hegramet hegramet

A comment caught my eye. . . .and a proposal for the benefit of the community

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A comment caught my eye. . . .and a proposal for the benefit of the community

from WinCustomize Forums
I thought this should be in it's own thread. . . In the post http://scripts.wincustomize.com/msgboardid.asp?id=17381 TomCruise says that Stardock won't place the skins for competitor's products on this site. While this is understandable from a purely market perspective, it makes me wonder about the commitment of Stardock to the skinning community. Please don't misunderstand me, I love stardock's products and am a registered OD member, and I know they put out great software. However, the site's mission statement is "The goal of this site is to act as a general skin site to the community." A general skin site would allow the community to be the judge as to what the site should host, or host enough variety to satisfy the whole community. Furthermore, the existence of competition is beneficial to the community, though not to stardock, as it is a driving force for both better products, better service, and better prices. If this site is devoted to the general community, and not stardock, then it would promote competition. I propose that either the mission statement be changed (to remove the pretense of community) or the site be ammended to include the skins of competitor's products.
36,817 views 102 replies
Reply #102 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Wow, long thread and heated debate. Congratulations to anyone that read this far, or just bothered to scroll to this point.

Mr. Hegramet, I don't understand where your personal dislike of Brad comes from, nor is it really any of my business, but based on my experience, I'm forced to disagree with you on nearly every aspect. OD is the first piece of software I've ever bought where the CEO of the developing company has taken time to talk to and help me though email, message boards, usenet and IRC. I'd certainly say that I've benefited from the community created by this site on many levels, from the skins that I enjoy downloading, to my fellow skinners and certain members of the stardock staff that I speak with on a near daily basis. All of these facilities are here for everyone to use, free of charge, and I'd say that absolutely constitutes a community. If sharing thoughts, projects and chatting with people that I know as a direct result of this site isn't a community, then I'd appreciate if you'd tell me what is.

Wincustomize isn't strictly speaking run by Stardock, but it is funded by them, and therefore I do think that they're entitled to a say in what is posted here. Most of us are aware of the huge bandwidth demands of this site, and while the site doesn't directly host skins etc for a lot of competing apps, it does not speak negatively of them, includes them regularly in the news section on the front page, and provides many links to other sites that do host skins for them.

Just my thoughts on the matter for what it's worth.
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