We all know what Xojo’s problem is: too many bugs & understaffed.
@Lars_Lehmann has said that his company grew bigger than Xojo.
So why do the “big wigs” not sponsor a new Xojo staff member or two (Julian Semphire comes to mind, or Tim Parnell) whose job it is to fix bugs? The expense might even be tax deductible …
Sponsor an employee? Like a GoFund me page to pay their salary?
Doubt that would work in light of Geoffs massive ego…
And just because a forum member like Julian or Tim are good at what they do working with the Xojo Product. Doesn’t mean they have the skill sets to work INSIDE the Xojo product. perhaps one or both of them do… but in my opinion more likely not.
So any move to sponsor a new employee gives the power of choice to people outside of Xojo, but would attempt to make the Xojo managment accept them…
This is just my opinion, since the over-all success or failure of Xojo as a company is no longer a concern of mine, and either result would affect me personally not at all.
That is only true in an either-or situation with no communication - which isn’t the case. A suitable candidate must appeal to both sides.
Sure, Geoff’s Ego might be an obstacle - but if he can’t accept a free win-win scenario then he will have a hard time arguing that he is not the problem.
there would need to be some way to be assured that the person sponsored to do this in fact DOES this and not some other unrelated tasks that were NOT sponsored
No ?
Sure. It should be clearly stated in the contract as that is what he is employed and paid for, with fine for non-compliance. Simple targeted contract work, maybe bonus for number of bugs fixed.
Let me say I appreciate the thought
It is thinking outside the box a bit to see if something could be done
But I have my doubts that Geoff would :
ALL this said why not propose it ?
At WORST Geoff says no and thats the end of it
At least you tried
He would probably get banned forever for that… I think they pretty much forbid discussion of their business practices and resources these days on the forum.
-karen
I’d email Geoff directly
Don’t put this on their forums at all
Didn’t Geoff respond to something that was proposed in the past (not this, something else)
and his reponse was something like
Don't tell me how to run my damn company!
Complete nonsense. Sorry.
First: we „sponsor“ their staff with licenses.
Second: an engineer at this level costs easy 100K per year. I habe so many things on my mind, what I would rather do with that 100K. Hire more Devs for my own company for instance.
Third: how sustainable ist that. If the sponsors quit, the person would loose its job immediately.
Fourth: If you have a professional tool where you have to put such an amount of money in it, just to fix bugs, then you better start running away, instead of trying to stay & fixing those problems with money.
A lot of words to basically say “I’m not putting my money where my mouth is” (after claiming your company is now bigger than Xojo), and deliberately misrepresenting in your arguments, eg as if you alone have to pay for a full time developer - do you really think there are no other “big wigs”??? Sorry, if you have to so badly misrepresent then you HAVE no argument.
The common complaint by the Pros that left is that Xojo has become too buggy.
Fourth: If you have a professional tool where you have to put such an amount of money in it, just to fix bugs, then you better start running away, instead of trying to stay & fixing those problems with money.
As many have done. I myself finish / maintain my old projects with Xojo but start new ones with Swift and B4x, and will start moving the big ones when I have more experience with them.
I didn’t “claim” it, it’s a fact and I used this as an argument to tell that I can understand the pressure of hard decisions Xojo has to make.
Not every expense for Employees is their salary. You can easily count with +40% to +50% on top of an engineers salary for equipment, perks, taxes, office, business trips and so on.
So as we do. Why should I spend money for a Xojo dev.
Do you spend Apple a dev, that they work on your problems? Or how much do you pay for B4X? Probably you can’t afford a whole person, but 1 or 2 thousands would be manageable for you, isn’t it?
Dump discussion, sorry.
There had been offers by some of the real pro developers with compiler/back end knowledge to voluntarily work on some fixes in the past, but to no avail.
So no, sponsoring would not help, I guess.
It’s nice to dream…
Yes, the idea is enticing, but look what happened to API2: Events renamed… It was nearly impossible for it to go back, then it reverted to load and API2.Desktop has new event names…
It would be easier to create a new IDE (different from Xojo) than to hope for a continuation of this proposal.
It’s Friday the thirteenth today…
I totally agree with Lars here. If Xojo in so much trouble that their users have to directly pay their employees then this company is dead and run for the hills! That’s what licenses are for. If they cannot afford extra employees to sustain or support their product because they don’t sell enough licenses, then this company is running on fumes.
How is it that different from paying for priority support to have your bugs fixed? It’s a bit more altruistic, but otherwise I do not see a difference.
The difference to licences is that the contribution is specifically targeted at what Pros (you included) lamented about and it isn’t up to Xojo what it is used for (eg its bug fixes, nothing else).
I find it interesting when people say “we REALLY want Xojo to succeed” and how much potential it has, but when you try to find solutions for the core problem are happy to shoot every other suggestion down with the flimsiest of “arguments”.
“That’s what licenses are for”? Sorry guys, how is that different from Geoff when you can no longer think outside the box?
The core idea of a dedicated developer focused on important fixes is a good one.
At a guess, it’s what Pro Plus was probably intended for, however, personally my experience with Xojo has been blame others for a bug, not acknowledge a bug or say it will be fixed and it isn’t. I do not have a pro plus license though.
If Xojo Inc was willing to open discussions on the community hiring in a developer that purely focused on contributors bugs that would be a big shift.
The core of idea of paying for a fix is a good one though. I know companies who have done it and it worked well.
There have been bigger clients using Xojo pay to get a certain feature implemented quickly.
But so far Xojo funds themselves purely with license costs.
So if you like to support them, you can get a bigger license. The Plus one was made to push more money to them.
If users paid someone directly, they would like to direct what bugs and features they wanted solved. That would add another team to the product and conflicts of visions. I guess that Xojo’s direction would not agree with that.
Back when I thought there was hope, I asked about Pro+:
Answers to questions were super wishy-washy.
None of this will fix Xojos problems when new leadership is needed. And that won’t happen.