"Why fpTech Sucks", 2011 edition.

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: filepro, via "Steve Wiltsie" <swiltsie at micro-mui.com>

> We will be supporting the base core product. The email you got was
> trying to explain what customers get when they purchase an optional
> annual subscription. Here is more detail that explains. We are in no
> way abandoning our customers with a non-supported product. Bugs will
> still be fixed and available to all customers at the levels of their
> purchase.
> 
> 5.7.00.00 is the base core that people buy into.
> 5.7.00.01 would be the base core with bug fixes
> 
> 5.7.01.00 will be bug fixes, new features and enhancements
> 5.7.01.01 would be the new and enhanced core with bug fixes
> 
> Those without a subscription are entitled to 5.7.00.01, 5.7.00.02 and
> so
> on just as it is now and has been for years.

Well, no.

Now, you have *four* component version numbers; you've gone from

version.revision.bugfix

to

version.revision.change.bugfix 

without saying so, and then you seem ("just like it's been for years") to
be irritated with *us* for not getting it.

> Those with a subscription are entitled to 5.7.01.01, 5.7.01.02 and so
> on
> 
> The additional revision level allows us to offer the subscription
> program to those wishing to prepay for new features and enhancements.
> Those same customers would also hold a higher priority in our wish
> list and development planning.

I don't necessarily have a problem with that.  The one pinch point *I* saw
in the original (total lack of) clarification email -- now that we've cleared
up the bug fix issue -- is that if you buy in to a new release, whether from
scratch or as an upgrade, you don't get the latest change, you get the .0
change... unless you pay for the subscription.

And they seem to think that's because it would be unfair to do it the other
way.

IMNSHO, what would be unfair is if you *got new feature upgrades after that
without paying*.

There are three points I want to make here.  They've been made before, and
no one in FP management ever seems capable of understanding, but I'm gonna
try one last time:

1) If you want to extract more money from the installed base *you have
to offer us something that WE WANT*.  You can't lay claim to not *knowing*
what we want, because we've been telling you about it on this mailing list
for 10 or 15 years.  Instead you keep making up crap 99% of the developers
who are your customer base don't really give a good goddamn about.  Bio.
Two different graphical skins.  ODBC that goes in -- for my estimation,
and I gather that of about 80% of the rest of developers -- the wrong
direction.

2) Your base is mostly legacy, and it's likely to remain that way, absent
a really big development effort you don't have the time and capital to 
fund.  So you don't have the luxury of pissing of your customer base,
even less so than most companies.  More to the point, it's *developers*,
a market you've never really seemed to understand how to sell into; you
don't know what we need, you don't know why we want it; you don't really
seem to care much.

3) This is the NFL.  You're a corporation.  We're paying customers.  You're 
not *entitled* to me being soft, cuddly and polite here.  It wouldn't be
impossible for fpTech to have that kind of relationship with it's developer
customers -- but top management actually has to give a fuck.

And there's never been any indication that it does, though 3 or 4 owners.

This is probably why I touch about 40 lines of filePro a year these days.

Owel; it fed me for 15 years.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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