> -----Original Message-----
> From: Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Geoff Worboys
> Sent: Domingo, 10 de Mayo de 2009 20:50
>

...

>
> (Assuming this buy-out goes through) I think it is the time
> to mourn the final passing, after a long lingering illness,
> of a company that made a huge difference to many of us. The
> Turbo products (the original ones, not the recent new-Coke
> versions), OWL and other early forays into OO, and of course
> their culmination in Delphi and C++Builder.

(Probably I should take seriously Helen's old advice of not throwing myself
in the middle of "political" exchanges where I have a tendency to upset
people due to lack of tact, but from time to time, I think I can grant
myself such freedom.)

- I celebrate the innovation of those people that created the IDE, the
original Turbos (I used them at the univ), the original "Pro" C++ compiler
(Borland C++), Delphi (I found the C++ Builder counterpart sluggish and
half-baked), OWL, VCL, etc.
- I celebrate the no-nonsense license agreement that allows you to install
the product multiple times, provided that you use only one instance at a
time (unless you have more licenses, of course).
- I celebrate the people that -despite their employer being more unstable
than the San Andreas Fault System- were able to develop good SW and remained
loyal to the company.

I don't blame Anders Hejlsberg for going to MS after the whopping amount of
money he was offered as a salary. After all, he didn't know if Borland would
exist in five years more. Just at that moment, finally Visual C++ had
outsold Borland C++ and the BC version was plagued by so many bugs that made
it unusable and thus caused budget problems in the tools division of Borland
(very poor sales). Remember they did at the same time IntraBuilder, that had
only one version and died without a clear explanation (only lack of budget
to continue development was rumored).

At the risk of making Geoff angry, I celebrate the final and much
anticipated demise of Borland. The company was a zombie already. It was a
cursed commercial entity that made impossible to plan ahead based on their
products because they could change direction in front of your nose at any
time, despite promises made four weeks before. It was living past its
allowed time and it didn't have any reason to exist after selling Codegear
(despite what the shareholders and the execs could say, dev tools were the
soul and the original "raison d'être" of the company). Probably it holds the
record in product terminations without proper warning to loyal customers,
with product managers and CEOs lying to the public like con artists. Do you
know another company that works so hard to have contradictory public
statements, that sports horrible marketing in a consistent way, that enters
into agreements with such mediocre partners as representatives outside the
US and that specializes in alienating customers year after year? It had a
funny stream of clueless CEOs the ironically came from very important
companies (Wetsel, Yocam, Fuller and Nielsen). I remember the phrase "a CEO
has an obligation to [make the wish of] the shareholders". Oh, yes, it's
obvious, but the CEO has the obligation to remember the silly shareholders
that the company makes money when it has customers and customers are loyal
when the company has an honest PR machine and doesn't work against them.
Some journalists were so used to witness problems with Borland that they
didn't bother to check before preparing an article and they always wrote
"the troubled company", so they missed the few years it was in good
financial shape.

The products we use and admire are well protected under Embarcadero's
shield. They got the marketing strategy right, I think. There's no reason to
fear the termination of the Delphi/C++ line. Let's hope that uncle Bill
didn't decide to buy Embarcadero.

The requiem of Borland is like going to the train station to salute a famous
locomotive that's being decommissioned and is doing its last travel: it may
go to a museum or can be dismantled, but the outcome has no practical effect
on the train service. Here the train service is the set of dev tools
acquired by Embarcadero, that continue unaffected: a more modern locomotive
will pull the railway cars. What's lost is only the money-making machine of
the shareholders, but they won't lose their money, because they will get
shares in Microfocus. We have nothing to mourn. Out with the old, in with
the new (in Spanish: a rey muerto, rey puesto).

What could I regret? Only that some mediocre middle level managers were able
to slip through the filter and made their way into CodeGear and thus into
Embarcadero.

C.