Evolution Redux -- So Am I Ready to Eat my Words?

Note: I'm rushing to catch a train and offline most of the weekend so if this isn't hugely cogent then I apologize.  I wanted to respond directly to Jason's commentary before I got out of the proverbial dodge.

Well, no I don't want to eat my words.  But I think there are some important points made here.  And I really think that you should read Jason Lotito's commentary.  I respect Jason a lot and I'll be the first person to tell you he's a sharp, sharp guy.  I don't agree with his comments but they should definitely be heard:

 Take Scott's recent debacle with Evolution. Shouting to no end LET MY DATA GO !!!. Now, I am not suggesting that his complaints are not valid. Nor am I suggesting that Evolution is without fault. However, I am suggesting that this is a case of a programmer, a developer of software, throwing a hissy fit over a little thing. 

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So am I throwing a hissy fit here?  I don't think so.  Yeah what I wrote was a rant.  Sure.  But what I wrote wasn't an uninformed rant -- there was a basis for it and it was factually correct.  This isn't unlike Jeremy Zawodny's recent "Fonts on Linux: A Rant" rant.  And I fundamentally disagree that data export is a little thing.  Its not.  Its freaking well huge. 

My point was actually pretty important -- Damn it!  I want my data.  And sure I could have grovelled about for it poking through directories and such but shouldn't this be an end user operation.  I'm a developer.  But what about the next user?  What about the non-developer?  What about the person who goes to desktop Linux because its "open" and then finds out that Outlook for practical purposes is more open than Redhat's default mail client. What does that say about us the "open" community. 

Now Jason arguest that I should have gone to the Ximian site and found the right place to put the comment and then submitted it properly all nice and tidy.  Well that's just not going to happen in the real world.  Its difficult to find here to put stuff on a web site, figure it out, etc.  Until that's a standard thing, users are going to put comments everywhere, even in blogs*.  And as someone who has been a product manager most of their professional life, I can honestly tell you this:

• Commentary on your product even in the wrong place is better than no commentary
• Commentary even negative is better than no commentary

One thing that  I do think that Jason has missed is that public rants -- IF THEY ARE CREDIBLE** -- serve a real purpose.  They make a company very aware that there's an issue and perhaps some incentive to get it fixed.  That's huge.  And someone else posted in the comments here "how would I like it if someone did that to me for one of my products (Inbox Buddy)?".  Well sure I see the issues but you know something -- if I screw up badly enough for someone to write this kind of rant then I should have my feet held to the flame.  Yup.  That's right -- I may be difficult*** but at least I'm consistently difficult.

So I still think my comments are valid.  Your mileage my vary and you'll make your own assessment.  I'm very often not right and I'll be the first person to admit that.

*Now thankfully there are tools like www.Feedster.com that make finding input from blogs easy.  Heck the people from Ximian can even set up a custom RSS feed so all comments on their product flow right to their desktop.

** And you'll make your own assessment whether or not mine was

*** If you wanted to substitute another word for difficult, feel free.

Note: I didn't even want to forward a todo item -- I just wanted ASCII and it couldn't even give me that. 

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How the Ever Loving Smack Do I Get Out of Evolution???

When I started using Linux as more than just a cool way to implement terminal windows that actually stay connected (as opposed to Putty on Windows which goes up and down like ... (fill it in)), I started using Evolution to manage my *nix email.  Now all I have to do is scream loudly until it reverberates through the streets of Newton, Massachusetts:

LET  MY DATA GO !!!

I've been using the Evolution tasks page to track the Feedster bugs assigned to me and new features I'm implementing.  Then I went to email them to Francois in the "here I am; look what I did" mode that you do with new folks you work with and ... nothing.  No export.  No copy and paste save individual items.  I ended up screen capping three pages of stuff to email and then said "this is madness; blog it instead".  And lets not even talk about the features that don't work.  Well I will but that's a paragraph or two away.

So is there anyway to get my data back?  I can deal with the tasks not moving but I have over a 1,000 messages to move.  Can I dump my mailbox to a Maildir locally?  Or do I have to drive over to Cambridge and choke the Ximian boys until their eyes bulge and I sing "Let My Data Go" ?   And don't even get me going about the nature of "If you're going to copy Microsoft, at least have the combination of brains and balls to copy the good features as well as the bad".  Example -- in Outlook pressing CTRL+N in the main Outlook window creates a new message.  But pressing it in a message window does the same.  In Evolution CTRL+N only works in the main Evolution window -- want to create a new message when you're in a message and you're hosed.  Just hosed I say.  Then there are the bugs and the excuse for performance.  Linux running slow?  Oh you're an Evolution user? Then just turn off mail and all will be good. 

And don't even get me going on the whole concept of Evolutions features that just plain don't work.  Doubt it?  Try coloring a message by sender and you'll find that they have taken the Henry Ford approach -- you can color any message anyway you want but the only color they'll show you is black.  Nice going guys.

Note to Evolution: Its Called Data Export.  Think It.  Learn It.  Live It.  Code It.

Note: I did just do an apt-get yesterday before writing this so I had the latest code before this "Evolution BitchFest" got published.

Note: If Evolution has this and I totally missed it then I'm happy to scrape, bow and admit I'm a moron.  I did look for it and its not in the main application.  Since there's an Import command, I'd assume that Export would be parallel so I feel pretty good with this bitch fest.

Note: There's actually quite a bit to like about Evolution and I like the Ximian guys but holding my data fscking hostage is not acceptable.

My next Linux mail client?  Looks like Balsa to me since Thunderbird isn't there yet and the concept of a pre-beta mail client makes me shudder.  Why not Mozilla?  Well since I use Firebird I can't run Mozilla concurrently thanks to the beautiful concept of shared libraries. 

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Welcome to the All New Feedster !

Note: I wrote this last night and then there was a Windows crash but I recovered the content since I wrote it to a text file first.

I know that I should be writing a pithy, humorous account of how the merger came to be, why we did it and so on.  Right now I just want to sleep for approximately 36.7843 hours and then write code.  Ah yes... The life of a "entrepreneur" (hate that word).  Anyway... The merger went well -- actually very well.  We've not completely but largely merged code bases as evidenced by the much more robust crawling technology, our now Unicode database and so on.  There are some minor features from rssSearch which aren't in the main code base but will be next week approximately.

I'll be online tomorrow morning early for any questions that popup as well as tomorrow afternoon with some (ack!) meetings in the morning.  I'll probably post a Q & A blog entry tomorrow or early next week.  The answers are pretty much what you think -- make a better product.  Prior to the merger you had two talented organizations, located literally 25 miles apart doing close to exactly the same thing.  As long as you're culturally compatible, that's basically pretty brain dead and once we put it together, the merger was a non-brainer.  Just a no-brainer.

As far as what you're going to see in the coming months, its much the same -- cool stuff on a regular basis.  You'll also see the inevitable commercialization of Feedster in what I hope will be an elegant, tasteful manner since we're now spending (and actually have been for some time) quite a bit of $$$ to operate Feedster.  We do honestly think that we have a business plan that lets us support individual bloggers as well as new corporate clients.  What you won't see is a dot com like spending rush, great quantity of marketing employees, etc.  That said, I should comment that our first official post merger hire is actually in marketing and welcome Heidi Ellard to the team.  There will be more on that next week as well. 

And Dave -- Thank you so much for the link!.  That was just awesome.  Made my day.

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