Thanks for taking the time to post that Integer. And thanks Firestorm for providing a good response.

I'll write a full response later. One thing about TGTSoft though - not only did they personally call me names. But they use fake users. And got caught. He got caught on Usenet bashing me personally under an alias. They got caught because his IP address was the same as TGTSoft. They finally admitted to it. But that's exactlyt he type of tactic that's been bugging us. That since August they've been trashing us on-line and everytime we defend ourselves or point out the errors in their statements, a half dozen brand new "anonymous" users would show up and start attacking to sway general public opinion. Of course, that was after months of bashing on Usenet, a site that went up and attacked our skins and said WB skin authors basically suck, and numerous posts spreading false info on how WB works.

Heck, go to their site right now and look at how they seem to imply that WB doesn't support things like Cleartype or high resolution (high DPI) graphics and what not (not as bad now as it was earlier it used to be more apparent that htey were implying that WB didn't support these things).

But many people on DA only saw part of it and of course they didnt' see anyone officially from TGTSoft posting. One thing you can, we at least come on as ourselves and take our lumps.

Anyway, the point there being that we got a raw deal. We got attacked and attacked and attacked for months culminating in that DA interview and then after that with fake users on Usenet and on our own internal news server (which they got caught doing in both cases and this can be found on dejanews).

Here's the link if you want to see one of these:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&rnum=1&selm=ur9TX3ecBHA.2208%40tkmsftngp02

TasT...it's not that easy...at the time of the skinz.org demise, general awareness was very much of a commercial company doing 'bad things' to the skinning community....that company was eFront.
With the death of eFront and skinz.org [mk.1] too, focus of animosity simply shifted to fill the vacuum.

Everyone needs something to complain about.

The problem with opinions is that everyone has one [but only mine is correct]...

oh no! Brad is going to write a "Full response"
run... hehe

g'night you guys my eyes hurt

I wasn't trying to drag you into a debate, Integer. But I wanted to reply to your points, again, from my own perspective. No hostility was intended

point taken Jafo...

jusss one more thing though...

Free apps are free therefore who can really complain or put them down cuz they are free!

Pay for Apps cost money so it better be all that plus a bag of chips! and if you don't have the money to buy it though you really want it then why not bash it?

to be expected really Brad

I see this same thing coming at John and Eric soon too, Themebar was great! while it was free

but now it tis a diff story for them guys too

Perception is everything.
I remember when I was a newbie, over at old skinz, I thought Frogboy was a Stardock employee who was getting paid to go around on the websites/newsgroups and promote the Stardock products. I thought it was amusing.
But later, I found out that he was actually the CEO and I was getting annoyed that he was pushing his products so much. It annoyed me so much that I kept looking for alternatives for Windowblinds. There was none, other than Customeyes, and I got into a long argument with him about it (the first of a long history, hehehe!).
Then Skinz died and here came this site. Still with the same anoyance, I thought oh great, now he wants his site to replace skinz.org so he can promote all his products as much as he wants to.

But then, some months ago, I had a change of hearts. So, yes, indeed, I still think he's overdoing it, I still think he could just leave things alone and not take personnaly every critic made to one of Stardock's products. Everybody's read my posts here and elsewhere about it. But I now take it more lightly. I've come to tell to myself: So what? Why should it bother me? Wincustomize is a good site, with nice people, nice admins. It doesn't have any annoying popups like other skins sites. But it's true that it still has too great of a Stardock influence, but I believe they are working on that at the moment, which is great news to my ears.
To come back to Brad, I have come to realise he is just a VERY passionate person. ABout his prodcuts, yes, but also about everything else. And I can't criticize him about that, because I'm the same way. That's why our debates clash at times, and that's why I was his nightmare at times.
So, in the end, I don't take it so seriously anymore. When I see that I feel he's making a fool of himself, I just send him a friendly email, which he always answers. And that's one thing I can say about Brad, he always answers his emails; that can't be said about everybody. I have send emails to other site's admins, and never got even an acknowledgement.
No, Brad is a passionate person, but he's a good person. He's not evil, and there are no conspiration.

