two cents worth. I haven’t had any business reason to deal with Brad and I will gladly state that his knowledge of how to get things done in Xojo far exceeds mine. I don’t post often since I don’t feel that I have anything valuable to add to most of the conversations. In this case, I want to encourage anyone reading these posts to take some of the comments with a grain of salt (so to speak).
Xojo is a great tool (in my opinion). It does have its warts - just like any other development tool. However, the ease of use and the capabilities of it do do cross-platform work is really, really great! No tool is perfect. Xojo is a pleasure to use and the fact that the developers interact with those of us on the forums is something that I haven’t seen with other development tools.
Bottom line - I would rather have Xojo (and its warts) along with direct interaction with Norman and Greg (and others) here than a tool (like Delphi and its warts) and no interaction with the people building that toolset. The majority of this community is very, very helpful. In other communities many of the the “heavy” posters tend to ridicule questions as not being worthy of their time. This is a different situation where many of the “heavy” posters answer questions in a helpful manner without judgment.

Just my $.02 as well.

Well put, Michael.

Well, I’m sad. Brad always seemed like a fairly decent guy other than his insistence that Android be supported. He never could get his head around why Xojo was putting resources into iOS. That said he was always helpful and seemed like a decent fellow. I’m sorry he’s gone off the deep end and has decided to enact a scorched earth policy. It’s not helpful to his reputation or to that of his business. I get it if he’s ticked off and Xojo isn’t meeting his needs. Fine - move on. But to go on the tirade that he is apparently on is tasteless and disgusting. I have not bothered to look at his Twitter feed or home page. I don’t need to waste my time on that and have my good memories of Brad ruined.

Brad - if you are reading this - just stop. All you are doing is embarrassing yourself and hurting yourself. If you don’t want to use Xojo any longer then move on. What do you expect to gain from your efforts? If you were to succeed in bringing down Xojo (is that your goal? - and it’s unlikely) then you’d have a whole heck of a lot of people really ticked off at you. Do you think this will win you friends? And if your goal is something else - how are you achieving that? What benefit do you get from it anyhow? None. It just hurts you and everyone else.

No platform is perfect as others have said. Shoot, there’s little things that I think should be fixed that aren’t. I’ve got bugs that I’ve reported two years ago that should be easy to fix that have not had any love. Such is life. I’ve figured out how to work around them. So most are not that critical given the work arounds. But beyond the bugs, Xojo is an awesome platform and I’ve put all my eggs in this basket. So stop messing with my rice bowl, Brad!

Not that this is any of my business but why not title the post “The lynching of Brad”. I mean you might as well. Why don’t everyone just move on. Geez.

Not to all those he bullied and denigrated on this forum. Agree with him and he was the nicest guy, disagree and you were on his bad list and he went out of his way to make your life miserable.

Decent fellows don’t do what he had done and continues to do.

I pity him, but I have to say I am angry at those who always just stood by and excused his behaviour.

You could see that coming from a mile away - it was just a matter of time before a Xojo employee got onto his bad list, and then Xojo itself.

He might be a decent programmer, but since he’s gone the tone on this forum went back to the more civilized one that I remember from the old forum, and I haven’t seen a single vitriolic thread.

If you want a decent guy I would put forward Bob Keeney. Always critical, but always polite, helpful, measured, and constructive.

There are a number of people around whose only goal in life seem to be to act some sort of revenge against Xojo, who never positively contribute, and appear only in this forum to denigrate the product and the team. These poor individuals visibly need to come here to claim their pain and hurt, after they feel having been rejected in some fashion, either because of the new IDE, because their value was not recognized, or any other incident that triggered their emotional imbalance. We should not blame them for their condition but rather pity them for the suffering they inflict to themselves. That said, most of us should not be victimized by their mental condition, since we are not responsible for it. I will be forever grateful to Toby for the ignore feature, which protects from undue harassment on the part of loonies.

Some of the mentally unfit could be decent members of society, and offer valuable contributions, if only they could put away their grudge. I have often challenged some of them to help others instead of constantly whine or bark, unfortunately to no avail. Knowledge is no excuse for being snotty or otherwise aggressive.

