Wow, it just doesn't pay to go on vacation. I come back to find an 18 page dialogue that has broken my heart and my spirit. I admit that i am only a user and my only contribution was to try to help anyone I could with the limited knowledge that I had acquired from applying the forum contributions to my own experience. My contribution to vera was to help friends and family order their vera unit and build varying levels of home control for their needs and amusement. In a way I am glad that I have been away for two months because it gave me an interesting perspective to read all of these pages in one sitting. Basically vera is losing developers on a daily basis, they have shown nothing towards product bug or development controls, and they still wish to control maintenance via email. Frankly, from the beginning to the end of this thread, the only thing that is new is that mvc is trying to do some damage control by actually making an appearance.
I don't know if anyone remembers IBM, but there was always the joke about the woman who had been married multiple years and was still a virgin because her husband was an IBM salesman and all he would do was sit on the bed and tell her how good it was going to be. I feel like I just read that joke in this thread.
chixxi, I applaud your actions. I will suffer from them, but given all of the months of issues I always wondered why you and the others continued to bang your heads against the wall trying to deal with an absolute nightmare of attempting to help a community without any proper support from mcv. Now they are scrambling to put a patch on it but it is very apparent that the writing is on the wall. I wonder if the veramate developer has committed suicide by now.
I particularly liked how Marc and Colin had the audacity to feel insulted about negative comments regarding their product and support. Again, from reading the summary, they didn't even admit to an email snafu until much later after everyone was further insulted by being left off of the list of free development resources. I have always like what Lee Travino said to a golfer that was screaming about his missed shot... "Son, you aren't good enough to be upset". Well mcv, neither are you.
I was already becoming concerned that virtually my entire collection of HA application uses were dependent upon volunteer efforts which could easily evaporate into thin air and given their treatment I could never blame them. Even though it is a fraction of their time spent, I as a user have also invested a great deal of time and money into the use of vera with the expectation that vera was trying to offer a competent product and that the forum would thrive. I have been in system development for over 30 years and I have never before seen such a vast resource completely ignored by management. Vera edge, from any out of the box perspective, is dead. My unused vera3 that I had intended for ui7 conversion is available to anyone that wants it. My vera lite will be available as soon as I can find a new product worth investing my time and energy into home integration. I too am ashamed for putting these products into the homes of friends and family and now will be burdened with their replacements as well.
I hate to start a list of the developers that have helped me so much over the years because I know i will miss one and I don't want to cause you guys any more pain. Thank you and good luck. Without your apps, I have no use for vera. I hope mcv's new concept of a point man works out for you. I am confident there are many behind the scenes conversations going on and I hope they are productive. I know you are all savvy enough to know whether to believe their rhetoric or whether it is worth it to give them another chance and I only hope that they don't further disappoint you.
So mcv, you should also recognize that the user community has expectations that you are failing on as well. From what i have seen in the past, it is perfectly clear that you only care to get a box out and the money in. You will not survive with that business model. Your biggest problem is that there aren't enough free edge boxes, or frankly even enough money to begin to compensate these great developers for their time, energy, compassion and outright genius. You blew it and you are still blowing it. When are you going to learn that your promises are empty and only make the forum feel more stupid for getting sucked in again? You should be ashamed, I am ashamed for you. It would be interesting to know how many mcv employees are jumping ship and floating their resumes all over the world.
And lastly, I want to thank this particular thread for helping me make the decision to move forward. I can't thank all of you enough, I have learned so much. It is now time to go learn something else.
