Ideamason 3.0 released

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jan 20, 2007 at 10:27 PM

Graham, in retrospect I have no choice but to agree with your assessment of Eric’s behaviour, the promises, and the arrogance.

Initially, I found him more open. To his credit, some features resulted more or less directly from suggestions some of us made, for example, the ruler, multiple open windows, table view, etc.

But increasingly he seemed to become closed—perhaps the result of getting pressure from both English and Chinese markets.

Given his move to place the developer’s list under moderation, even though it had had only a few posts in recent months, suggests he was learning about control from the Chinese political establishment. The fact that I was kicked off that list for criticizing him privately, with something that never appeared on the list, reminds me of Stalinism. My original post stating my view of moderating the list was sent to the list, but it was his choice to deal with the issue by private correspondence. At that point my confidence in Eric and the whole ADM project was shaken.

I wrote back to him saying that putting a moribund list under moderation didn’t look good, that it reflected a defensive, circling the wagons approach. My fear is that it would be seen in a poor light and put off any of the testers who still kept their eye on the list. I made it clear I was writing as a friend. The reply was that my language was unacceptable, and that he had taken me off the list.

Daly

Graham Rhind wrote:
>Unlike Daly, I personally never liked ADM much - I can see the potential, but the
>interface is clunky and it’s full of bugs - even to the extent that data gets lost, and
>that’s just not acceptable. The coders, whoever they are/were, seemed
>heart-hearted, being charitable, in any efforts to remove the bugs, preferring to
>make a further mush of the program by always adding new (buggy) features.
> >I was a
>member of the user group which, one day, without any notice that I saw, just wasn’t
>there any more (or not that I could find). The treatment of their customers is
>tantamount to fraud. They took money from us for version 4, promised within a few
>months, a couple of years ago, and just never delivered.
> >I should have known,
>really, when I first tested the program and looked at the help file. Each help topic was
>an arrogant preamble of how wonderful ADM was and how it would resolve all your
>problems, and actually very little help. The response to any suggestion for
>improvement that Eric didn’t like was not only dismissive, it was often downright
>rude.
> >I have learnt to buy software only from companies which react (correctly) to
>their customers and don’t treat them as irritances. I’m now using Whizfolders and
>have no regrets, even though it doesn’t do all that ADM could. I prefer to work around
>the weaknesses, the developer is very responsive, and I’ve never lost a letter of my
>data.
> >Graham
> >