Blog: Drama on Aqua-Soft

Hmm, sounds terrible. I guess everyone, no matter where they are like sticks and stones. Must be a Genetic Memory, thing. Since it happens everywhere, repeatedly over many different topics. If you are a Larry Niven FAN (SciFi Author), you'd recognize this as Pak Protector Behaviour. It's an ingrained behaviour in that the protector, does everything in its' power to protect, defend, and ensure the survival of its' particualr genetic strain. If the Protector has no Descendents to protect then it can chose to protect its' Species, or a particular Cause. It is unfortunate that they allowed that to happen (over there.) I always wonder about the Mac folks anyways (this is not a Mac flame starting comment), or the folks that want to look like a Mac. when I was doing support for Framemaker, I used x86 Box, Mac OS 8, 9, and 9.5 BOX and SunOs Workstation. I liked all three but no better than any other PC, brand or type, they all served the same purpose. Why not just go and buy a Mac, or XXX Brand if you like the GUI so much?
This kinda reminds me of the squabbles we had here, over HoverDesk, and other shell Enhancing Software to include as Sections. Maybe this crowd is a little more Seasoned, due to the early fighting alot of Folk went through Over at SkinZ, and having GOOD and Responsible Moderators Here that worked through all that, and are concientious about what they do.
It's hard to loose sight of the Ball, when ya got your Eyes on it.
[Message Edited]

People are people.

So, why don your asbest suit on your own turf?

Crae: If it was a news item post I think you'd see more views.

I think over the years because we've talked so much you see things from many perspectives.

But there are a LOT LOT LOT of people who really see a fundamental difference between how freeware should be treated and non-freeware (evne though DesktopX is effectively freeware).

The view of these people seems to be: If it is freeware, it should get more promotion than non-freeware. I.e. sure, there's a double standard but quit your crying about it you greedy capitalist pig!

I want to also make sure it's clear that I don't think AveDesk's developer is the bad guy here either.

We've all seen MacOS advocates in action and MSStyles advocates in action and so forth. This was the same kind of thing where AveDesk's supporters seemed intent on taking over the site and controlling its content. Which is not what Aqua-Soft has been aboutn. It's always been a neutral site.

I wonder what fosters beliefs like that? I mean You hear alot about open Source software, but unless you actually use or need a piece of it, it is virtually unheard of. I mean I do not go over to souceforge and surf the isles, like I would at a software retailers. I do not hear or see masses of open souce developers crying/ hawking their wares. I mean on WIN Platform you have free alternatives to mainstream apps, and alot of them are really good. (like Irfan Viewer, AbiWord, DvdShrink,UBook ebook pdb Reader, and many..many others)
True Cream of the Crop rises to the Top by itself, and its reputation, it requires no flame wars or Jihad type movements to sustain its' momentum. Also I guess there are alot of Clueless folks out there. Sucks to be them!

I wonder where alot of those New advocates, when Aqua-soft got Hammered a few years back? Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't apple go after them, or something to that effect? I have no love for folks that havn't been throough the birthing pains of something and then Bash Away, at percieved interlopers.

This episode may have a more to do with the "Aquifying" of one's computer than anything else. If you've ever had a desire to make your Windows GUI look like a Mac GUI, then on some level you can understand the growth of this obsession. I myself have been guilty of tweaking a stable, great-looking Aqua desktop - I couldn't leave well enough alone when I stumbled across a component that would bring it just that much closer to 1:1 with the Mac GUI. At some point, I had to tell myself to knock it off. My desktop now could fool just about anyone for at least a few minutes. I take a bit of pride in my Aquifying, as silly as that sounds.

So here we have users who are literally *obsessed* with making their Windows box look and act just like a Mac box. (Sidebar: I can hear the grumblings of "Why don't you just buy a Mac?". Well, I would've bought a Mac last year, but 2 apps that I depend on for both business and pleasure are XP-only, and I didn't want to invest the money or the time I'd have to spend learning the Mac counterparts. The software alone would have run into the thousands of dollars to buy and hundreds of hours to learn. So I'll happily settle for the surface appearances of OSX.) There are free icon sets, free msstyles, free wallpapers, free cursors, free docks, free hacked control panel applets and free hacked system files. Almost everything is Mac-able, almost everything is free and life is good. But wait: here comes Konfabulator. Now we don't have a 1:1 desktop any more and we sure as heck don't have a free Konfab. I can almost hear the sighs of disappointment. Until AveDesk. AVE gave hope to the ones that were hopeless. I figure that is what has engendered the fanatical loyalty so I'm not really surprised by the vicious attack on Brad the Interloper. I don't condone, on any level, that kind of verbal assault - I'm only stating that I think I understand where it came from.

