Add-In: Outlook for WHS

I applaud the efforts of the developer on this add-in. It leaves me in awe for Mike who develops WHS Outlook. Mike, don’t let this discourage you. You develop a damn good add-in.

Bought the fantastic WHS Outlook from the Commercial Add-in Area. Excellent program and only £17. Not sure on this free Add-in. If I didn’t have the Commercial version I would try it for free first.

I hope Mike Carries on with this as I want to download the FULL version 1.4 with webs access for free with my yearly updates.

Keep the good work up Mike. Cheers All.

What’s wrong with competition. If you say it’s EXACTLY the same, then why should I pay for one and not the other. If yours is better and justifies the money then I would buy yours. If he doesn’t want to make a buck, then I’m ok with that.

Hi guys,

Okay I see that I’m in the minority on this one then. I’ll bow out and you can all relish in the fact that another WHS add-in developer has bitten the dust because of your actions.

As of right now, there will be no more WHS Outlook. I will no longer sell nor support the program and I will NOT be participating in this community any longer (as I don’t want to be associated with a place that condones such actions).

Terry please remove ALL references to my program from your website.

– MIKE

Seems like Nabeday practically stole the source code from Mike and released it under his own name. It’s not a matter of someone releasing a free version of software. It’s a matter of someone STEALING another person’s hard work and making it available for free.

@spovat -

If it can be proven that the code was lifted from WHS outlook, than Nabeday should get sued for infringing intellectual property. If not, than officemaven comes off sounding real whiney. Its called competition. Deal with it.

Dosen’t work properly on my Whs, keeps telling me to install outlook
when it is installed – got rid of!

Originally Posted By TheOfficeMavenIt doesn’t matter if he stole my source code or not (which I’m sure he didn’t based on the look of his screen shot). The point is that what he has done is illegal as he has stolen my intellectual property (which is the design and implementation of having Outlook display within the WHS Console)..

I can’t believe this, it’s not like you had an original idea and you only you have all the rights.

<Do you think that Apple would allow me to build an exact replica of an iPod (I’d call it an “Podi” just to be as original as Nabeday has been with the naming of his own rip-off add-in) and then release it to the public for free? I think not, and I can guaranty that Appleâ��s lawyers would be all over my butt on that one. Same concept applies here IMHO.)..

I’ve seen knock off’s of IPODS

Even with putting the legality of it all aside, do you guys really feel that what he has done is okay and do you really condone his actions?

COMPETITION

Did I do something to make him mad? Did I sleep with his wife, his daughter… What??? I’d really love to know what I did to him to warrant his actions.

Way to go here, I think if you had sex with his wife and daughter, he might be a little more upset then creating a Outlook knock-off, didn’t even use your code, geeze.

BTW, I’m not trying to act like a spoiled brat here,

YOU ARE,

P.S. Nice going Nebeday (or should I say Stewart Fisher) by putting out a screen shot that has all of your private information in it (such as your personal e-mail address, eBay user name, etc.). Unless �Stewart Fisher� is your company name, then I think you made a bit of a booboo

Another good one.

I had his addin installed for about 30 seconds and got rid of it.

You have a following of PAID customers who you promised to support, and now you drop them. I THINK YOUR THE JERK.

Mike (OfficeMaven),

I really do understand your feelings, albeit in a different industry. I’m a writer, and I have seen other writers “adapt” my concepts, in one form or another. As a journalist, I’ve witnessed the competition latch onto some key concepts in reviews and feature stories after their publication; as a playwright, I’ve had a work that was published used as the basis of another’s work.

It hurts. It stinks.

But please do not remove yourself, either from the community or from your enthusiasm for developing and for enriching the experience of WHS users.

@Terry Walsh – Probably the right course of action.

Needless to say, you’ve got a helluva good service here, Terry.

how about a competition in 30 days make the addin’s better and find a way to improve then by adding more feature sets

Stop crying TheOfficeMaven. Why in the first place are you ask money for your add-in.? There are a lot of good add-ins for free. And the people behind that also spend a lot of time at it.

There are more add-ins who looks the same or have the same options.
Like powermanegment add-ins, Website creation add-ins, ect..
Non of those people are fighting each other.

It seems like at lot of people are accussing me of stealing source code. This is simply untrue and impossible. The real answer is that anyone with any knowledge of .NET could easily develop this kind of add-in and to be honest I think that some of the comments on this forum are a little unfair on me. Mike should never quit, I have respect for him and his add-in but I will not be held for ransom and no one else should either. Competition is healthy and I would encourage Mike to develop his web add-in.

naw – I think they should make a reality show and call it “Hackers hack it out” – that way they both can make money and the public can get their fill on “reality TV”.

I think that WGS should do the public a service and do a side by side comparison (don’t shy away from a little controversy by pulling the software off of the site) That way you can let the market decide. If one is feature rich and fills a need – I don’t know anyone that would not pay $25. Now if the free one does the same job then its a different story.

IMHO I would pay $25 for something that I relied on daily.

