Now, here we are in November. And the buyer turns out to be which company? Um, well, Borland…
No matter what spin the company puts on this (“wholly-owned subsidiary focused on maximizing developer productivity”, “innovative, high-productivity development tools “, “the best interests of our customers, shareholders and employees,” etc. etc.) it strikes me as a marketing disaster unequalled since the days when a certain well-known company named Borland decided to make itself anonymous by calling itself by the wholly forgettable, and justifiably forgotten, name ‘Inprise’.
Think about it. Is this the way to build up your business and inspire customer confidence? a) You tell the world you no longer want a chunk of your own company; b) you lead people to believe that you are going to sell this chunk off to some third party; c) you leak out stories that suggest a fierce competition with aggressive bidding – speculation runs riot: who could it be? Corel? Sun? IBM? Microsoft???; d) You take almost ten months to do all this and e) at the end of it all, you suddenly decide to sell the unwanted chunk of your own company to to yourself!!!
I could be even more scathing but, hey, I know the guys in CodeGear, I’ve known some of them for a couple of decades; I like them; they’re good people and good programmers. Over the years I’ve used many and liked quite a few of their products. Frankly, they deserve better than this.
Let’s be positive, I hope, in time, they get better than this. I really, really do…
Add
to del.icio.us