(Warning: self-congratulatory hype is next.) I've paid for Object Desktop, a WC subscription, Cursor XP Plus and OD+. My opinion is that I've gotten a really good deal because I've enjoyed every minute that I've spent customizing my computer. I would be willing to bet that the loudest voices over at Aqua-Soft haven't ever paid a dime for any of the stuff they use. To anyone. Ever.

Keep up the good work, Brad. Y'all make really good stuff.

Jeff




EDIT: punctuation
[Message Edited]

Not being a 'Mac-fanatic' I know nothing about AveDesk....but can't help musing....'what happens if/when it becomes payware?.....will its vocal supporters just sing in a different octave?'....

Well, in this particular case I think it went too far. Especially so since I don't understand what AveDesk (while being a nice app) has anything to do with Aqua. It's just widgets. It doesn't make your desktop, your windows or anything look like OSX. OK, so OS 10.3 will have widgets too, but it's even released yet, and it's only a tiny aspect of the Mac OS that most people won't even use or even be aware of. Why place so much emphasis on this? 

But anyhow, aside from this particular issue, regarding this quote from Brad:

But there are a LOT LOT LOT of people who really see a fundamental difference between how freeware should be treated and non-freeware

I guess I am among those people, if only for the reason that commercial software have the financial means to promote their software, so it's always nice to help the little guy if his product is good.  It doesn't stop me from recommending a commercial application if I love it, but in my book a commercial product needs to be extra great in order to gain my "blessing", not that it would need it. 

I visited the forum before they closed it down Brad...what a whiny bunch...they need something better to expend their energies on.I think you wasted your time on most of them,but maybe a few who read it were enlightened.

PAK protectors....love Larry Niven

people all over the world are looking for a cause .(even a bad cause is enough for some )... they are looking for companion ship and friends... online those lost souls will get in to a clik.. where out siders are unwelcome , berated , even threatend if they strike a wrong cord with the group.

it is sad that they have taken over that site and are ruining it for those who use progs other than avedesk... sad part is they (unless drastic measures are taken) they will probably force the closure of the site .... moderators can get tired .. and give up or get sick of trying to take their site back from unruley users... razor art is an example....i feel for the sites admins ..its hard to watch a few mean spirited people try to destroy their site ...

i hope that all works out and the admins can get their site back....
[Message Edited]

Paxx: What about "freeware" that takes PayPal donations? The line starts to get blurred. 

But here is my concern: Communities can take many paths. The path that I don't like seeing with the Avedesk community is that they seem to want to tear down others.

Remember when Style XP first came out? Or how many MSStyles people are today? They're not about saying why you should use their thing. Instead, it has always seemed to me to be about telling you why everyone else sucks.

The Samurize community doesn't go around slamming everyone else. The Kapsules advocates don't go around spreading propaganda.  It seems that something in the Avedesk community has made it much more hostile and militant than the others. 

And by every metric I have available, Avedesk NOT that popular. It is not Avedesk that worries me. It is the idea that its users will go around trashing us like the MSStyles people did.

The whole modern "Stardock is evil" thing really didn't get started until October of 2001.  Go back and do a webarchive on news items on various websites of WindowBlinds 2.x from before then and the comments are all friendly and positive.  Then, starting in October 2001, these MSSTyles people started coming on and ragging on it everywhere I'd go.

On CNET's Download.com, WindowBlinds USED to average around a 90% thumbs up rate and that was in the 1.x era.  Today, even though WindowBlinds is infinitely better than it was, we're lucky to stay above 70% thanks to all the "WB sux" posts.

Before the growth of the MSStyles "community" we just didn't see this kind of negativity.  After, however, we started hearing about how bad system hooks were (even though MSSTyles uses them too but they didn't know that) or how much memory WindowBlinds uses (even though it uses less than msstyles) or saying how it crashes all their apps (..right..) or you name it.

And I bet many people here think MSStyles are really popular right? They're not.  ThemeXP.org, for instance, isn't nearly as popular as WinCustomize is. WindowBlinds skins get far more verifiable downloads than msstyles.  So it doesn't take a huge number of people to misrepresent something.

That's what seems to be unique about the Avedesk community compared to the other programs. They would build up Avedesk while tearing down everyone else. It has the undertones of zealotry too.

Consider this "review" of Avedesk:

http://aquaxp.com/index.php?p=11

Forget for a moment that it was written by the same person who makes the Avedesk tutorial (it would be like us posting a "review" of DesktopX by Martin who writes the DX tutorial).  While I think it's a pretty good review overall, it's clear that the author thinks that Avedesk is the greatest thing since sliced bread eclipsing everything else.  Moreover, in the comments, someone who clearly has an anti-Stardock agenda is going to write the DesktopX review.  This is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.  A fan writes the Avedesk review and then a Stardock detractor writes the DesktopX review (to be fair, the DX review hasn't been posted but you can imagine).

