An Apology is in Order

[Doug Kuyvenhoven]

Hi All:

Okay... I'm going to speak my mind.

The fiasco over the European conferences last year and the events of  
this week have been disturbing to many of us in the Omnis developers  
community.

The accusatory emails and actions over the past 12 months of those in  
charge of Omnis Central, whom we considered to be leading the Omnis  
developer community, have damaged our community.

It saddened me to watch the bickering and accusations by our leaders  
over the European conferences as to who was right and who was wrong.  
It didn't really matter who was right and who was wrong. In the  
position of leadership you (D&C) should NOT have fought for your  
rights and bullied your way across the pond to host a European  
conference. The right thing would have been to FIRST ask the Omnis  
developer community if they would be in support of Omnis Central  
running a conference in Europe, possibly Germany. No one questioned  
your 'right' to host an annual conference in North America... but you  
had no precedent to hold one in Europe. Asking first would have  
avoided a lot of problems. Good leadership would have backed off and  
apologized rather than start a power struggle, enter into public  
debate, and force the community to decide between 2 European  
conferences. Poor judgement, poor leadership.

You shocked all of us on Monday by shutting down the the OmnisCentral  
portal and sending out a lengthy email raising past issues that we  
wanted to put behind us... and you left us wondering what was to  
become of the future of our mailing list. We aren't your minions. We  
are independent Omnis developers who help each other via a mailing  
list. You might have the 'right' to make the decision as to who gets  
the mailing list... but good leadership would ask for input from the  
community and let the community decide or at least have a say in it.  
Honestly, who died and made you king over us?

Heck, if you had told us on Monday that you were tired of running  
Omnis Central and were having a discussion with Mark, Brian, Fred and  
Dan to make a smooth transition of the mailing list to omnis-dev.com  
you would have saved us all a lot of work and anxiety. I would never  
have bothered to spend my time and effort to pull together  
omnisdevelopers.com.

We are tired of the bickering and long winded emails. Clifford, I  
don't care to read any more long winded emails about your political  
views, or your negative comments about Omnis. You enjoy debate. That's  
fine... debate on some list where there are others who like point for  
point, tit for tat, arguments. We're not here for that.

We want to do our work, cooperate, and help each other... mixed with  
some friendly banter.

The pain you (D&C) feel for the large part, has been self-inflicted...  
and you dragged all of us into it.

I believe you (D&C) owe an apology to the Omnis Developer Community  
for your unwise leadership over the last 12 months.

I'm ready for a group hug and getting back together as one big happy  
family... but an apology sure would be good. A simple, "I'm sorry"  
would go a long way towards healing the rifts that you (D&C) have  
created in our community.

BTW - I will not be making the decision on whether or not the  
omnisdeveloper.com mailing list is shut down... that will be put to a  
vote of the members. I think many of the members at  
omnisdevelopers.com would like to first see if peace is restored in  
the house (the omnis-dev.com mailing list) before we leave our new  
home. It's kind of nice and peaceful over there... safe & friendly  
atmosphere... helpful folks.


Doug Kuyvenhoven
Vencor Software