My 1 cent.

Paxx...'is no conspiracy'.....

Paxx, thanks for the post. Your perspective shreds light on a lot of things.

As Stardock has grown, I've discovered a real problem in myself - I've never had a "real" job.

That's because my job came out of my hobby. I've never had to distinguish having a job and having a hobby because they've always been the same thing. Whatever cool computery stuff I've gotten into I've tried to find a way to make it so that I can do it full time.

Consider what Stardock does: We make video games and desktop enhancements. How are they related to one another? They're not. We just released Elves, Inc. Why did we make that? Because it was fun.

Dor, yes, it's going to be a different story for Themebar now, it just left the playgrounds of the free beer contingent, that's their choice, and respected, I'm hoping.

Integer told me he wouldn't be back here (as if he could resist if challenged...). He formulated some stuff I wholeheartely agee with here, can't resist backing it up (problably radicalize it, not his opinion).

I like Brad, and while definately choosing to be part of the free beer contingent (thanks for that name), even if I'm 34 and have a job and no time (though create a little).

The TgtSoft example is poor. Their initial website arouse suspicision all around, they did their own anti-advertisement. And sure, did lots of other bad stuff (fake users and all), I don't even doubt that, just not the point. Easily ignored. Much harder to ignore, massive response by Brad, other "involved" (?)people, declaring war all around. Makes me feel I'm a criminal for even trying the stylebuilder beta's and all. I've considered myself pretty neutral to SD lately, but it's everywhere denying me to make my own choices. Not stating that, mind you, but it being all around gives me a real creepy feeling. Ignore other thoughts, let them be, even if (99 %) being childish, immature and all, don't try to control it all, please.

It seems pretty immanent there will be several choices in skinning/customization scene soon, and the "community mask" will be left aside. Imho, it's clear Stardock, Winstep, and others will have 99 % of the users. Please be satisfied with that and leave others their little sites.

DISCLAIMER: I don't work for Stardock, Mirabilis, Nullsoft, Microsoft, and/or Apple. This is just my personal opinion.

"Much harder to ignore, massive response by Brad, other "involved" (?)people, declaring war all around."

Defending oneself isn't the same as waging war.

As for the other "involved" people, well, friends help friends out. This wasn't a case of two companies ducking it out through press releases. This was one company launching a smearing campaign against a company that's been very good to its customers AND an individual most of us think very highly of, even if we've never met or spoken through media other than the internet.

"Makes me feel I'm a criminal for even trying the stylebuilder beta's and all."

Why? I tried it myself, for the sake of rendering an impartial judgement. No one's stopping you from choosing the app that satisfies you the most. Most people dislike Microsoft's business practices, yet we use their software.

"I've considered myself pretty neutral to SD lately, but it's everywhere denying me to make my own choices. Not stating that, mind you, but it being all around gives me a real creepy feeling."

I mean no disrespect here, but that's your own issue to work out. Should these guys apologize for being succesful at what they do?

If you're hinting at the Custo feud, no one went there to try and enforce policy, just to ask for fair treatment and maybe an apology for the people affected.

"Ignore other thoughts, let them be, even if (99 %) being childish, immature and all, don't try to control it all, please."

It's not about control. It's about receiving fair treatment, IMO.

"It seems pretty immanent there will be several choices in skinning/customization scene soon, and the "community mask" will be left aside. Imho, it's clear Stardock, Winstep, and others will have 99 % of the users. Please be satisfied with that and leave others their little sites."

Somehow I feel this "Payware/Free Beer" situation isn't quite as one-sided as you see it. Then again, I don't have access to any statistics, so I'll just refrain from speculating.

plastic - The problem is by the time the stylexp issue appeared onto the skin sites where you saw them, the issue had been going on for awhile. It started in August. I suspect you only started to see this stuff in November - after 3 months of TGTSoft and brand new anonymous people showing up on sites blasting us. The difference being that when we'd defend ourselves (and that's what it was, not us launching some sort of "War" on this - occam's razor, we have coexisted with eFX and Chroma very well over the years, we're not anti-competitive) we'd do it as ourselves rather than as alias's. Look at the link I provided, Plastic.