Luckily, none of the mainstream sites are going to carry this stuff. But repeat the same things over and over again and mark my words, six months or a year from now you'll have people saying completely inaccuarate things about DesktopX based on negative "marketing" from Avedesk proponents. 

And if we defend ourselves, it'll be just like with Style XP all over again. Us pointing out that Style XP "works" by patching one byte of memory in uxtheme.dll to enable unsigned msstyles will be called a "brutal attack" or worse even as its proponents write the most inaccurate things about our software.

At least Avedesk's author seems like an honorable person and a truly good guy.  But I definitely don't like the direction that its community is going. I don't want to see Avedesk propped up by its supporters by tearing down our stuff or anyone else's stuff.

Sorry so long. You know me.

As I have recently had more time (due to some changes in school) to check out the skinning community outside of WC I have been really disappointed in the number of vitriolic and narrow minded folks out there. What bothers me the most is that I doubt they are, in any way, the majority of those who enjoy desktop customization. They are just the most vocal of the group. I have read the idiotic anti-Stardock posts on both aqua-soft and Neowin, and all I can infer is that someone, somewhere lost perspective.

The vitriol spewed against Stardock for expecting to receive money in exchange for their products is mind-boggling. As was mentioned already in this thread, I doubt those who screech the loudest about their product loyalty ever bothered to pony up and support the authors in any real, tangible way. I just don't get it.

I sure hope things can get sorted out as I too had noticed that the folks in charge of Aqua soft seemed to really be above this sort of petty squabbling.

I just want to correct some things on this (not all incorrect things, just some).

There was a reason AveDesk was all over aqua-soft. I'll try to explain - in my crappy english - why.
AveDesk as a project, started completely on the aqua-soft website. At the time I was a semi-daily visitor/poster on aqua-soft, and through private discussion with some other members, the idea to create the application was born. When the first version of avedesk was released, it was released as an aqua-soft.org-only community application. For me and others, it was a fun project which we shared thru the forums of aqua-soft.
A lot of things for AveDesk are created with the "aquafying" thing in mind, often with a lot of aqua-soft members helping.
I guess that's the mean reason some of aqua-soft members are so protective/aggressive/fanatic about avedesk: they consider it as their own application.

When I released a new version of the application after six months - just some weeks before desktopX 2.2 was released, a lot of people got really hyped up about it and went over a line in responding to others.

Anyhow, that's the background.

Now, what happened, from my point of view: Recently, on aqua-soft there was a big discussion on what direction aqua-soft should go: going the diehard way, all aqua, or allowing other themes too. This discussion, which Brad wasn't aware of I think, has also been held thru private communication channels, like MSN Messenger. With that discussion still in mind, I made a comment about one newsitem, which, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, was not related to anything aqua, so shouldn't be posted directly on the frontpage of the site, because this was the kind of stuff some people on A~S had problems with.

From there, things went kinda ugly, with a lot of "fanboys" coming in to defend their application to death. So the sites administrator wisely closed commenting on the particular newsitem.
A night later, and several hatefull e-mails in my inbox ( and I don't doubt Brad will have some too) later, the discussion was being continued, in an even worse manner.
For me, it was enough at that point. I am currently spending more than four hours a day on something that was supposed to be fun, and with all the extra crap: it was enough for me.
I don't know why timan [ a-s admin] ultimately decided to close aqua-soft forum, but I am at a point where I don't care anymore.

I think I have already apologized to Brad for anything offending I might have said as well as for not giving my comments thru more private channels. If not, please take this as my apologies.

For me, it's no fun anymore at the moment. I need to think if I feel the need to continue with any of my customization-applications.

Andreas (also known as AVE).

P.S. Frogboy, that blog was just something I did out of request for timan [a~s site owner].




Oh, and if we are going to use our own custom-made smileys:

Ave, from my dealings with you (which were questions concerning your OD docklets and from talking to you in the Stardock chat area), I think you're a very honorable person. I realize some things, which we later regret, can be said in the heat of the moment. I'm also sure that your apologies are heartfelt and sincere.

since Brad, in a subtle way, mentioned me (as a mod who accused him of ripping AveDesk) and as an evil newsposter who avoided programs made by SD in his newsposts, i feel compeled to say a word or two. 1st, why don`t you mention that i ASKED you several times to PM me with any SD related info you wanted in the news? I told u i was the only newsposter and that i couldn`t follow DX development (i was focused on work released on AS, which included AD). Yet you chose the path you did which lead to this. If you PMed me as i requested, DZ wouldn`t have broken my method of posting to which people were acustomized to, and wouldn`t have complainted about that newspost. But i don`t blame you, i blame all of us for not being mature enough to ignore that newspost and this whole situation. But at least DX has one less competitor since Ave has quit all AveApps, AveDesk included. Good work Brad
Looks like many more people will flock to DX (or will they? )
Good luck in any case.
Aleksandar (Unbeliever)

