Re: A cross-platform vision for Delphi

John,

I'm wasn't explaining this part of the story to the public as I thought
it's not very relevant to the subject at hand (the cross-platform
vsion for Delphi), and because I don't usually take private conversations
to the public. But as you are requesting it...

I'm even more disappointed than you that Simon forgot the several
conversations he and I had about his proposal,

I'm not forgetting these. However, these conversations have been
initiated by myself - I simply kept bugging about my proposal each
time you contacted me on a different, partnership related subject.

And all conversations have been on a meta level - "did you read it?",
"did someone else read it?", "did it get mentioned at the meeting?" etc.

I know that you personally have done your very best, but quite frankly -
you didn't appear to stand any chance against the the well-known
walls inside your company.

this message, including the part about my telling him I would be
talking to Michael Swindell about this subject before the end of this
week, which was TODAY in California. It so happens that Simon posted
his message about 2 minutes before I went to lunch with Michael to
discuss Simon's proposal.

That's not accurate. I'm not in my office right now (sidenode: if anyone
from CodeGear has sent me a mail during the last 13 hours, I have not
read it yet) and can't check my logs, but you told me quite a few times
that the proposal would now be read/discussed, and none of those
announcements held true.

Two weeks ago you told me that in the following week the proposal
would be discussed in a management meeting, but that didn't happen
again. And last week I told you that I was now going to publish my
proposal and be done about it, which again caused you to say that
it will be looked at at least by a single person the coming week.

And well, this week ended yesterday, and before I left my office
I've posted the proposal. It's a great coincidence that 2 minutes later
suddenly things started moving - and I welcome this, no matter on
what finally made people read my proposal at the end of the working
day shortly before going to weekend.

And, lo and behold, Michael did review Simon's proposal THIS AFTERNOON,
and even spent the time to respond to it here already.

Yes, and I think that's great. I do however also know that there are
forces inside CodeGear that:

a) Don't wish to listen to anything I say because they just can't stand my
person (which is their very best right), and therefore refuse to read that
proposal even if it could be benefitting their company a lot (which is not
a clever thing to do)

b) Have extreme difficulties with accepting changes in the route they
are going, and refuse to learn from mistakes made because they think
that learning from mistakes implies admitting mistakes, which never
really has been something Borland was good at

So, it's nice that after weeks of reminders, one of all the people the
proposal was sent to on request has read it. But Michael Swindell is only
one person. There are far more people needed inside CodeGear that
finally stand up and start convincing the rest of the team that there still
are a lot of things to change to make Delphi as strong as it once used
to be.

I should have posted that proposal to the public from the very beginning
on, as public feedback flowing in through various channels would have
made that task of getting the CodeGear team united from the inside
easier. Pretty much like it was the case with the public uproar due to
the .NET focus, caused by vocal community members writing about it,
and angry customers posting to Nick's blog - due to this uproar, CodeGear
finally got out of the "everything we do is right" and the silly "you
customers
are only single voices, we better listen to the majority of
different-thinking
customers, but won't tell you where these customers are" denial stuff.
It made even the nay-sayers in your team reconsider and get the
input from the community verified using a customer survey.

So, that's the big picture - you've still got a lot of Inprise-spirit flying
around in your CodeGear offices, and public pressure may aid you
in getting rid of it.

This tendency to paint us as a giant corporation that ignores its
customers and doesn't care anything about their feedback is beyond
illogical.

That's not the picture I'm painting. You are a small development shop
these days. The problem however is, that you are not a startup - you
are not a group of young people that came together to implement
their vision. You are coming from a big corporation, and have inherited
their missing flexibility, oversized distribution channels and slow
work processes, which is a huge burden for a team of the size you
now are. What's more, your team doesn't share a unique vision,
and until now it doesn't appear to me that your CEO has yet achieved
uniting your team.

Decisions on the future of Delphi appear to be made on a "Oops,
we've just lost another 30% of our customers, let's now quickly
implement parts of what they asked for before they left" basis - you
are not only running after your competition in the Development Tools
market, you are also running far behind your customers and partners.

I think the way this proposal was handled is a pretty good example
for that - CodeGear doesn't take the time to look at things before
they really hurt.

Simon


.

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