Borland Communication

I received a phone call from Borland on October 28, 2004, and, was given the opportunity to further elaborate on the community's needs and requirements as well as suggestions for putting BCB back in the hands of the community. Based on what was shared, I was very encouraged by the commitment Borland is showing to address our issues regarding BCB!

One of the things that was impressed upon me was the development team's desire to seek the assistance of community members to help in such things as product validation. However, the decision to carry on BCB ultimately rests upon Borland Management. Based on what was stated, I have no doubt we will hear a clear decision regarding the future of BCB on or before Dec 15th . Stay tuned!

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Here was the initial reponse received from Borland on October 22, 2004, the day the community letter was sent.

http:Borland_Response_To_Cover_Letter.pdf

Preventive Medicine with Windows Recovery Console

What happens if your computer won't boot up. For instance you get an error that says "Windows is unable to Start. Please insert Windows Setup disk and select to recover the missing files."

Typically this type of error has to do with a fragmented registry. A corrupt registry can leave you completely out of your system. If that happens to you, it might seem impossible to get back into Windows.

Essentially what you need is the Windows XP Professional disk to recover an earlier state of your registry. But, what if you're away from the office and you don't have it???

The things to do ahead of time, as preventative medicine, is to make a back up of your registry on a frequent basis, and install Microsoft's Recovery Console on your hard drive.

Microsoft Recovery Console is, in essence, an operating system that can be selected upon boot up. Unfortantely, it is not part of the normal install when your computer was set up (by Dell, Compaq). So you must put it on yourself.

Here are the steps to install it:

1. Log on to Windows XP Pro as an admin or user with admin rights.
2. Insert the Windows XP Pro CD. If you are prompted to upgrade Windows XP, click No.
3. From a command prompt enter the following command
   "d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons" (make sure d:\ is your cd-drive)
4. Follow the instructions that are provided.

It will take up about 7 mb on your hard drive. Now, if your computer ever desides not to boot up properly in the future, you can select Windows Recovery Console via the F8 key and make the necessary changes/fixes to your system so that you can boot back up. And then, once you are in, use a registry restore application to get your system back to a state that is "normal." Otherwise, you might not be able launch and load the applications you had installed previously.

Standing in the Gap

Let it be clear, what the BCB user community has done with regards to the community letter, is to take a "proactive" stance and plainly "pitch" what they believe is best for the entire community. We are neither fleeing, nor begging, nor disillusioned. What we are doing, through the community letter, is “standing in the gap” on behalf of our fellow developers, our customers, and those we know within Borland who are just as passionate about C++Builder as we have been. Consider the following text for which the concept of “standing in the gap” has been borrowed over history.

"I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before Me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none." - Ezekiel 22:30

There’s obvious benefit if Borland C++Builder was to continue. If we sit quietly and not say anything -- other than whining and complaining among ourselves – perhaps we might wonder one day if our lack of interest put the final nail in the coffin. We are told that by December 15th an answer will be made. By standing in the gap with solidarity – a greater chance remains for Borland to provide and commit to a roadmap regarding the future of C++Builder. Following December 15th, we will move forward (with or without Borland).

As far as those who are critical of this cause or think we’re begging, let me put it in context through a simple analogy...

Suppose you travel to work on a train, and that was the most efficient way for you to get to the office on a daily basis. You've been doing it for years. One day though, the transportation company responsible for the train begins to focus more interest on other "transportation" endeavors. Slowly the tracks that you travel begin to deteriorate, and people begin to wonder, "what is happening to this train?". The initial response, that you hear is, "well, we are working on a new train - called the Xtrain. It's not quite as fast, but it crosses over a whole lot more terrain -- it will cater to more riders -- and it will eventually give everyone more options." At first, you are okay with this, but then you slowly realize that the train stop that you and many others board is not going to be supported or included with this new Xtrain, because it uses an entirely set of new tracks - not compatible with the tracks used by the old train. This is bewildering to you -- and others -- because you realize the infrastructure is already in place with a train that has always made sense because it is fast and efficient for a majority portion of their ride share. Furthermore, the train used on the other side of town, which receives a whole lot more attention by the transportation company, operates on the very same type of tracks your train operates on, however it continues to get annual maintenance repairs and improvements by the transportation company, whereas your train does not.

