8dio (Criticism re: business practices)

[stubbsonic]

I put in only the slightest effort to find something "Immoral" or just "bad form"-- and I AM NOT saying 8DIO is innocent, or whatever-- I just could not, without sapping myself of whatever dregs of mojo are left in my husk of a being, read that thread. It made my head hurt-- and that was before I even got to anything marginally informative.

Seems like a complicated back & forth. I would consider reading a carefully written summary/account, perhaps one from each side of this issue; if I was to make some decision about avoiding a company. But picking through a long thread with lots of noise isn't something I have bandwidth for at this moment.

[James Steele]

That's kind of where I'm at. I just don't have the time and I tune out when these disputes go into a public fight on an internet forum. Get a lawyer and sue for breach of contract then. Oh wait. There was no contract. Never mind.

[mhschmieder]

I have to recuse myself from any discussion of 8DIO, but as for someone improving someone's library or fixing bugs, then asking for compensation afterwards, I think that is unrealistic with small developers especially (this is not an endorsement of the company in question; I have my own opinions but am unable to state them publicly as I am not an unbiased source).

Several friends have done this sort of thing but have contacted the vendors first, and in most cases just want to see others benefit from the improvements or fixes they made. In a couple of cases, they were compensated as a reward. I fall into that category myself, with a few vendors. But the work I've done is nowhere near as deep as what some of my friends have done. Sometimes they are given a free product or library license.

That's as much as I will say on the topic, as I worked briefly in the sample library business during my time between regularly salaried jobs, for the first half of 2021. I unfortunately have inside info on quite a few vendors by now, and as a result, I rarely talk about products in those categories anymore, except for VSL, where I have no reason to recuse myself.

[James Steele]

Yeah... you know it's never a good look for anyone when these things spill onto internet forums. I understand the motivation. Someone feels wronged and legal action might be too costly or just plain not worth it, so out of frustration, they go to forums or social media and hang out the dirty laundry with the goal it seems of getting others to boycott the company and inflict financial damage on that company.

In many cases, the person may have definitely been wronged and it's completely justified, but like a lot of the personal stuff I'm often surprised to see posted after bad romantic breakups on Facebook, etc, nobody seems to come out of that looking good. I myself kinda got taken advantage of by someone I know in an exchange of my goods for their labor and I made the mistake of fronting the goods. I could go on Facebook where we have mutual friends and call them out publicly and rant about what a lousy person they are for doing me wrong. But it's just a bad look and I haven't been in high school for decades. So I'm going to walk away with a bit of a painful and somewhat expensive lesson. The important thing is to be smarter the next time. Education truly can be expensive!

[mhschmieder]

Well said.

[mikehalloran]

I sat on one of the many juries in the Intel vs AMD trials of the early–mid 1990s and then, more recently (big browser company) vs (huge telecom).

Those were easier to keep straight than this.