Rob Mensching Openly Uninstalled

Thanks Rob!

I think the "individual" is just trying to get some press... we all know him and his style. It's not worth the discussion. :-)

Hi Rob!
The problem with trolls like the one you mention might be that there are people who take the author's word for granted if nobody clearifies the wrongs.
Personaly I don't like his style of attacking WiX, but that is just my pont of view as blog reader.

Just ignore the Trolls... it's the very nature of the web. You're able to see what anybody out there says, whether it's true or not.

Many "programming/coding" sites have comments that are absolutely useless because answers to questions are used to bash at some programming language or framework. Completely irrelevant content ensues and the point of the question is lost.

Common sense is not part of the definition of the web... instead you can watch out and listen to what the trolls are saying and blog something "positive" instead (without feeding them).

Your blog is sometimes quiet (it's a good thing, keep your focus on your day job and Wix ;-).

But if you don't blog... trolls will fill that silence.

If you blog more "constructive content", then the trolls won't survive very long because the community will know what they say is "****hit".

Just a thought... keep up the good work!

Although I have never gotten around to blogging (one of those things that keeps slipping down the to-do list), I can comment on what I do about trolls as an avid blog reader. That is, I ignore the posts for the most part, and I sometimes wonder about those authors who are combative enough to continue having a prolonged exchange with unreasonable people. That said, sometimes trolls can raise salient points, even if they are couched in offensive or vitriolic language. I think it is good that you are engaging the community to find out whether more people feel that way; this is the beauty of blogging.

That said, having used WiX and the Visual Studio installer package, I would choose WiX any day for any non-trivial installation..each approach has its benefits, but speaking of Orca, I remember firing it up a few years ago repeatedly to make a few customizations to a package being built by Visual Studio..talk about painful.

Oh, and just my 2 cents...no, installers don't always have to have a UI if they are not publicly distributed...if they are public, I think its common courtesy, but internal apps are a different story. So there is nothing wrong with making it optional in my book.

Just ignore them :)

In my experience, the ability to easily create .msi installers WITHOUT dialog boxes (for unattended setups) has been one of the greatest features of WiX.

Keep up the great work, Rob! WiX is awesome.

My suggestion is to stick with objective facts and quit the discussion once it has deviated from that. That's my "troll strategy" I suppose. Anyone reasonable will put together the truth anyway.

I think he's hard on WiX because deep down he likes WiX. I can't help but feel the same way. I get frustrated at times because WiX feels like it's "right there" but there are idealogical things that keep it from becoming the whole tool I believe it could be.

Good question! Personally, I think there's room in this world for both WiX and InstallShield - and I have my likes and dislikes about both of them. Regarding the Trolls, I would suggest the following approach:
1) Always ignore anonymous trolls
2) Usually ignore other trolls, unless the particular troll has a respected Blogoshpere presence.

That's a very nice personal attack Rob, I haven't seen you do such a libelous hit job since you attacked Sinan and WiXAware.

BTW, I'm having a hard time seeing the troll connection. It's not like I left comments on your blog. I did it the Scobel way and put a post on my own blog. If you don't like my professional opinions ( I have been doing installs for 12 years now so I believe I'm entitled to have my own opinion ) then you are more then welcome to not visit my blog.

I have a broader view of the setup space and I believe my numerous readers appreciate that perspective.

FanBoy's aren't much better. They don't contribute to a conversation, they just blindly defend...

Rob, before publicly asking for advice on what to do about (what you perceive to be) trolls, you really should take a look at your own behavior - in the physical world. In the meeting between InstallAware & Microsoft, you were a total troll towards us (for lack of a better word):

1) I asked you if you had any idea what the meeting was about before introducing our new product, WiXAware. You said "no" to my face, but later you proudly blogged that you had successfully predicted InstallAware had built a WiX tool before the meeting. Why would you lie about something like that? What kind of satisfaction do you get out of that?

2) You were extremely hostile the whole time without even doing us the courtesy of letting us know what it was all about. Third hand accounts about InstallAware were apparently sufficient for you to hate us, without even giving us the benefit of the doubt, or doing your own research. Instead of facing up to us in the meeting, you later blogged about those third hand accounts - in perfect troll fashion. I've responded to those third hand allegations in your respective posts so I won't tend to the trolls here.

3) At the root of it all, you found it hard to swallow that InstallAware was poised to generate revenue from an open source project, off of which you yourself don't make any revenue. Deal with it - that's open source! And look at your own employer - Microsoft - if you have sticker shock for installer products. Who do you think pays the bills, Rob?

