Diego's Departure and the future of SV

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Can anyone shed any more light on the departure of Diego from SV? It would seem to me that a company that produces development tools and can’t afford to hire a single full time developer, is in dire straights. And that’s putting it mildly!

As far as I know, Diego would be the only person with intimate knowledge of the internals of the current Clarion tool chain, and to move to an out-sourcing development model would slow development time down by many, many factors. Consider even when Diego was full time, development was glacial, at best.

And is there any truth to the Capesoft rumor? I suspect Bruce would be only person a) interested and b) with the money.

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Havent heard a word about a “Capesoft rumor”.

SV has used contractors for years as did previous owners of Clarion, as have many companies that use Clarion as a dev tool. It can be done well and it can be done poorly:)

SV may or may not be cash strapped, but it is not an assumption I would make simply because someone made Diego an offer Z couldnt / wouldnt match.

We dont know who else is coding on Clarion besides Diego (Surf? Alexey? Others?) because Z doesnt reveal that info - and frankly, isnt obligated to do so.

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“Bruce” Barrington? Yes please! :wink:

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Irrespective of who it is, I think it’s obvious if you go from having one full time dev to none, that things aren’t looking too good.

As to outsourcing, we all know how well outsourcing Clarion.Net to the Russians went. A lot of us paid money for a product that was never delivered in a usable form, and has since been abandoned.

You can defend SV all you like, but facts are facts.

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Haha. Don’t we all wish :slight_smile:

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None to one

No argument there:)

I dont have a clue how many devs they have, contract or otherwise. I know of Surf (who contracts to the and does other stuff), Diego (no idea if he still contracts, but his skype comments give you the idea that he doesnt expect to), Alexey (no idea if he still does work for them). The rest of the names I know of arent IDE devs, at least I dont think so.

Trust me, no one would categorize me as a SV sympathizer:)

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At CIDC 2019, Bob Z. indicated that Diego is still actively involved as are other specialist. While we may wish for more rapid development, I don’t think there is any reason to be pessimistic about Clarion’s future. In fact, the proposed changes in funding suggest more responsive development.

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I don’t anything Bob Z said implied “actively involved”, and as others have suggested, the opposite seems more likely. Naturally I’m not expecting SV to divulge who is working for them and in what capacity; I’m merely suggesting that with Diego effectively gone, we can expect development will slow down even more than usual (if that is even possible).

The crowd funding idea is an interesting one, though given Bob’s track record in delivering what he promises, I can’t see it raising astronomical sums of money. If he had done the sensible thing a decade ago and switched to an annual subscription model, he likely would have been in a much better position today.

The gimped free edition will be, I fear, too little, too late.

Naturally I hope to be proven wrong on all fronts! Long live Clarion!

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Didn’t they first bring up crowd funding at CIDC2013?

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That wouldn’t surprise me, hence I don’t expect SV will do anything about it in the near future.
64-bit remains a pipe dream
Proper Unicode support is likely still years away (because it’ll be buggy as hell when first released)
What’s new? A re-branded version of Thin@ called AnyScreen, which would have required zero development hours from SV.

But forgive me for thinking the future looks bleak :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree 100%, I have asked SV previously to utilize the Good Money I paid for Vapouware for my CSP and they said they don’t do it that way.
Does SV expect me to just forget about it and write the money off, well that will not happen. I don’t forgive people that take my money like this.

Agree 100%.

Definitely not from me.

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I feel the same way. No matter how well intentioned SV were, they did not deliver what was advertised and what was paid for. An honest person/company would have refunded the money. In the worst case, like you say, they should have applied a credit towards a Clarion/32 CSP or another product. As a result, SV has lost my renewal for the past 2 Gold releases, and will likely continue to do so. It’s more about the principle than it is the money. Anyway, I’ve since moved the majority of what I do away from Clarion. Why reward a company who treats its customers with such disdain?

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Hi David,

And is there any truth to the CapeSoft rumour?

I’m not sure what the rumour is, but since you’re talking about SV here I feel I can safely say No, whatever you’ve heard is almost certainly just a rumour and not true.

Can anyone shed any more light on the departure of Diego from SV?

Worrying about SV is both pointless and unfruitful.

Firstly it’s pointless because, not to be blunt, it really doesn’t matter what SV do. Our business exists because of what we do, not what they do. Sure I want new stuff as much as the next guy but there has been very little “new stuff” for a decade now.