I can’t help but think that there has been a complete overreaction by all parties here. I don’t see any reason why two add-ins should not be able to address the same functionality. Unless nabeday has stolen the source code from Officemaven (and he says he hasn’t), then Officemaven’s reaction is a little bit like Symantec saying that they will no longer develop or support an Internet Security product, because it’s not fair that McAfee has released a product doing similar things.

Terry, in your case I think you have buckled to pressure too easily. In the WHS Add-in “market”, we already have add-ins doing similar things, e.g. “Advanced Admin Console” vs. “Program Launcher” and “Event Viewer” vs. “WHS Event Monitor”. I didn’t see one suddenly removed when the other was released providing similar functionality.

In this case, both Officemaven and nabeday are dealing with the same underlying program in Outlook, so at the end of the day, they are both delivering the same core product and anything they develop is going to be around the way the program is accessed, or extras they provide – such as the web interface that Officemaven has recently been working on. Gee I have Outlook installed on my WHS and am launching it from the “Program Launcher” add-in, because I decided I didn’t need the functionality that Officemaven provided. From looking at the screenshot from nabeday’s add-in (http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.php?autocom=downloads&req=display&code=ss&full=1&id=162), it looks as if all he may have done is to launch Outlook inside the WHS console, which is just a rather nicer refinement on what I am doing. (Apologies nabeday if it does more than that, I didn’t get a chance to download it before both were removed.)

Officemaven – I say this is just competition. You obviously have the more extensive product here. Put your toys back in the cot (I hope that’s not a particularly New Zealand expression) and keep developing. You have a product you are charging for and have at least a moral obligation to keep supporting it.

nabeday – I say good attempt at providing a simpler solution. Don’t loose heart and keep at it.

Terry – I say put both add-ins back and let the market decide which one is best for them.

SANITY AT LAST

The “ALAN” has spoken

Terry I mean you – taking down the downloads was not wise

I certainly would never pay money to someone who states he’s going to give up support for his paid add-in.
Extremely childish – if OfficeMaven can prove he owns IP rights to an add-in which manipulates another product, then fire away.
If not, put up and shut up and keep supporting the people who paid you.

i agree, dropping support is not cool, i was going to buy the add-in (with the web support) but was having trouble with it freezing my HP WHS and was going to wait for another update before i paid . but when i read Officemaven was dropping support for his product. what to do? Officemaven put your boots back on and make a better product. Im Waiting

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to cause any trouble either – just trying to see if my view on this is in the minority or not. My outlook is that you let the free market decide (you can see the mess that the USA got in when the gov’t tried to mess with the free market).

This is no pressure of any sorts on Terry – God Bless him and the WGS community – if he feels that this is too much of a distration from the day to day business of WGS then by all means – pull all references of this “Outlook Throw-Down” and be done with it.

I for one see this more as an informational lesson – gauging more or less on how I think I would react if I where in the Office Maven’s position. Would I react the same way (I would hope not – but that is me – BUT if this was sole sorce of income – then probably) – Would I write an application and give it away for free if it is already commercially available (maybe if I was interested enough in the program/problem/solution).

But maybe you are right nabeday, maybe put this to rest and keep the disagreement more private with you and The Office Maven.

Best of luck to both of you.

I am slightly confused as to the areas of law that TheOfficeMaven is hoping to rely on, and really what Nabeday has done wrong.

Similar battles exist between other softwares and are still ongoing without any legal or other implications. Should Bill Gates have canned his Windows product because Linux came along? Both products do the same thing, with similar features. Windows survives despite its price, because for many it is the better option because of its ease of use and wide compatibility. Even the relatively recent Windows Media Player court cases did not force Microsoft to stop producing a free Media Player application – it merely stated that they had to make their own media player optional so that other players had a chance in the market (this was under EU competition laws).

Outside of computing, should paid-for newspapers shut up shop because free, advertising supported papers are now commonplace? Similarly it is now possible to get free broadband or phone services as part of bundles. This hasn’t had other providers running to the courts, but has resulted in lower prices or better feature sets from the more expensive players. As far as I am aware, there have been no lawsuits in any of these areas. This competition merely provides choice for the users, who can choose the best value package for their own use.

These examples show that the way to establish a decent, commercial product is to ensure that you design the BEST product for a given application, and ensure that the price you charge is fair for the added useability or functionality that you provide. If a free product can exist that does the exact same job as yours, do you really deserve to charge for your version? Similarly, if the value-adding features are minimal and the price is high, no-one will buy. But if the price is reasonable for genuinely useful extras then your product will fly off the shelves.

The only area I think that TheOfficeMaven has a complaint is the name of the new add-in. However I am doubtful that he would be able to legally enforce much in this area either – all either name consists of is 2 of Microsofts trademarks tacked together in different orders. As I would doubt either party has Microsoft’s permission to use these trademarks any court action would more than likely involve both sides being forced to rethink their naming.

I understand TheOfficeMaven’s frustration, but I feel he is only hurting the community and his own reputation with his actions. If he wants to continue to be paid for his development work then maybe he needs to develop an idea that is either radical (and therefore patentable) or sufficiently complex so that it cannot be replicated by a hobbyist?

Terry,

Let’s just agree that we disagree on this one and move on with our lives.

