I think Sean was pretty fair in his assessment. You are discounting the enormous power a user base can have on a product, or a company.
You are correct in your statement that Chizen does have a primary financial responsibility to the stockholders. But how does he meet that obligation? According to you it is making the most money he can for Adobe, and to hell to his customers. Now how much money do you think he'll make if he completely ignores the CF community? I'd say that, after some time, he'll be losing money since, if he's not actively engaging the product and improving the product, people will eventually move on to greener pastures. So if he has his stockholders best interests at heart, then it is an absolute requirement that he and his company listen to what the user community has to say. To ignore us, which you have said is likely in the interest of helping the stockholder, only hurts the company's bottom line. But listening to the users brings forth a better product (anyone remember the jump from CF 5 to CF 6? And how about 7? 7.0.2? And what about the rumors of Scorpio?) which a) keeps existing users engaged in a product they know and love, and b) entices new customers with a consistently improved product, which in turn generates revenue, which leads to profit, which ends up making stockholders happy. So, could Adobe dump CF? Yes, if it made sense. Does it make sense given the current user base, the (I'm sure) continuing or increased demand for CF? Not if CF is a profit making Endeavour. And you improve profits by listening to customers. -----Original Message----- From: Adam Churvis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 2:20 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Sean Corfield, it's time to approve my post Sean took this public, so I thought I would respond in public. I saw that post about me that Sean put on his blog a couple of weeks ago, and it was obviously intended to make trouble for me because of the way he titled it and how he took what I said entirely out of context. So I posted a comment to his blog that was simply a lead-in plus my posting in its entirety, so that people could see that Sean was twisting the truth. Now I know that Sean's been on vacation, so I waited until he started posting to his blog again and approving other peoples' comments posted later than my own, but he still hasn't seen fit to display what I actually said alongside his spin. So here's my original post in its entirety... ------------------ > I think the above response is drawing some pretty large conclusions > that aren't based on any substantiated facts. You don't really need (and will probably not have) any substantiated facts at hand when drawing conclusions about future actions a public company might take. All you have is instinct, an understanding of what truly drives public companies, market forces, technology innovations, etc, to guide you. Licking your finger and sticking it in the air to tell which way the wind blows helps, too. How are you ever going to have any substantiated facts that tell you in plain terms what a company definitely will do? The facts that are released to the public have been thoroughly sanitized and neutered by Public Relations and Legal, and the SEC only lets you say certain things (virtually nothing of importance) when mergers are about to happen. I wouldn't even call most of them facts, but rather diversions from the real facts being hidden. I mean, big business is often a poker game, yes? There are things that Chizen is dealing with right now that will determine how Adobe will "handle" its inheritance of the Macromedia product line, and they have absolutely nothing at all to do with any of us or how "cool" some people think ColdFusion is. And federal law dictates that Chizen, as the leader of a publicly traded company, *must* act with sole regard to the betterment of his stockholders' financial positions, as long as those actions do not violate any laws. So let's all stop being naive about ColdFusion's future having anything at all to do with current number of installations, how much you like it, how important it is to you, or anything else that a developer might see as important. It may be hard to swallow, but nothing about you or what you do is of any importance to them whatsoever. ------------------ .....and here is a link to Sean's spin: http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/Adam_Churvis_thin ks_you_are_not_important How many of you understand that what I said had nothing at all to do with the way Sean twisted it? Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX 7 Developer BlueDragon Alliance Founding Committee Get advanced intensive Master-level training in C# & ASP.NET 2.0 for ColdFusion Developers at ProductivityEnhancement.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:262299 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