Practice what you preach, Rob. I think you have a lot of thinking to do regarding your motives and behavior in the physical world before having the luxury of pondering the question of "to tend or not to tend to the trolls," and publicly on top of that.

Of course we all know that your real goal is just publicly bashing people - whomever has drawn your fury at the moment - as long as you do the bashing in an environment where its a lot harder for your opponents to be heard.

Sinan, you need to understand that I believe that your company practiced some very questionable business ethics. I know that I came across quite negative in that first meeting because the research that I had done on your company up to that point had led me to that conclusion. This old history is all cataloged in this blog entry: http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2006/12/11/Response-to-my-WiXAware-Introduction.aspx.

To address your specific points:

1) I'm sorry if I remembered some part of the conversation differently. Since this sounds very important to you, I will go back and try to find that part of the blog entry about this and strike it out.

2) I didn't have third hand accounts, I had accounts from people on the other side of those deals. My research after those accounts (I didn’t just take their word for it) plus the behavior of the individual that accompanied you to the meeting (I wish I could remember his name, he was sitting right across from me) led me to the conclusion that I still hold today. You are correct, I could have asked you directly and looking back I probably should made a better effort to do that. However, no one from your company has ever addressed any of the core issues that were raised. After you had a similar thread with Stefan Krueger but did not address the core issue there, I decided the best option for me was to just stop talking about any specifics of your company.

3) It is not correct that I was upset that a company could make profit by building tools on top of the WiX toolset. In fact, quite the opposite. One of the long term goals when we first released the WiX toolset was to try and build a platform that companies could use to build business on. Your company and Indigo Rose have both made that goal a success. Thank you. As for the pricing stuff, who cares what I think? Pricing is about what the market will bear not what I personally think the cost of goods should be.

Finally, my goal is not to "bash people" or create an "environment where it’s a lot harder for your opponents to be heard". My goal *here* on my *personal* blog is to raise issues that are important to *me*. I said several kind things about your product and I said a great many positive things about you as an individual. I also (at your bequest) posted the entirety of an email of yours in a blog entry to follow up things I had posted. Also, I have always allowed everyone to leave comments here (as long as it isn’t spam, I’ve been battling spam a lot lately) to further debate the issue at hand. I work very hard to avoid personal attacks in my writing (as much as some people frustrate me) and I do not suppress debate.

If you wanted to categorize my *two* posts and maybe even Stephan Krueger’s *single* post about your company as “trolling” I would completely understand that. However, to bring the conversation back to the issue that I originally raised (before our flashback to December 2006), what I’m interested in is how people handle consistent personal attacks wrapped around what could otherwise be interesting debate topics.

Can't we all just get along? Like I said on Chris' blog, I won't take sides, but this sort of bickering is not beneficial to the community at all. Both of you are making good points, but there are better ways to make them.

I hope you guys can work this out. Remember back in the old days you'd go out on the playground and beat each other up and then become best friends?

Hi Rob,

0) I'd encourage you to review your own employer's (Microsoft's) questionable business ethics before accusing others of the same. For instance, Stac was awarded a $120mln payoff from Microsoft all the way back in 1994 - the first out of many, peaking in the recent billion dollar fines from the EU's anti-trust case against Microsoft. Of course, InstallAware is nowhere near Microsoft's size, so it can be even harder for us to explain our side of the story.

1) I hate to say this, but your reply sounds like a convenient escape route, instead of a frank answer to my earnest question.

2) When you say "I didn't have third hand accounts, I had accounts from people on the other side of those deals.", which deals and people are you referring to exactly? There are no such "deals" that I am aware of. I'd be glad to field responses to them here.

2) Could you clarify what you mean by core issues in "However, no one from your company has ever addressed any of the core issues that were raised.", so I can also address them here.

I'm going to take these issues with Sinan offline since they are drifting back into issues we had back in 2006 and aren't directly related to what is being discussed here.

We've been building rather complex Wix UI for a while reusing the stock stuff a lot. All UX people are saying it looks quite professional, even the stuff out of the box.

Rouge vs. noir (hmm, bleu) is a debate that dates back to 1830. Just like Stedhal's character, the author of the troll post doesn't really understand much about the world :)

In some cases there is a fine line between a "troll" and someone who has a legitimate, but opposing viewpoint.

In the cross posts that I read here and the other blogs... I think this one of these cases.

Just because someone has a different viewpoint, doesn't automatically make them a troll.

This seems like the case here, especially on the other blog where you had an interaction with the author. You both expressed your strong convictions about some topics, and gave reasons for doing so. They just happen to be different.

eg, I agree that purely disagreeing about some topic is no reason to call someone a "troll". However, if you read through more of the blog posts on the other blog I think you'll see the trend that I was discussing here.