As such, I stand with my decision, and I would indeed like you to remove ALL references to my WHS Outlook program from your website since I do not wish to be part of a community which condones the behavior of developers the likes of Stewart Fisher (i.e. Nabeday). Further, I request that you remove the entire WHS Outlook forum from your site since I will no longer be monitoring nor posting in that forum. Having it there will only produce frustration for your members as their requests for support, etc. will go unanswered by me.

It’s a sad day for me, as I put a lot of hard work and effort into my program. However, I don’t want to be any part of a community that willfully allows such antics, and so I’d rather see the program go wayside than to continue developing it for a community with such blatant disregard for its developers. Don’t get me wrong here as I have no problem whatsoever with competition, but what Stewart has done is to simply rip-off my ideas point blank, and that’s not competition in my book. He did nothing to make his program original nor to make it different in any way than mine. He simply figured out how to mimic what I had already done (and quite poorly at that I might add) and released it just to spite me (which is made abundantly clear by the dig you added to your original posting which states that his program is the same as mine only without the $25 price tag). I see that a lot of folks on your site appear to think that what Stewart has done is just, but I don’t see it that way. If he had attempted to run Outlook through the Console in some different/unique way, then that would be fair “competition” and I would have had no problem with it. However, to blatantly take another developer’s work, copy it nearly verbatim, and then release it for free just isn’t acceptable to me (and I’m more than shocked to find out that it is to you!).

Also, just so you know, I haven’t made any money at all off of selling WHS Outlook. In fact, the sales that I have made, have barley produced enough revenue to cover the cost of hosting of the program’s website, covering the bandwidth charges for all of the downloads, paying for the tools/controls used to build the program, etc. Thus, this isn’t about financial gain (or loss) for me. It’s the principle. I have better things to spend my time on, and so if this is how the WGS (and WHS) community wants to treat its developers, then I’ll happily move on to working on some other project (which I can assure you will have absolutely nothing to do with WHS). You guys can have Stewart’s freeware instead. I’m okay with that.

Lastly. I will not be contacting Stewart Fisher back as from the PM he sent to me via your website, it is quite clear that he feels as if he has done nothing wrong. There’s no “arrangement” (as he puts it) to be made as far as I can tell from his message, so why should I even bother. So, Terry, you’ve won. You and your community have managed to run this WHS developer out of Dodge.

Please note that I will continue to support my existing customer base (through my own website) via correcting any bugs which may be found in the current release of my program. But, I will most likely not take on any new customers, and I will probably not be further enhancing my program (with web access features, etc.). If Stewart is willing to do the work for free, then I say more power to him.

Take care.

– MIKE (The Office Maven)

@TheOfficeMaven – Wow – really saddened that you’ve taken this so personally, and have blamed me personally (and, indirectly the WGS community) for this, especially when we’ve done everything we can (as we do with all add-ins ) to create awareness of your add-in to our community, as well as providing separate support and private beta forums for you to create something great and keep in touch with everyone out there.

Saddened too that you didn’t want to discuss things in a more private space with Nabeday, but that’s at your discretion too.

We’ll comply with your request, Mike – good luck in your future endeavours.

Terry

Hi Terry,

It is what it is I guess. I’m saddened that you don’t see things for what they really are. It’s your site after all and you’re the one who agreed to support Mr. Fisher over me on this one. We’ve both made our decisions and we’ll just have to stick by them.

Also, what’s to discuss with Nabeday? Go take a look at my WGS PM box and read the message that he sent to me. From that, you’ll see that it’s obvious that we have nothing to say to each other. I concede and he can have his moment in the sun with his add-in.

Thanks for complying with my request and good luck to you too.

– MIKE

Hi Mike

I have a lot to discuss with you but unfortunately you have spoken to everyone else about it and not responded to my personal message. At no point have you approached me and asked me to remove the add-in. In terms of coming to an agreement I was wanting to discuss this in private with you. I am not unreasonable, I have never slated you in any of the forums yet you continue to have a go at me. Will you consider discussing this in private? I do not want you to stop your development and it certainly was never my intentions.

Yep, I’m the bad guy here… Let me have it as I’m sure I deserve it.

If you guys can’t understand my point of view, then I’m sorry about that. However, since you now have Mr. Fisher’s add-in back, what’s the problem and why are you all so upset with me? Go on with your own lives and don’t worry about me (as many of you seem to be overly concerned about my decisions and welfare). I’m sure that Stuart will fix up his add-in real nice for you and then you can enjoy all of his hard work completely free of charge (the bargain of a lifetime!). I’ll take care of my own customers I can assure you of that.

BTW, I’ll surely continue reading all of your posts as they amuse me so. Please do keep’em coming.

Thanks for your comments.

Stewart,

The road goes both ways now doesn’t it my friend… Don’t try to come out of this one looking like the innocent bystander. I didn’t see you attempt to contact me for one moment before releasing your copycat add-in here on WGS. You’d think that you would of at least of had the common courtesy to contact me before you released it just to ask for my thoughts and/or comments back then. It’s a little late now as the damage has already been done. It’s all worked out rosy for you, so you shouldn’t have any concerns anyway.

Take care.

– MIKE