I don't see how we're denying choices, btw. Afterall, where do the most people get their Litestep stuff? Litestep.net? Nope. WinCustomize.

In any discussion in which there is discension, there are those who can be reasoned with and those who are just locked into a certain point of view and won't change no matter what.

That's why people like Plastic and Integer are at the top of my list of people whose perspectives matter so much. I've talked to Plastic privately for a long while because he is passionate in his views and articulate in his reasons.

I think Integer is the same way.

Let's look at the issues raised:

#1 Me asking DesktopX users to participate in on-line surveys.

Response:
There is often more than meets the eye. Very often, there are organized groups that see our software as a threat and make a coordinated attempt to try to smear it. The "skin community" is really just a tiny part of the entire customization world. In certain Mac and Linux groups, DesktopX is "the devil" because it brings to Windows the ability to do many of the things once exclusive there. When DesktopX came out, there were Usenet posts with the link to DesktopX (and WindowBlinds) urging those users to "bash it down". My response was to try to counter that to an extent.

And our software is uniquely vulnerable to smear tactics like that. Why? Because most shareware works like this: You download it and it brings up a nag screen and you then can enter in a registration number and the nag screen goes off an dmore features show up. Our software is different. We have a seperate enhanced version. Once soemone buys our software, they never need to go to a download site again to get new versions. They get it directly from us. Thus, over time, the only ones downloading them from a download site are the ones who have not registered it but may have been exposed to it before.

#2 Statistical analysis
Response:
Stats are part of business. The difference being that we share those stats rather than keep them secret. I think one of the reasons why Stardock has been so successful has been its obsession with statistical analysis. It allows us to support customers much more effectively and respond to market changes much quicker.

#3 Skin Primer.
This is one of the things that chaffes me actually. Why hasn't someone else put together a good detailed skin primer (I've read the one that was linked to on Tek, I'm talking a REAL primer that goes over the main apps). Anyone could do it. They didn't. I did. And I covered apps competitive to Stardock's. If the "free beer" people don't like that, they need to start doing more work themselves. I wrote the primer on my own time. There's no excuse for someone else not having done it.

#4 TGTSoft
This is one of those things where the issue had been going on for months but only came to the local sites we think about here in November. I could take the time and document post by post demonstrating clearly that we turned the other cheek for literally weeks before we finally began to defend ourselves. I could also document many examples of fake users coming out and trashing us (I don't know if all those fake users were related to TGTSoft or not but I already provided a documented case of a fake user of TGTSoft's that they admitted to ever getting caught). We spent months quietly and politely trying to get them to stop implying that their program was a skin program. Even now, if you visit their site, it's quite clearly implied to be a skinning program. It's not. It's a patch. Now they try to make it look like it's not a patch with beta 4. It's still a patch, it just patches in memory. It still disables MS's file security. But you'd think it was some sort of new skinning app with "0 footprint", etc. The perception you came away with I think is the result of the order in which you read responses.

I can see the other issues on how one could see them the other way. But the TGTSoft one is one that anyone who's followed this closely can tell you isnh't even a close call. There is no moral equivalency here. Not a matter of "company A and B battling it out." It's more like company A attacking company B over and over and finally company B defending itself with facts.

All that said, from readin gwhat you and Plastic have said I can see your points of view. I said in another post that from a neutral observer, Stardock could look like a growing thing gobbling up all the niches once held by freeware authors and leaving in its wake a commercialized "community".

I'm not sure what can be done about that because that perception is based on fact - to a degree. I think people who work on something full time can do a lot better job than eople who work on something part time. And users will pick the thing that is better whether it be software or a skin. And unfortunately, freeware generlaly requires it to b developed by someone part time. So it has a hard time competing with the thing being made by someone who's working on it full time.