Yes, I love C11 with the wider template windows, and I love the ability to choose fonts in the IDE (since C9) and I appreciate lots and lots of minor tweaks and updates - I’m reminded almost daily of how crap C8 is by comparison (I still do examples in C8) - And yes, from what I understand Diego was responsible for a lot of that.

But our business does not depend on the IDE - it depends on the software we create. So the progress, or lack-thereof of the IDE is not business critical. Judging by the number of people who seem happy on C8, or even more surprisingly on C6, I’m guessing I’m not alone in this assessment.

In terms of what Clarion adds to my programs over the last 10 years, the answer is “not much”. A lot of what shipped in C9, C10 and C11 we already had via either our own code, or 3rd party code. Diego spent a lot of time on H5 which (for obvious reasons) is unrelated to what I do so in that sense meh.

Personally there are two features on my “hit list” - proper Unicode support (which I’ve been lobbying for since 2004) and the ability to make 64 bit programs (which I’ve been lobbying for since 2009). Everything else is window-dressing - I can either do it already, or build the code to do it myself. I am confident Unicode will ship, and ultimately be useful. I expect a significant bedding-down period, but I expect that and won’t be too concerned by it. Bob Z mentioned 64 bit as a “possibility” for the first time this year, so I see that as progress. I’m doubtful we’ll ever see a 64 bit version, but at least acknowledging it is a step in the right direction.

Worrying about SV is pointless because ultimately there’s nothing you can do about it. It is what it is,and will be what it will be.

Worrying about SV is also fruitless because literally it bears no fruit. I’d rather spend my time and energy (especially emotional energy) worrying about my business, what we are doing right, and what we are doing wrong. That is fruitful in the sense that I see a return from improving - and we are far from perfect, but striving to improve all the time. When we make the time to worry about ourselves we make decisions that affect our future, and most often we see a return from that on the bottom line.

You can defend SV all you like, but facts are facts.

Well it’s been a while since Mark was accused of being an SV defender, but maybe he’s inherited the Russ mantle :slight_smile:

I’d like to be clear (since obviously Mark wasn’t) that I’m not defending SV. I’m simply saying I don’t care about them at all. They are free to do whatever they like, as are we all. Ultimately they will stand or fall based on the decisions they make. I might not have done the same thing in their place, and you might not have done what they did, or what I would do, but it’s easy to make decisions for a company that you are not involved in. It’s harder to make decisions for your own company, and ultimately have to read the scorecard based on your decisions. At the end of the day I respect their right to make their own decisions which lead to their own outcomes.

To be honest when we’re planning our own future the future of SV doesn’t even make the top 10 topics. If they disappear we’ve got the best part of 10 years to make decisions (given that people still on C6 seem to still exist, 11 years after the last C6 release.) there are so many more important things to worry about.

Lastly I’ll say this - I first started using Clarion in 1992. I think about 20 minutes I started I’ve heard predictions of Clarion’s demise, and it’s been pretty regular theme since then. And here we are 27 years later and Clarion is still around. Your worries are not exactly “news”.

Cheers
Bruce

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Hear Hear Bruce.
I had a quick chat with Bob Z as well and he was well pissed off with MS and their abandonment of compact forms and such, he mentioned spending a couple hundred thousand and it being ahead of everyone else and then was all for nil. Frankly that would piss me off as well.

I’ve also regularly heard rumours of demise for decades. Seems to hit fever pitch every 4 years or so and dies down. They still bring out updates, the product improves. I’m sure they will survive.

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Hey Bruce. I read all you said and essentially agree with what you’re saying. I do so little development in Clarion thesedays that it matters to me personally not one iota what they do. And like you say, even someone as entrenched in the Clarion ecosystem as yourself would not be left completely up the proverbial creek if they disappeared tomorrow.

And yes, it is entirely fruitless to whinge and complain about what Clarion is not. It won’t change a thing and does consume time that could be spent doing something fruitful. However, it is somewhat cathartic, especially when you come to know your not the only one with the viewpoint! I suppose for me on a personal level it’s just a bit disappointing to see the potential, which will likely never be realised. With some direction and concerted effort, everybody would be a winner – SV themself(ves), us developers, and also the end users. On a business level, I couldn’t give a rats, except for the money they stole for Clarion.Net.

