And did they resolve the documentation issues start providing good
support? No. That is the issue, and that is why I left to PHP. They
made it clear to me that developers like me were not important to them
at all.
--
Robert Garcia
President - BigHead Technology
VP Application Development - eventpix.com
13653 West Park Dr
Magalia, Ca 95954
ph: 530.645.4040 x222 fax: 530.645.4040
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://bighead.net/ - http://eventpix.com/
On Oct 21, 2008, at 7:14 AM, Stefan Gonick wrote:
Hi All,
I generally agree with Mark Weiss, but I would stop quite short of
calling it
"abuse." Rather, I think that Phil has always had a big blind spot
around the
great importance of communication with the list of developers.
You all probably remember when Robert Garcia announced that he was
dropping
Witango due to missing documentation and a lack of support from
With. After his
announcement another prominent Witango developer said that he was
leaving as well.
This created a lot of anxiety in the remaining developers about the
company, not the
product. We all loved the product but were concerned that there were
problems with the
company that could mean the end of the product. Phil could have done
a lot of
damage control by stepping in at that point and reassuring everyone
one that
he was planning on providing good support and finishing up the
missing documentation.
Instead, he remained silent.
In my concern about the situation, I emailed Phil directly. He told
me privately that
they plan on providing good support and finishing the missing
documentation. I asked
him why he didn't say that to the list. Here's where the blind spot
came in...
He said that responding to the accusations of Robert would just fan
the flames and
he would not get involved in a public debate about all of that
stuff. He said that if anyone
was concerned, they could contact him directly like I did. He
believed that if he didn't
respond to the list, the hubbub would eventually die out.
He was right that the hubbub did eventually die out but not without
damage. That was the
turning point where many developers decided to either leave the
product or at least learn
another language out of fear that With Ent. was not responsive and
therefore not a viable
company. Their commitment to Witango was very weakened at that point.
In my opinion Phil's ongoing communication blind spot and
misjudgment caused the
downward slide of a loss of confidence in With Ent. and an exodus to
other languages.
People felt kept in the dark and disrespected. It didn't seem like
Phil cared about us and
so on. And here we are today. We have no idea when or if version 6
is ever coming out.
It's extremely frustrating and discouraging. Bridges have been
burned in the process.
I have pointed out this blind spot to Phil privately and
accidentally one time publicly.
It didn't have any lasting impact. As Mark said, it's apparently a
personality thing.
I still use Witango 5.5 exclusively, though I did learn ColdFusion
and researched
Ruby on Rails. I will upgrade to version 6 if it ever comes out. I
want to install Witango
on my Windows Vista laptop but can't until version 6 comes out, so I
am chomping at
the bit for that.
I wish Phil would say something. There is one possibility as far as
this particular
thread goes that people may not have considered. Phil may only check
this list
every week or two. It may be that he hasn't read any of these
postings yet. Hopefully,
he'll read them and respond. However, even if this is the case, the
general pattern of a
lack of communication still stands. Maybe this thread will have a
more lasting impact
since people have really let Phil know how bad it feels and the
impact of a lack of
communication on our confidence in the company. We'll see. It's such
a shame.
This product could have been in much better shape otherwise.
Sadly and hoping for the best,
Stefan
=====================================================
Database WebWorks: Dynamic web sites through database integration
http://www.DatabaseWebWorks.com
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