Shoggot may prefer Illumination but let's be real, users have chosen WindowBlinds over alternatives because it is the best by a massive margin. And that's because it has a team of people who do nothing but work on it. And that's because they get paid to do so. Which in turn has to be passed on to users. And for most (not all) adults, $20 is basically the same as free.

Phew!

Seems to me there are two main issues here:

1) The growing discontent with Stardock from those outside the WC community.

2) Paying for code vs. free for fun code. Skins, apps, elves shooting wrapping paper, whatever...

I think Brad had it half right in assessing time as a factor. Take it step further though. Not only do I have less free time but I aslo have quite a bit more disposable income than when I was in my teens. Twenty dollars used to be a weeks allowance, now I earn that much walking in the office, booting the computer and getting a cup of coffee. Point being that to some people, especially the younger crowd, ten or twenty dollars can be a significant amount of money even if they have access to a major credit card to make the purchase. People who suddenly loose access to something they enjoy are generally upset. Leave a bag of cookies where your kids can have access to them for a week. Then take them away and hide them high up in a cabinet. You are going to have some kids screaming for cookies. Now let's say you don't leave the cookies out but you give your kids all the cookies they want as long as they ask for them. Kids are happy. Now change the rules. You give the kids all the generic cookies they want if they ask but if they want good cookies they have to clean their room first. I hope this makes sense, its been a long day I think the vocal crew over at Custo felt as if they were being taunted by the Logika screenshot. Sort of like "here it is but it's gonna cost you, if you can afford it". Did Pixtudio do anything wrong, no but I think they should have thought about it a little more, especially their target audience/customer.
Why this animosity towards Stardock and Brad. It seems to me that every heated topic across all of the message boards draws in extended comments from the WC crew. Do you need to stick up for your friends and your company, absolutely! I wonder however if sometimes it's just better to say your piece and walk away. It seems most of the bitterness comes out late in those threads. I know a good debate is a tasty thing. Crushing soemone verbally, and politely, is beautiful but at what cost.

Just some random thoughts from me....

Wow Integer, that was quite a rant. I can't say I agree with all of your points, but I do see your point of view. I don't see anything that Brad has done (except the hidden cameras) to be paranoid or overzealous. I've written a few apps in my time, and if any of them ever came to a commerical level, I would do everything in my power to pimp them accordingly, and would get pretty riled up if people were telling lies about them.

I also read the interview on DA with TGT, and don't see any of the responses as hugely offensive. Brad's claim that StylesXP is only a hacked DLL is completely true, the themes for it are in a format developed by Microsoft. Though I'm not sure how correct all of their info with regard to the workings of WB is, I find MS Visual Styles to be a little faster than WB, and don't suffer from a small but very annoying (to me personally) glitch that every version of WB I've tried has suffered from in MDI windows. That said, WB is a much more mature product, and has the greater support where it really counts, the skinners.

Whatever your reasons for having personal differences to Stardock and its members, you can't deny developers the right to make a living from their skills, and like it or not, Stardock has done very well partly because they have a great line of products, and partly because it's run extremely well.

At what point did this thread go so wildly off topic?

Freeware is like giving a dog a bone. Payware is when the dog sees the bone in the shop and he knows he's not going to get it, unless he grabs it and suffers the consequences. Shareware is like giving the dog the bone and snatch it right when the dog wants to starts gnawing on it. Do that to a dog and you could get bitten.

Us crae_dawgs would say *growl* and hops off to munch on a tree (and your shoes and the news paper).

At any rate, as hageshiku said on customize, paying for something not tangible like software is strange, very strange. It's not an exchange of goods, the developer doesn't loose his software, it's more like charity.

finally here comes crae bringing in the cold popcorn AFTER the show is over!
Doreen tosses crae the last two Gummie Bears

anyone using a computer at all has paid for software even Mr. Hageshiku (I'd like to see his OS and what is sitting on his HD) hehe

Craeonics, you pay for electricity, don't you? That's also an intangible good, but you benefit from it. Your OS cost money, didn't it? What's the problem with paying for a piece of software that provides you with the functionality you want?