Following Borland's announcement to exit the development tools business, REAL Software today announced that all Borland Delphi users can receive a free license for REALbasic 2006 for Windows Standard Edition through February 28, 2006.
"REAL Software focuses exclusively on the developer tools market," stated Geoff Perlman, president and CEO of REAL Software. "We understand the stress and concern that plague developers when their development tool is terminated. REALbasic continues to reflect the efforts of our company's sole focus on building the best possible rapid application development tools. We welcome Borland Delphi users to our powerful, object-oriented environment for creating cross-platform software that really works."
My eyes got wide. The blatant dishonesty here is the first thing: "...their development tool is terminated". There are lies, damn lies, and advertising, and apparently these people fall totally into that category. Delphi is NOT terminated. It's going to be sold and developed under a new brand.
However, let's go to the land of Oz now, and pretend that it was. WHY would Delphi developers flock to BASIC? Seriously, please, keep the laughter down...I'm asking a good question here. I could maybe see it if they were offering a nice license to a C# tool, but BASIC? Most developers would rather gnaw off their fingers than abandon the cleanness of the ObjectPascal language for any derivative of BASIC. Even a lot of the VB6 guys who got over their anger at MS for dumping them switched to C# rather than swallow another generation of that language.
And from the company angle...if Delphi developers WERE going to jump ship, why would they jump to a non-Microsoft compiler at that point? Why would they go from one small company to another (again, we're in the land of Oz here..). If you got rejected by a small family that couldn't afford to keep you, would you go looking for ANOTHER small family? The whole precept here is absurd, from the ignorant 'terminated' language to another.
I understand the goal of advertising is to draw attention to yourself, but there's a fine line there between drawing attention to yourself and drawing ire. If he wants to position REAL Basic as a Delphi competitor, go ahead...but the only thing that this kind of deceptive advertising and FUD spreading is going to do is tick people off - never a great way to get sales. They better convince me that their tool is better than Delphi, without all the FUD, or they won't get a nickel of MY business...sheesh.
Randy
4 comments:
Hi, Randy:
I saw your blog post and would like to clarify; it seems you take a statement in our press release out of context when you say that Delphi was being terminated. We never said that. What we were talking about is the fact that there have been many cases in the past where development tools were suddenly abandoned for many different reasons and this is something that developers understandably dread. We merely made note of Delphi’s announced intention to exit the development tools business by putting that business unit up for sale.
Regarding REALbasic as a language, I would encourage you to check it out before you come to any conclusions. I say this because just as Borland took Pascal and turned it into what is effectively Object-Pascal, adding RAD capabilities in the process, we have done the same with BASIC. REALbasic is a completely object-oriented BASIC with RAD capabilities aimed at those that seek to build cross-platform solutions (a need that Microsoft's tools don't fill). Because of its similarity to Visual Basic, it's easy for VB users to switch. It's not too difficult for Delphi users to switch as well. AltaPoint (the developer quoted in the press release) develops electronic medical records (EMR) software that was originally written in Delphi. They switched to REALbasic to get a cross-platform solution.
We welcome the opportunity to have you take a look at REALbasic and give us your feedback. We are always interested in gathering and incorporating feedback from developers as we work to make REALbasic the best cross-platform development environment available.
Thanks very much for the opportunity to clarify our statement.
Gwen Palmer
Director of Marketing
REAL Software, Inc.
gwen@realsoftware.com
Hello Gwen,
Thank you for writing.
I have read your reply carefully, but I disagree with your assertion that I have taken you out of context. In fact, the only way to read your press release is IN context. E.g. you were careful to not come out and DECLARE that Delphi was terminated, but the association is very clear:
1. Borland is selling off their IDE business
2. We feel sorry for developers when their tools get terminated.
Read *IN* context, the intent is for the otherwise uninformed reader to believe that Delphi, too, was terminated. Anything else is just legal parsing. You created a press release to create a false impression in the Delphi community. There is enough anxiety about Delphi to exploit without implying that Delphi was terminated. Your press release may get by a legal department carefully parsing words, but it doesn't pass the smell test of common sense and implication. Everyone I know who has seen that release has reached the same conclusion: you carefully crafted words to send the message that Delphi was terminated while leaving a legal escape hatch for yourself in case it was actionable. You can choose to be completely 'legal' but still be completely unethical, and your release leads me to believ that this predatory press release you put out falls in the latter category. You will only alienate the very Delphi programmers you are hoping to attract.
As far as your REALBasic compiler is concerned, I did indeed download it to look at it, and will do so as I have time. (I never turn down free toys!). But thus far my initial experiences haven't blown me away. The fact that the syntax is BASIC is already one strike against you...
I would suggest to you that you could have exploited the fear and uncertainty about Delphi without implying it was "terminated". I think you and I know both you crossed an ethical line there. All the parsing in the world won't change that.
Thank you.
Randy
Gwen --
I don't think that anyone cares that you guys want to give REALBasic away for free to Delphi users -- that's cool and probably good marketing.
But your clear implication, and certainly the headline of the press release, stated that Delphi was being abandoned.
That is /not/ true, and way out of line.
Nick Hodges
I want to add one more thing I spotted in Gwen's answer to me:
"We merely made note of Delphi’s announced intention to exit the development tools business by putting that business unit up for sale."
Nowhere in the press release did it say that Borland had put the business unit up for sale. It referred to it exiting the tools business, and stopped right there. No mention of a sale. Then, following that, the allusion to 'terminated' development tools.
Gwen's response to my blog was as dishonest as the initial press release, I'm afraid, as she attempts to put words in the original release which were not there.
Randy
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