well no, all those you have an investment of Xojo in their daily source of revenue are at the mercy of those consequences. Not everyone can afford to just drop Xojo and pickup with another tool immediatley and without cost.
Again, doubtful, at best they will realize they are fighting a losing battle, and then they will move on, like a few have already done in the past year or so.
Ego maniacs are incapable of believeing they are “wrong”
by then most of the people that ever cared will be invested too deeply in new tools to care
Not a damn thing, because I have realized that any such effort is a waste of time. I gave up tilting at wind mills when I was 20
Again, you assume two incorrect things. 1) The Geoff would sell/abdicate whatever and 2) That someone thinks the product is worth what it would take to make #1 happen
Why do you think Greg left in 2022?
Why do you think Dana, who the CEO has said on multiple occasions tried to get him to do the right thing, is leaving?
I believe it will have to get worse, before it can get better. “The night is darkest before the dawn”.
We’ve all tried positive methods to illustrate to Xojo that their actions are suicidal and have crippled a product that many of us care about.
All that we can do now is to save as many potential customers from experiencing the pain that we’ve been through, and that alone may be effective enough that it forces Xojo to reevaluate how it treats customers.
It may be enough for someone to say to Geoff, “that dying company of yours, I’ll take it off your hands as I believe I can turn it around”.
Meanwhile as part of the grieving process, it provides a peaceful means of releasing this pent up frustration and anger, that was inflicted on so many, by one single person.
The other positive action that I believe most of us are taking, it to retrain in an alternative tool, I mean Xojo wants us all to learn a new language, it may as well be in a different tool, which hasn’t stagnated over the last decade or doesn’t have limitations imposed by a non-programmer deciding what is important or not.
I have no idea why Dana and Greg left, I follow their official statement until stated otherwise. I do not assume anything.
What you said is all very true, but it doesn’t change anything except make you unhappy. Why grieve over a tool in your toolbox? I love working with the applications in my toolbox. However, I do not have any emotional bond with them. What is essential for me is that I build up a good business relationship with the people behind the primary tools I use. When I encounter a problem I can’t solve, I need a solution fast. I need them as much as they need me as a customer.
At the current state of Xojo, I should not rely my business on it. This is too much of a risk. Nevertheless, there seem to be many people satisfied and happy with Xojo. You can be quite happy if you only have the desktop platform and build simple applications (like myself). I want to stress out “simple” because other alternatives are more secure when it becomes complex.
There comes a point in time when Xojo Inc. has to make a life matter decision. Hopefully, they make the right decision. I will regret the eventual demise of Xojo, but I will not grieve over it. I already had too much suffering and grievance in my life; I now go for happiness.
Xojo Inc continues luring new customers into buying licenses by applying deceptive marketing techniques. See the timeline here.
No mentioning of Web1 and API1 deprecations. This is plain lying by omission. No wonder that people who’s businesses got damaged by the CEO’s callous actions continue to be outraged by that fraud.
Because you and I appear to have different relationships with Xojo. I have been involved with Xojo since the beginning. I spent time working for their European distributor helping to promote and grow the company. I have gotten to know many of the employees and have met several in person.
Good luck getting Xojo to address any problems, that’s literally one of the complaints we have about them.
I too will be sad when Xojo is no more, but I know that I did everything I could to save it, except rewarding customer hostility.
It is what we’re doing here. There is comfort in knowing that none of us are alone in this. There is comfort to know that this situation wasn’t because we as individuals did something wrong, we were wronged by a person that we trusted. We support each other by acknowledging this shared experience and encouraging each other to move onto better things, to focus on things that will help them move on.
It is literally the reason we do what we do, to help each other reach happiness again.
It is also because most of us knew each other from before API 2.0 and while we move on to different products, this is a place where we can stay in touch.
I didn’t. I use Xojo only for Mac/Windows desktop development. For that it’s not bad. Everything else is pretty much an expensive joke. If I was to to go single-platform (which might happen soon), it will be Swift/SwiftUI on Mac/iOS.
I’d be surprised if Geoff were to sell, or at least if he were to accept a reasonable market valuation offer. During my career I’ve witnessed owners married to their unsubstantiated beliefs hold out for literally 10x what any sane buyer would ever offer them for their company, when they attempt to sell around the time they want to retire.
However if I were wrong and he put up (what’s left of) Xojo for some standard multiplier of recent annual revenue, and would accept some downward adjustment because the company is on a downward trajectory … and if I had the $ to buy it … would I?
Xojo is just a dated product with massive technical debt. It would literally take years and (at least) a tripling of development staff to dig it out of the hole that it’s in. There are competitors in the space that seem to be well on their way to realizing Xojo’s original vision. There are big-gun competitors with unlimited resources as well with a decent cross-platform story (.NET MAUI, the open-source Avalonia project for .NET, equivalent efforts in the Java world, etc). Those big-gun competitors are not married to Basic as a programming language, which, however you feel about it, has the additional burden of a heavy prejudice against it on the part of many devs.
In many ways, I feel the opportunity for a product like RealBASIC came and went 20 years ago.
So no if I wanted to spend my twilight years running a software company I don’t think it’d be Xojo.
Only time will tell what will happen with Xojo. At this moment, it doesn’t look good, I agree.
Indeed, Bob, Avalonia looks very promising, and I thank you for bringing it up here. As a rule of thumb, when there is no more development on a software, I stop using it and look for a good alternative.
Speaking of alternatives for Xojo, I think the B4X range and Avalonia are very good candidates.
Yeah the DOT COM boom of the rly 2000’s would have been the time
But they’d have had to have had an offer
From what I recall they have only ever had one potential offer to buy the company and that was before I worked there
it was obviously declined
Xojo Inc still using deceptive marketing for luring new customers into buying licences:
With Xojo you can quickly build a desktop app (for mac, Windows or Linux) to test out REST APIs. You can build a web app to demonstrate some UI concepts or easily distribute information. You can build a mobile app (iOS or Android) to quickly try out ideas. Xojo lets you do All The Things without having to deal with a bunch of different complex tools and technologies. Xojo can give you the speed and power of low-code tools without all the limitations.
