Other Software > Developer's Corner
"competitive upgrade" - is it ethical?
Carol Haynes:
It would be nice if you could spend a year or two working here and really getting to see what US life is like. I think (or at least hope) you would discover we're nowhere near as selfish, arrogant, or evil as I sometimes suspect you think we are from some of your comments.
-40hz (January 13, 2011, 02:30 PM)
--- End quote ---
I am not singling out the US - the UK is just as bad and getting worse by the day.
Wherever in the world if a director doesn't do all they can to maximize profits for shareholders they are in a breach of trust situation between themselves and the shareholders and will probably be voted off at the next shareholder meeting.
It seems to me that most businesses of any size have a level of paranoia that means people end up having to do things they are not proud of.
That's why they call it the greasy pole!
I don't wish to insult individuals or nations. Individuals in all nations are great - it is when people come together that some really ugly stuff can happen, and when you add competition into the mix things get ugly fast.
This is why we have a world where companies:
* patent biological entities do the detriment of society as a whole
* have appalling attitudes towards the sick and needy (anyone work for a drug company)
* start law suits with the intention of pushing smaller rivals out of business
* claim they own patents on public property
* make preposterous and patently untrue claims about products (beauty industry like to chime in with a defence?)
* pay directors whopping bonuses whilst claiming public funds to bail out the mess they made
* buy out small competitors just to remove their product from the market (never mind the customers who lose out)
* kill thousands of people daily whilst saying 'not me'
* use pester power to get young children to force adults purchase rubbish
just a smalll sample of the sorts of behaviour I object to
40hz:
Eh, OK, I think it would not hurt anything at this point - it is RealWorld Icon Editor - as the name suggest, tool to primarily make .ico files or other application or web graphics.
-vlastimil (January 13, 2011, 02:00 PM)
--- End quote ---
Looks to be a very nice app. Wish I had the talent and know-how to write something like that. :Thmbsup:
How about also identifying the competition's product (IcoFX by any chance?) and maybe provide a link to their advert page so we can analyze what's happening with them and maybe offer you some better suggestions for how to deal with or work around it?
Note: you're in position 9 on a Google search for icon editor. That puts you just "below the fold" on the average monitor. You'll want to do something to improve your ranking since there are 5 competing products (1 which got two separate hits) a Wikipedia page, and 2 big download sites above you.
Also - Wikipedia has a page with a list of notable icon editors here. I'm not sure what the criteria is for being considered "notable" but you should try to get your product listed on that page too while you're at it.
------
Note: if you do a Bing search on vlastimil and software it gives two possibly good hits. One is a guy that wrote a single free app. The second pointed to RealWorld. Figured that had to be you. Especially with the competition for software in that area.
40hz:
Wherever in the world if a director doesn't do all they can to maximize profits for shareholders they are in a breach of trust situation between themselves and the shareholders and will probably be voted off at the next shareholder meeting.
-Carol Haynes (January 13, 2011, 02:49 PM)
--- End quote ---
@Carol- Agree on all your points except for the above as it relates to what goes on in the States.
Over here shareholders have virtually no real say in the composition of the board of directors. Most shareholders mindlessly proxy their votes over to the board, or vote the slate whenever it's presented. And that's assuming they even read what they receive. Part of the problem is that large chunks of voting stock are held by mutual funds and other investment companies. So while it may be possible to mount a proxy battle, in practice it's extremely difficult to assemble enough small share votes to do anything. It usually takes something just short of major civil disobedience at a shareholder's meeting to get somebody sacked. Most times, the person in the crosshair negotiates his/her "resignation" (complete with heavy bonus and buyout package) to "spare the firm" the "expense and inconvenience" of a prolonged proxy struggle.
"So it goes" -Kurt Vonnegut :-\
vlastimil:
40hz,
Heh, IcoFX is fine. It is a decent free icon editor. The one with the "competitive upgrade" has the place right above me.
Google is not an ideal search engine and gives too much weight (indirectly) to free software. I am not complaining though - try searching for "icon maker".
Wikipedia, well, it was me, years ago, who added most of the content to the "icon editor" entry http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Icon_editor&oldid=112038555
Someone decided to rewrite it... There are no criteria. Whoever changes it, changes it.
Getting good organic rankings for a commercial software is not an easy thing these days. It simply is not newsworthy. Spamming or producing tons of useless content apparently still works, but I do not want to go that way. Maybe facebook will save me 8).
phitsc:
Never used your product, nor am I a designer, but I've tried to use the Axialis Icon Editor when a special version of it was offered for free together with Visual Studio. I've un-installed it shortly after trying, even though I could have used it for free! It seemed just too complicated for the novice / casual icon designer. I'm always using IcoFX now if I have to do anything with icons, which is mostly converting other pic formats to .ico or doing simple modifications on icons.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version