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Complaints about Direct Access Text Expander Taking Ideas from Others - Split Topic

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app103:
If you are truly wondering exactly what I meant about how your behavior can hurt your company, and you wonder why wraith808 feels the way he does, then read this and take a little advice from a very intelligent businessman that I used to work for many years ago:

What should I do about an unethical competitor?

[...] Above all, don’t badmouth your competitor, even if it’s badmouthing you. Customers will think less of you if you do. That’s an iron rule in my company. [...]-http://www.theknack.info/asknorm/2009/01/05/what-should-i-do-about-an-unethical-competitor/
--- End quote ---

When you point your finger at someone else, that's one finger pointing at them, giving them negative attention. But at the same time, that same hand is pointing 3 fingers of negative attention at yourself.

And in the Opera example, I want to point out that there is a big difference between Opera casually stating that they had tabs first, and representatives of their company chasing down Mozilla employees and Firefox developers all over the internet and bad mouthing them in public, calling them thieves, and then arguing with what could be potential customers about how right they are to act so atrociously.

Opera would never do that. Opera has more class than that.  (AOL, on the other hand, does not)

Now, do you want to be like Opera or whine like AOL? (Note that AOL did not gain any new customers by doing this, nor did GMail lose any. It actually had the opposite effect, driving more away from AOL, over to GMail.)

ropt:

Michael,
I'm a lawyer (and software developer) who advises (my clients) on legal issues.

Your conduct is completely disgraceful and typical of big-bully corporations:

1) Do you have ANY shed of evidence that code was copied? (Yes/No)

if NO --> then what's your problem?

2) Is your process patented?

if NO --> then what's your problem?

you cannot "copyright a process" or "known facts". you can only copyright your own implementation.

3) Why are you harassing a competitor in public for?

If you're doing this to make your competitor lose face -

How clever is your lawyer to defend your bad-faith actions?

Paul Keith:
Actually app, Opera has been accused of being whiners before: http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/microsoft-antitrust

I hear your arguments, but it still feels like you guys are more whiners, than champions of open standards. Especially where it concerns "unbundling".

and even if you win this it would not clear up teh problem with sites that adhere to IE (activex et al) to function as they do now.
--- End quote ---

Note that this isn't an isolated comment. Guys from ars technica's forum to other tech forums lambasted Opera for this.

That's why the FAQ was made in the first place. In fact, Opera IMO had valid intentions too and although they didn't call MS thieves, the seed was sown and most of the internet community feel like Opera was deliberately attacking MS.

I'd also like to point out that although I haven't read about the whole discussion (by your wording it seems BartelsMedia is chasing and posting this issue in several forums but outside of a slight comment of Andrea, I'm not sure how serious the accusation is) at least from his last few posts in this split topic, I don't see him calling his competitor a thief or bad mouthing them. He started inquiring and pointing to evidence and then the legal issue was raised so as a rebuttal he pointed out how he might consider the other person's actions as theft.

I know it's a semantical issue but I thought I'd just clarify how he didn't originally brought out the definitive accusation of theft in this split topic and appeared to be legitimately interested in clarifying the intentions of the other person to ensure that there was no ethical possibility of theft. That's all. (Although he would later be more firm in his statements of theft but I assume that's because he feels the other person intentionally avoided replying to him time and time again.)

Sorry for sounding biased again. I really am not trying to pick any sides. I just hate feeling like people are seemingly potshooting each other due to a misunderstanding. In this case, I feel like BartelsMedia even prior to the legal discussion already pointed out that it was a case of ethics yet as he also pointed out:

I wonder why so many ride on the patent thing because I never said the slightest about violating a patent.

Everybody can see that the program itself is not stolen. I would never claim that and it is not the case.

It is his version history that has too many congruences over the years to make us saying it is a "coincidence".
--- End quote ---

Believe me, if I felt that Andrea was seemingly misinterpreted, I'd have spoken out too. It's just that it seems that everyone understood that he didn't want to address this issue any further and so I don't feel how he is being misunderstood in any portion of his replies here. Again, if I'm wrong, I apologize. My intentions are just to clarify and I constantly point this out because I know this is a sensitive heated issue and emotions could easily dull the context between each of our intentions in our replies.

bmms:
I respectfully agree to disagree and withdraw from the conversation, as it seems a lot like beating a dead horse on a mouse wheel. :)
-wraith808 (February 03, 2009, 10:36 AM)
--- End quote ---

So why did you bother to post in this thread at all, Wraith? Just a "hit & run" attack leaving funny animations? ;-)

wraith808:
Perhaps to let you know that I wasn't just ignoring you?  Just leaving the conversation?   :huh: *sigh*

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