Regardless, because you have seen the transportation company deliver the goods in the past, you force yourself to drive farther to catch the new XTrain even though it's still under development. Occasionally, though because of necessity, you keep using the old train despite the fact it has no conductors servicing it anymore. On almost a daily basis, you consider other transportation options: driving your own car in heavy traffic, joining a van pool, slugging to catch the HOV with other riders, etc... While there are other options, they are not as enticing and, it just perplexes you why the transportation company doesn't advance what they already have. And, secondly, you and everyone else wonder why are they neglecting their tried and true customers on your side of town -- or so it appears -- and giving focus and attention to the faithful riders riding the old but updated train on the other side of town.

Now is it begging to go to the Transportation Company, and state why you feel the old train is important, and to clearly ask that they provide a roadmap and decision on what they're going to do with that old train? Especially if decisions need to be made as to how you might need to travel in the future? Don't those faithful travelers, such as yourself, have every right to ask what's the plan? Additionally, don't they have every right to try to persuade them to recommit to the old train that everybody loved. Why? Because it simply makes sense to keep it alive. Keep in mind one does not need to beg to plainly ask – and to stand in the gap. But by not standing in the gap we may be legitimizing a decision to shut down the old train. What good is to sit quietly when one can express (and encourage) what they feel is a mutually better way -- especially when there’s still hope that the ship can be righted.

Open Community Letter to Borland Management (Now Released!!!)

It's been sent!!! Thanks for the feedback everyone.

The official site for the letter is http://bcbjournal.org/community_letter.pdf

The signature page will stay open for a while longer.
Still compiling results of Mark Jacobs survey.

Otherwise, the letter is now in the hands of Borland Management!!!

Pitching the OCL to Borland Management

Someone whom I respect very much suggested that one deterrent people may have to signing our Open Community Letter (OCL) is its length. So, I took a few minutes to boil down the points of the letter so that those who are interested in Borland continuing the BCB product line, but are hesitant to provide a signature to something that they feel requires them to read in detail, will now have zero excuses as to what this letter is about. Incidently I found this as a good exercise resulting in something that could be used for pitching the argument to Borland Management (thus the title for this post).


Key points of letter

Arguments

• Borland must continue development, maintenance and updates of its Rapid Application Development (RAD) focused C++Builder product line including VCL support.
• Time is of the essence. Decisions are being made. Borland must no longer delay.

Chief Problem

• Borland’s lack of Communication and Commitment over the course of the past two years regarding C++Builder (e.g. promissed open letters that failed to materialize, lack of updates to BCB 6, CBX misdirection)
• C++Builder is a Mission Critical application for developers and the customers whom developers support.
• Developers, and sponsors are in limbo / many are upset

Impact of Problem

• alternative tools, languages and vendors products are receiving greater consideration for future product development.
• “investment” in C++Builder built is being seen as a potential “loss”
• Software teams using Borland’s C++Builder product line will require to be retrained and re-skilled for other development environments and languages.
• Mission critical “long lived assets” are now in jeopardy of receiving support for maintenance / improvements
• Users/developers of other products such as Delphi (e.g. VCL vendors) are affected

Key Considerations

• The potential impact to customers, some of whom are major entities, who use and rely upon C++Builder built software,
• third party Delphi component and library vendors who have a stronger financial interest in producing VCL controls, components and tools if they can be leveraged by BCB users.
• customers who demand high performance and reliable applications in which only a standard-based language such as C++ can be uniformly considered.
• Customers, sponsors and users who rely on C++Builder based applications to be maintained, but this would be contingent upon if developers can rely on C++Builder to be maintained (patched, supported, and improved upon).
• Microsoft renewed intent for C++ as the principal language for exploiting CLR for .NET., which creates greater compelling reason for C++ Builder to persist and evolve to support .NET (leveraging the Delphi for .NET effort)
• BCB as a key part of the Borland Developer Studio (BDS) environment.
• The statements by Dale Fuller (Borland CEO), in which he said “[Borland] will never abandon the developers.” and “Borland’s past is really our future.”

