My point of view as a selfemployed >40 years in a market that has been extraordinarily competitive and in which there is a constant fight to the finish and in which fairness is a foreign concept:
The man cannot distinguish between business and private life and "brings his work home with him" and vice versa. (e.g. does a customer need to know about his divorce?)
He likely started out as a hobbyist and never managed to become an entrepreneur (because he thought he won't have to learn to be an entrepreneur)
So if I had been his buddy and he had asked me for advice, I would have advised him to sell his business as soon as possible (before he ran it down, largely through his own stupid talk and actions).
Being an entrepreneur means - among other things - constantly adapting to new situations without grumbling and pursuing your goal with great composure and achieving it against all odds. Without giving myself the shame of lamenting the injustice of the world.

As a customer, I wouldn't trust this company at all because it blames others for its failure and doesn't even have the balls to close the company down completely. I assume that they will be bankrupt in a few years anyway, so it's not worth investing in their plugins.

P.S.: Wasn't that the guy who surreptitiously accessed his customers' computers and basically foisted Malwar on them?
https://audiosex.pro/threads/tone2-products-are-malware.41422/

or has changed forcedly ...
But the mindset didn't change at all. It's simply bad style to blame everyone else except oneself, and that's exactly where he remains true to himself.

 

Last edited: Mar 17, 2024

That's a lot to unpack and a pretty righteous fantasy considering its extremely rare for any company to take proper responsibility for their actions, or even outwardly admit the actual failure points.

You expect one guy who made mistakes and might well be pretty bad at running a company to accurately understand what went wrong and then repent for his personal mistakes?

He better get in line behind every CEO and leadership team ive ever worked for (some very big ones).

And the successful 'entrepreneurs' you are holding up? These mythical composed leaders? Some of the worst bosses I've ever encountered. Blessed with little self-awareness and massive egos, they thrive normally because of their mercenary survival instincts. And little else.

In my industry, proudly being a great 'entrepreneur' is a warning sign to creatives.

I like this ethical, professional ideal you have, but in my experience working at 15+ tech companies, its not my reality. Most bosses really struggle to run companies, at ALL levels. Compared to the expert douchebags I've encountered, a guy running a tiny software company badly is pretty easy to forgive.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 17, 2024

Guys, guys, guys -- he's not folding because he's no good at running a company. He's running because his customers are bastards who are nasty to him in the forums. Over-emotional, drunk, high they've been harrassing, defaming and trolling him.

And presumably those are just the paying customers. Don't even get into those of us who use his stuff for free!

Looking forward to Icarus 3 though. Hopefully those witches will be right on the case.

 

Nobody on this forum actively says anything bad about this guy. It's a generally dead subject. But there are plenty of people who will remark on it, if the subject arises.

I find it very suspect that you say you have worked in IT at all, and do not understand how writing any code that creates the possibility of remote code execution is not the kiss of death for any company/vendor. Deletion of system files, modification of system files, deliberate addition of vulnerabilities to a product are all essentially the same level of an attack on your own customers. Even if the product was open-source, do you think anyone is going to install something if they will have to audit every single line of a program?

There have been many comments about this here. None of them have been about the guy personally, or anyone giving a f*ck about his profit and loss statements, sales reports, and other KPIs. His juvenile "prank" is no different than if he installed a trojan on the affected customer machines. It's even worse than authoring malware, because it destroys any of the trust that a programmer must maintain to keep their job or their customers. Maybe not understanding this is why you mention that you have worked for 15 companies. That isn't something you want on your CV.

 

Tone 2 Saurus is one of my favorites

 

I have truly mixed thoughts on Tone2. Hate them for their sneaky bloatware security nonsense, but do love Gladiator!

 

Guys, guys. Let's start a gofundme or something and keep him afloat just for a while so he can explain WTF he was trying to achieve with Ray Blaster.