In a different thread (re the gimped community version) I said that “The excruciatingly drawn out death of Clarion continues”… so I didn’t mean to suggest that it was dying in a hurry (though sometimes I wish it would :D)

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Oh come on. They didn’t steal your money. They sold access to a beta program. You did a detailed analysis and decided whether to spend the money or not. When you buy into a beta program you know (or should know) what you are getting. Ultimately the software may ship, or it may not.

Ultimately they shipped something, but it’s not what people expected, and not what they need. Well, that’s how beta programs go sometimes. If you spend money based on what’s there then fine, if you spend money based on promises then that’s on you not on them…

I see this occasionally. But clearly if you pay for vapourware that’s on you not on them. If you choose to participate in a beta program for something that is clearly and obviously unfinished, and then hold a grudge when it doesn’t go the way you want (or expect), well, it sounds to me like you made a mistake and now you’re looking for someone to blame.

Like many, I spent money on Clarion.net, probably more than most - but that was my mistake, not theirs. Blaming them for my mistake would be to not learn from my mistake. The money is long since been written off, the tax man paid a third of it anyway, and I’ve moved on. It’s business, it’s not personal.

Hanging on to some grudge based on something that happened 10 years ago, that was objectively your own fault, seems to hurt you more than it hurts them.

Cheers
Bruce

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Sorry Bruce, but you’re dead wrong there. I didn’t buy into a beta program. I purchased it in 2011 based on the information on the SoftVelocity web site at the time.
Refer: http://web.archive.org/web/20110716102055/http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET.htm
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20110811074758/http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET_details.htm
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20110811063125/http://www.softvelocity.com/ClarionNet/ClarionNET_Buy.htm

You will note there is no mention of it being beta or non-finished, and you’ll have to admit that what was delivered does not match the description on the web site.

I stand by my comment that they stole my money.

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Actually, if you read the description very carefully, that’s exactly what they did ship… Or did I miss something (genuinely curious.)

Of course it’s not what you expected, and it’s not what you need - and it’s mostly useless - but I’m not sure the text is actually wrong. Is it?

Of course it’s disingenuous marketing - something I don’t like - but if nothing else it’s taught you a valuable lesson about doing your homework before buying things :slight_smile:

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I get where you’re coming from, but I still disagree that they delivered as advertised. Years have passed now, and I have no intention to ever re-install it to find out what was missing, but I do recall that not all of the RTL had been ported to .Net. Some of the database drivers for instance, still relied on the old Win32 RTL. So stating that “The Clarion Runtime Library has been ported to 100% verifiable .Net code” should read “Part of the Clarion Runtime Library” or “Most of”. The way it has been written implies that all of it had been, which is not even close.

“Clarion.NET is a port of the Clarion language to .NET. Clarion.Net provides an easy way to port Win32 Clarion applications to the .NET platform.”

You might argue semantics, but to the layperson, this means that you can take a Clarion/32 application and, with minimal effort, compile it for .Net. We both know this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Don’t overlook the fact that you came into Clarion.Net with a whole lot more information than I did. All I had to go off was what was on the web site. I didn’t come into it with 20+ years of Clarion experience. I didn’t even have access to the Clarion newsgroups!

What homework could I, as a new customer (no prior SV or Clarion experience), have done? The website suggested Clarion.Net was the future of Clarion, and so, as a new customer, why would I buy the older Win32 version?

Anyway, it’s all old news now. I’ve wasted 10 times the amount of money I paid for Clarion.Net on far more stupid things, so it’s not like I lose any sleep over it. It also helped make my decision easier when it came time to renew my Clarion/32 subscription.

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That’s a fair point.

Yes, I think where what is said and what everyone reads is a big difference here. And I agree the language is pretty vague (at best) and disingenuous at worst. Certainly Clarion.Net is not Clarion/32 plus…

Certainly coming in cold would be difficult. I give you points there. (Although this argument doesn’t necessarily hold for most folk complaining about Clarion.Net.) But your point here is well taken.

Yeah I’m in the same boat. We paid for several copies of Clarion.Net and never used it for anything. (Lesson learnt, buy one copy first :slight_smile: ) - As far as renewing subscriptions - to be honest that’s all on me though - in other words SV doesn’t come into my thoughts there (probably just as well, or I might end up with a different decision.) For me it’s all about me. Do I want to stay on an old version, or use a new version. Since I use it pretty much all day every day even minor improvements help me a lot, and compared to that the subscription costs are trivial. But then I have very few principles other than what suits me :slight_smile:

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