PowerBasic - will it recover or is the Air out?

[Marc Giao]

I understand Jim is now the General Manager at PowerBASIC and he does answer his e-mails.

Marc

[Marco Pontello]

FWIW, this seems to be his Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/tunedin76

[David Roberts]

Eric posted a link but I was still not able to get to PB. I use OpenDNS. I disabled it and got to PB. On enabling I got the"not found on this server" messages again. It should settle down in a few days - if not then I'll kick a stink at OpenDNS. 

[Chris Holbrook]

Perhaps the PowerBASIC website is keeping office hours EST.

[Theo Gottwald]

Its down again ... 14.12.12.-08:57 MEZ.

[Patrice Terrier]

Theo--

This disorganization doesn't give much confidence...
And it is kind of answer to the question you have been asking in the title of this thread.

"Un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé"
Lamartine

...

[Theo Gottwald]

Today i thought "If Bob had been there, it would not have been happened like this."
I would expect an explanation, some official statements ... something that makes us believe that there is somebody who cares.
Now people report that even the mail bounces.

Good we have Jose's Forum.

[Chris Holbrook]

Strange things can happen when key people leave the scene (for whatever reason). Third parties can be difficult. We should not rush to judgement.

[Eric Pearson]

Patrice --

Maybe I remember things differently, but I always thought that Bob was very brusque when dealing with BBS outages.  And customers in general.  He probably hired people like him.

> but is he a skilled programmer?

It will take a lot more than a good coder to run PowerBASIC.  We should be hoping for a good businessman, somebody who understands the PowerBASIC market, and lots of other things.  We won't know if he is the right person until we can say "the company didn't fail after Bob died"  How long will that take?  You may as well make a pot of coffee.

Guys, as far as I know PowerBASIC had exactly two things of great value: Bob's brain, and a loyal customer base.  Now they have only one.  They probably don't want to offend their most loyal and vocal customers.  So maybe they can't say anything yet.  How long does it take to appraise and sell a company?  Maybe negotiation are still in progress, maybe they are looking for an investor, maybe they are interviewing people... who the hell knows?  Maybe THEY don't know anything yet.

I have no insider information about this. I'm as in the dark as you are.  Considering the ongoing business relationship between PowerBASIC and Perfect Sync, think about that.

-- Eric

[Eric Pearson]

Theo --

> Now people report that even the mail bounces.

PB runs its own web server "in house".  When that server is down, emails bounce.

-- Eric

[Guenter Fuessner]

It seems that almost nobody on this board knows enough about Jim Bailey at this time to say more about the future of PowerBasic Inc.
If you look at his twitter account then we can learn that he characterize himself as a "Conservative Activist". If you read some of his tweets where he expressed his opinion, did read the warning yesterday against Patrice in the PB-Forum, for just making his opinion public (and no Beta-Details!), did see that Jim Bailey edited Tom's forum entry describing his relation to Bob Zale, find no serious information at any place about the ongoing problems with the PB-Forums, I feel that Eric is right with his opinion:

"Maybe I remember things differently, but I always thought that Bob was very brusque when dealing with BBS outages.  And customers in general.  He probably hired people like him."

[David Roberts]

Booted this morning and got "not found on this server" so disabled OpenDNS and then got a timeout. I put the kettle on. 

Perhaps the PowerBASIC website is keeping office hours EST.

They may be working out of a tent. 

We should not rush to judgement.

In twelve hours, for me, this fiasco will have been going on for a week with downtime exceeding uptime.

Each time the site has been up there has been an opportunity to say something. Eric said: "So maybe they can't say anything yet." Saying nothing is not damage limitation best practice.

"Some of you may be pulling your hair out this week. If it is any consolation, so are we. Bear with us folks, we will get there."

That has told us nothing but it does say, as Theo wrote, "something that makes us believe that there is somebody who cares."

As Stephen Hawking said on one of the Pink Floyd's albums: "Keep talking"

[Patrice Terrier]

Guenter--

did read the warning yesterday against Patrice in the PB-Forum, for just making his opinion public

I have always been a problem for Bob, because i am using several programming tools.

He kept me in the beta team, only because i was pushing PB to the limit, but our 20 years relation has always been tumultuous.
Some of his PM to me, are true pieces of anthology, due to his "very thin skin".

He has always been upset by the existence of this forum and especially by this thread:
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=1129.0

But all in one, i always been faithful to him, because PowerBASIC is such a little gem when it comes to create tiny fast DLL, especially those requiring real time processing.

...

[Paul Squires]

He has always been upset by the existence of this forum and especially by this thread:
http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=1129.0

I got a similar blast from him a couple of years ago when I made a "disparaging remark about DDT" in one of my FireFly sales ads. The text was not malicious and only indicated that DDT was limiting versus SDK. Nonetheless, I quickly changed the text (and apologized) but lo and behold the next day I got very nasty emails from him digging up snippets from some of my posts over the past *10 years* wherever I mentioned the power of SDK over DDT. The man could not accept apologies, nor could he objectively see two sides of a disagreement. If he wanted a fight then by God he would fight tooth and nail until he hammered you into the ground. I learned a valuable lesson after that encounter. I respected him as a programmer but was very leary in dealing with him on any other level.

When Bob found out that the new FireFly Visual Designer product was also now tied to a private, members/customers only forum, he lost it. He went ballistic on me during a telephone conversation with him. He told me that the only reason for the private forum was so that I could hide malicious conversations about PB without him or PB staff seeing it. Think about that. Why in the world would I create a private forum with 100% PB and FireFly customers just to bash PB? I would be killing my own market immediately. The man was somewhat paranoid or at the very least way too overly sensitive and hot tempered. Once you got on his bad side then I don't know if you could ever get into his good graces again. The private forum was created merely to prevent FireFly software pirates from getting free support. Nothing more. Nothing less.

He was a great programmer though and even though I doubt that we would have been best friends hanging out with food and drink, I do miss him.

I am very surprised that PB has not posted something in Jose's forum explaining what's going on. Some of the strongest supporters of PB come here every day (some of us every hour).     I have sent an email to Jim Bailey asking a few questions. If he answers and allows me permission to share then I will update people here with what I've learned.

[Guenter Fuessner]

Patrice--
Paul--

it seems that more than one of us did make the same experiences and share the same view.

It is my hope that PowerBasic Inc. will change some of the old business politics and show their customers that there will be a valid future for PowerBasic and show into what direction Powerbasic will be heading under new ownership and/or control.
Maybe I'm expecting too much - in that case, maybe PowerBasic is expecting too much from the existing customer base.