Uh oh
May 26th, 2008 | Tags: b-side, ecto, mac | 6 Comments
Why am I concerned? Try following this similar situation to its unfortunate conclusion. I use and love ecto, and I’ve recommended it to a lot of people, most of whom use it. Here’s hoping illumineX will be better for ecto than they were for the FSS stuff, and best wishes to Ado. (I am thankful that the current version of ecto 3 is functional and works with contemporary Macs and Leopard.)
UPDATE: thanks to Gary Longsine for some more information. UPDATE 2: Erik Barzeski also weighs in, as does someone whose time might be better spent contacting Barzeski directly.
May 27th, 2008 at 08:05:38 AM (#)
hi Will,
Yes, illumineX has acquired ecto. We haven’t announced it officially yet, but will do so within the next few weeks. I have been an ecto user since its earliest days, and I care about ecto as much as anyone.
The situation that you refer to, Freshly Squeezed Software, was unfortunate, but doesn’t have much to do with illumineX. Due to unforeseen circumstances, illumineX found it necessary to sell FSS within just a few months after we bought it. During the short time that the products were in our care, they were cared for.
illumineX was founded in 1998 and isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, we have been working the past few months on a number of things that will be announced over the coming months. The first such announcement, which will be related to ecto, is slated for either June 9, 2008 (the same day as the Apple WWDC 2008 keynote address, when all the world expects Apple to discuss their plans to launch a 3rd party software store for iPhone), or possibly June 29, 2008 (the anniversary of the iPhone launch day).
I bet you can guess what we might be announcing.
: )
/gary
. .. … ….. ……. ……….. ……. ….. … .. .
Gary W. Longsine, CEO
illumineX, inc.
http://illumineX.com
May 27th, 2008 at 08:10:31 AM (#)
Thanks, Gary. I’m glad to hear your side of the story; good luck with your upcoming release.
May 29th, 2008 at 07:24:20 AM (#)
Gary, “illumineX” had FSS from April until December of 2005. I hardly call that a “few months” or a “short time,” and not a single update was released in that time frame, so perhaps we have different definitions of “cared for.”
That being said, I don’t think anything re: FSS and its eventual demise had much to do with you – Gary – at all. I believe it was Don’s gig, and Don’s failure, and it seems to me that you’re being an upright sort of fellow in not throwing a (former?) friend under the bus.
The domain name is still registered to Don, after all, and I believe you “sold” FSS to Don in December because his lack of support, effort, etc. was harming the illumineX name.
Call all of that an educated guess, but it’s at least got a high school diploma, if not more.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:14:13 AM (#)
“and not a single update was released in that time frame”
This is contradicted by your very on blog posting on the subject which mentions that they released an update, but whines that the update was all your work. An update in 6 months is not unreasonable. Selling a product because it doesn’t fit well is reasonable as well.
You bitching for years about how they have done nothing with your product, when you yourself know that they had sold it 6 months after buying it from you seems pretty unreasonable. Over a year after the product was no longer theirs, you were bitching.
Personally, as someone who has no skin in the game (And hadn’t heard of the situation until just now when I was pointed to your blog entries) it sounds to me like you sold them a piece of crap, or something that didn’t sell as well as you’d lead them to believe…. and they discovered this and moved on for business reasons. It sounds like you got paid but you’re just going to bitch anyway– which is your right, but nobody should listen to you because you have no involvement with this product either. YOU SOLD IT. I think them not bashing you, even in the face of this three year long campaign on your part, shows them to be pretty classy. They probably feel ripped off, but aren’t saying anything… while you, who got paid, are bitching and moaning.
Really, Erik, you’re making yourself look bad and you should be embarrassed.
May 29th, 2008 at 02:41:40 PM (#)
I have no vested interest in any of this, and wasn’t aware of any part of this saga until a blog I frequent linked to this. I’ve since gone back and read all the blog posts related to this saga, and Joe (if indeed that is your name), your criticisms of Erik are quite harsh, IMHO. I have no desire or intent to put words in Erik’s mouth or fight on his behalf, as I don’t know him personally, I’m a complete stranger, and may have even misunderstood what he was trying to express. Regardless, go back through his posts. You claim his “bitching” (as you put it) is about “them” (illumineX), but time and time again Erik’s posts have always specifically mentioned Don as the subject of his gripes. In fact, the few times Erik made any reference to illumineX in his blog, it was always in a positive light. He even had this to say to Adriaan about the ecto acquisition: “Good luck to you, to ecto, and to illumineX.” His perceived sourness towards Don only began in February of 2006, after illumineX was already out of the picture.
You’re the only one trying to make Erik look bad…
June 1st, 2008 at 01:27:37 PM (#)
“This is contradicted by your very on blog posting on the subject which mentions that they released an update, but whines that the update was all your work.”
You’re right – Don eventually released PulpFiction 1.2.2, but it took several months despite being quite nearly complete. I was wrong on that point, and apologize.
I will disagree with you that one update to one of several products in six months is unreasonable, particularly given the effort required to publish the update (very little). Several other products had updates nearly completed, and they were never released.
There’s been some misinterpretation about what I’m trying to say here, so I hope to be clear now. As Bob says, my ire has been directed at Don. Don is – I believe – no longer a part of illumineX, and as such, I believe ecto will not suffer the same “fate” as FSS and that Gary will do well with the software. I have always respected Gary, and his software dev skills, and wish him luck.
“You bitching for years about how they have done nothing with your product, when you yourself know that they had sold it 6 months after buying it from you seems pretty unreasonable.”
I didn’t intend for any of the posts to come off as “bitching.” I was simply trying to answer, with one post, the many emails I had received from former, potential, and current FSS customers. I was attempting to update them as to the status of the software, the developer (Don), and anything else I could.
Even a year later I would get several emails per day or week about FSS. The blog entries weren’t “bitching” to me, but rather were attempts to share information. Don wasn’t doing so – so I felt the need to do so.
If illumineX was basically Don and Gary, and Gary sold his share in FSS to Don, that’s not quite the same as “sold it 6 months after buying it.” The same developer was in charge of the products continuously.
I have no idea why Don didn’t do much with FSS, and I don’t care to speculate, but at the time (2005/2006), I still felt the need to inform my former customers with the little bits of information I could find, a few times after (finally) speaking with Don. They’d written to FSS support and not gotten an answer, so they wrote to me. Or they wondered if they should buy a product since there’d been no updates in six months (or whatever). Etcetera.
My posts were my attempts at answering questions and concerns en masse rather than several times per day or week individually.
I’m sorry you took them as “bitching.” That really wasn’t the intent.