Well, I applaud Ave for posting in a nice manner, but also see that some of A~S detritous has followed him.
I guess since they cannot post underhanded and snide comments over there, that they will invade WC. I can see this one coming, it needs to be nipped in the Bud. NOW!

thanks for killing aqua soft, your a moron if u think people will just pick avedesk over anything else bacuase it is at aqua soft. different people will use different things to suit there needs. i have seen many threads at aquasoft by u acusing aqua soft memebers of backing up ave, and its just not true. you have managed to make this seem like something its not. congrats. and aquasoft is closed now.IF it opens up again it will be drimaticly differnt.AWSOME. GOOD JOB.
kill my acount, im not comeing here any more.

have a nice day.

Admin Needs to lock this NOW!!

Ave is a good guy, as are most of the people over at A-S, but like here there are some immature individuals that don't get the big picture about the skinning and modding "scene". All hail Brad for what he and Stardock have done and will continue to do for the community.

personally I feel that those who get out of hand supporting or detracting from anything pretty much OWN the death of it...

so all of you throwing hate and crap, pat yourselves on the back, well done...

Andreas is a solid individual with honor and deserving respect, Brad is not different.

sad...

really sad.

#18 by grim53

promise?

I can see that they are going to come and we are lucky this is a Holiday Weekend, and the Traffic is low. As far as I can tell this has been Civil up to this point, but I can gaurentee ya dollars to doughnuts that it is going to get alot worse before it ends.

Grim53, Unbeliever, I don't think Frogboy was out to kill Avedesk or Aqua-soft so I think you both need to take a chill pill, seriously. And Grim, you need to grow up. I don't think this needed to be brought over here.

And BTW, I also am into theming and do the OSX interface layout most of the time. But that is what is so great about customisation software as good as what we have available. You can do just about anything you want so I say you should be free to do whatever you want with it and not have someone get on your case saying if you like it so much why don't you just run out and buy the computer it's based on. Being able to do as much customisation as you can with this software puts the personal into personal computer. Like for example on my user account I have the OSX layout, on my admin account I have a blackbox shell running instead. In the past I have done many other looks and I like that freedom. I say just because you are using windows that doesn't mean you have to like having the titlebar, desktop shell, etc. the way microsoft thinks you should want it. That's the reason why themes where made in the first place and the reason why I chose themes over just running my system using the classic appearence.

Unbeliever: I didn't receive any emails from you suggesting that I PM you news items. I did, however, receive emails from Deadzombie suggesting that I email him news items and Deadzombie is an admin on Aqua-Soft.  I did see your public posts suggesting I send you PMs of news items but that was after the fact. Besides, Deadzombie is an admin on Aqua-Soft. 

I don't pretend to know the internal politics of Aqua-Soft but as an "outsider", an admin is an admin.  If someone emails Jafo a news item and he posts it, I can't imagine Paxx yelling at the person who sent the email to Jafo for having sent the email.

Given the number of times we've gone to bat for Aqua-Soft when dealing with Apple's legal department, the suggestion that we somehow are out against Aqua-Soft is absurd. Everyone can appreciate the volunteer efforts of people who make software or skins but I can assure you, our attorneys aren't volunteers and cost money. Money that we happily have spent helping our community (not just WC).  It was I that got Aqua-Soft into Wired Magazine this past year.  There are a lot of people who have pulled for Aquq-Soft over the years so it's pretty offensive to suggest I have any ill-intent for the site.

Andreas: The issue on Aqua-Soft isn't that you objected to a news item on a DesktopX tutorial (we can agree to disagree) but because of the volume of Avedesk fanboys on Aqua-Soft, when you publicly objected to the news item (ironcially, Unbeliever doesn't seem to suggest that the objections to the news items coudl have been handled privately) it brought the wrath of the Avedesk fanboys.

If anyone is to blame for the shutting down of the forums, it's the Avedesk fanboys who got out of control. I would challenge anyone to find one post by me or anyone who agreed with the position I took that was even remotely rude or nasty.

Running a site is a difficult job. And it's often a thankless job. The guys who run aqua-soft have worked hard to create a nice place for developers and users to hang out and talk about aquifying their desktops. And what thanks to they get? Moderators and users turning against them because they had the nerve to defend/support OTHER software developers like us who have been supporting them since the beginning.