Likely Result of BCB Abandonment

• If Borland sidelines a popular and key product, a likely consequence is that developers* and sponsors* will end up sidelining Borland. (*This is not exclusive of just C++Builder users)

Potential Result of BCB Recommitment

• If responsive to the community letter and those that signed it, Borland is seen as attentive and responsive to needs of community.
• C++Builder can restablish itself as the mission critical application development environment of our industry for both Win32 and .NET.

Strategy For Open Community Letter

I wanted to share a bit of the strategy for the Open Community Letter that we are working on.

(1) Signatures

We have established a database for collecting signatures, which will be attached with the Open Community Letter. It's important that each person must be verifiable, so we have added some safeguards by collecting informaton that will allow that name to be checked. However, not all the information collected will be delivered with the signature list.

The signature database to be operational since Oct 4th -- one day earlier than planned! It's imperative that we receive as many signatures as possible to create the traction we need.

(2) Site

Right now, my blog is being used to reflect the Open Community Letter effort. The intent, however, is to move it to a more appropriate / community representative web site. Current candidate web sites include the forthcoming CodeFez site and also the BCBdev web site that Harold Howe has been web mastering for all these years. (As of Oct 5, no response from them yet.) Perhaps we could use both. I'm open to other suggestions.

(3) Survey

Mark Jacobs has put up a survey to collect information to help us further make the case for BCB. This can be found at...

http://www.critical.co.uk/surveys/bcbfwd/bcbfwd.htm

We will take the results of this and make it part of our package. I'm asking him to shut down the survey by October 22nd, so that we have time to pull together the results.


(4) Delivery

So what gets delivered to Borland -- and who will get it at Borland? Good questions.

We will deliver the Open Letter. The signatures (collected via the database). Also, we hope to generate a separate document detailing information collected from the survey (this all depends on participation of the survey to be honest). Finally, we hope to provide a pseudo-repository to collect invidual / organization letters (PDF), which will also be delivered.

The Delivery will be accomplished several ways...

(a) Email dump to select members of Borland Management (Open Letter and Signatures)
(b) Announcement of Web site(s) posting of Open Letter, Signatures, Survey Results, and those letters people have written which they are comfortable with sharing.
(c) Snail mail (postal delivery) to select members of Borland Management of the entire package

(5) Target

Borland Management is the target for the Open Letter and the related materials. We will also CC the BCB Development Leadership as well as Developer Relations. There are two addresses we have for Borland, but Corporate is likely the only address we need to send the package to.

(6) Date

Borland's promise to us for an "answer" is December 15th. The proposed date for our delivery of this Open Community Package is currently November 1st. If we get enough traction early, this date could be earlier. Think of it like popping popcorn. You may have set the time on the Microwave, but as soon as you hear the popcorn stop popping, you shut it down and pull the bag out of the machine if there's still a few seconds left on the time. We may very well deliver early on this whole package, but that all depends on the early results of feedback, and if it then starts to level off, then I think we're ready. Keep in mind the earlier we emphasize our desire to the Borland management team (and are able to show our strength), the better our chances of influencing their decision and shaping the future.

(7) Spreading the Word

There is strength in numbers. Now that the signature page is up, we need as many folks adding their name to the list. Word of mouth. Email. Phone Calls. It will take all of us - working together to get the word out!!!

Community Letter Signature Page Up and Running!

The signature page for the Borland Community Letter is now ready and operational!!!

Show your support for BCB continued development by Borland. Your completed submission of your signature represents your agreement to the statements within the letter, and your consent to have your name, title and organization forwarded to Borland along with the Letter.

Please note that your phone number, e-mail address and mailing address are collected only to support verification of the signature if needed. They will not be published with the signature list, and they will not be shared with any other organization or business.

Remember, there's strength in numbers! Spread the word!