I am also convinced that Xojo team exercised a lot of restraint in front of someone who routinely insulted anybody who had the misfortune to post in good faith things that individual did not like. At one point in real life people who cannot behave get excluded from places where their disorderly conduct is harmful to others. Thank you Xojo for protecting us from bullies by banning them.

He wasn’t banned - Brad disabled his own account.

After my last run-in with Brad I asked Xojo to temporarily ban both of us (so we could read the forums but not post) for the sake of everyone, but they didn’t want to do that. I thought that was a mistake as in my opinion they should have stood up to bullies and introduced a "zero tolerance to bullying " policy. Instead they introduced the ignore feature.

[quote=137049:@Markus Winter]He wasn’t banned - Brad disabled his own account.

After my last run-in with Brad I asked Xojo to temporarily ban both of us (so we could read the forums but not post) for the sake of everyone, but they didn’t want to do that. I thought that was a mistake as in my opinion they should have stood up to bullies and introduced a "zero tolerance to bullying " policy. Instead they introduced the ignore feature.[/quote]

Brad is only one case in a recurring problem I have seen since I joined the French network Calvados back in 1981, and then Compuserve in 1982. In spite of the invention of smilies, forums are inherently a “cold” medium, which does not transmit the human non-verbal communication, and induces a perverse misperception of what is acceptable.

In real life, if someone says, as it happened yesterday in another thread “you are an idiot”, conversation quickly stops or people simply punch each other and case is closed. In cyberspace, tempers flare in writing and all sorts of flames ensue without an immediate sanction. The level of invective quickly escalates, because the medium remains as insensitive as the machine.

This forum is far from being the worst place, as the immense majority of posters are polite and respectful. I already wrote the good I think comes from using real names. Which by the way was the case of the two networks I mentioned above. And recent moves on the part of Facebook seem to concur with that policy as a mean to prevent cyber bullying.

The ignore feature is now standard in places where anonymity fosters insults and crazy conduct, like Usenet. It may not always suffice, but it helps. Now indeed it would make sense to ban members who cannot seem to show composure, but some of the most unruly already proud themselves in using all sorts of fake ID to keep harassing the forum. Since it is so easy to create a new account, banning would work only for certain people who need to appear under their legitimate ID.

I can appreciate where you all are coming from, but let’s be careful with what we say here. We don’t need to have a thread just trash talking a former member of the community. We don’t want to add any fuel to the fire.

This is so true. Text depending on how it is written can convey a meaning or tone that the author was not intending. I’ve had a terrible time with this in my life. I’ve had to learn how to stop, read and edit a post or e-mail before sending. Even then there are times when my emotion gets the best of me. I’ve evolved throughout my adult life for sure. I look back at things I’ve sent (faxed back in the day) and am mortified by what I sent! It’s hard to keep one’s tone level when one is animated or roused up about something.

If I am arguing with you face to face then I am more likely to get punched by you. However, here safe on the other side of my computer, all you can do is lash back in text. So I am more likely to add vitriol to things or at the very least apparent vitriol. So yes, one must be very careful when posting so as to try to convey what they really are intending.

So it’s a good warning to us all - before hitting that post button - think about what we are saying and why…

I know what you mean, but I also don’t hold with the “you only say good things about the departed” (dead or otherwise). In my eyes that is just as disrespectful as just telling bad things. The only thing you can do is be truthful.

My brother died two years ago. He was a charmer and could be the nicest guy in the World - but he could also be the biggest $%#${%# in the World. He was borderline psychotic, and people either loved him (he could easily have had his own cult following, and in a way did) or thought he was a truly evil person.

They were both right.

For the funeral I wrote a speech about him, a brutally honest one about the Angel and the Devil on his shoulders, and everyone said I got it spot on, wether they loved him or couldn’t stand him.

That is the kind of respect I want to give, and I hope that is the kind of respect I get.

My friends have never been those that didn’t criticise me, but those that respected me (and more importantly: themselves) enough to kick my ■■■■ when I needed it.

I think the only viable solution here is for Xojo to reserve this place during the XDC…

http://www.yelp.com/biz/richard-lords-gym-austin

Bring your gloves, bitches! :stuck_out_tongue: