(decided to make this a forum post since it's not really news)

For this blog I'll have to put on my special flame-resistant outfit.  Our friends at Aqua-Soft have shut down their forums after a dramatic inter-developer spat broke out. I was in the middle of it and for my part in that discussion I feel bad.  So what happened?

First a little background. Aqua-Soft is a customization website that specializes in helping users make Windows look more Mac-like. Since WindowBlinds, ObjectDock, IconPackager, ObjectBar and DesktopX have long been used to that end by many users. Stardock has long been on there in various ways.  But I hadn't been on there much until recently because of my work on The Political Machine.  Now that that game is out at the stores, the next things on my list to work on were ObjectDock Plus and DesktopX 2.2 both of which had late summer release schedules. 

But when I went back to Aqua-Soft I was startled by how much its community had changed.

The site admins are great guys who really have worked hard to make the site a place that is friendly for developers and users. But the content of the site had slowly become very AveDesk oriented.  AveDesk is a program that essentially lets you take dock plugins (such as for ObjectDock) and put them on your desktop sort of like DesktopX widgets.  How did the site become so oriented that way? Why AveDesk instead of other widget-type programs like Kapsules, Samurize, or DesktopX? Because those programs all have their own website, own forums, and own libraries whereas AveDesk does not so they gravitated to Aqua-Soft.  So just as users WinCustomize.com tend to be users of DesktopX and WindowBlinds, users on Aqua-Soft had become vocal supporters of AveDesk. Which is fine until they start trying to antagonize other developers/programs.

When I went onto the DesktopX forum and wrote a post on DesktopX 2.2, one user actually wrote "Hmm, this sounds like a Payware version of AveDesk" (not even close).  When a news item on IconX was made, several AveDesk users went on and wrote things like "AveDesk can do this better" (no, it has nothing to do with IconX).  Other developers have noticed this trend as well.  In one discussion, an Aqua-Soft news moderator actually accused us of scheduling DesktopX 2.2's release around AveDesk's 1.1's release to interfere with it.  This would be akin to accusing Microsoft of scheduling Longhorn's release to conflict with SkyOS.

So with that back-drop, I submitted a news item to Aqua-Soft of the DesktopX video tutorial I did the other day. And like I said, the guys who run Aqua-Soft are very fair minded. They've been doing this for a long time and know what they're doing.

Then all hell broke lose. If you think people ripping on IconX or saying it's not as good as AveDesk was bad, the response to this news item was much worse.  The first response was from the AveDesk developer himself who publicly complained that a news item for a video tutorial wasn't appropriate.  Now bear in mind, on Aqua-Soft, the AveDesk developer gets to directly post news items. He has a developer's blog where he can put his development status reports (and does) as front page news items on the site.  I don't object to that. I don't object to that AT ALL.  I make blogs posts like this here on WinCustomize.com (of course, I work for the company that owns the site).  But for someone whose own personal development blogs get posted as front page news items on Aqua-Soft to publicly complain about a 3 line news item about a video tutorial seemed like quite a double standard.  Which I said so. 

And if I thought it was rough having AveDesk advocates zinging every DesktopX or IconX related news item or post, it was nothing compared to when the developer himself had taken a public stance. It was like a clarion call for its advocates to rush in. 

Eventually the news item comments were closed but a forum post was made at which point the entire process repeated with everyone getting angrier and angrier.  The AveDesk developer felt I was putting words in his mouth. I felt he was demanding a double standard and oblivious to how much benefit he received from Aqua-Soft. And I also felt under-siege as his fans came to his defense. His fans essentially argued that since his program is free he should get special treatment.  And besides, I was "forcing" DesktopX down their throat because I had become active in posting there in the run-up in DesktopX 2.2's release. So  post after post about AveDesk is fine, but if I write about DesktopX in the DesktopX forum I'm forcing people to use DesktopX. DesktopX has WinCustomize they argued (implying that AveDesk should have Aqua-Soft even though Aqua-Soft is supposed to be a neutral site).

The AveDesk fans basically took the view that while it okay to basically flame and impugn me or DestopX and its users, merely disagreeing (and I mean the polite cannon was on maximum power) was considered forbidden by its fans (I wish I could link to the thread so you wouldn't have to take my word for it but to see it for yourself). Literally the mere concept of other apps, particularly non-free ones, being given an equal shake was totally unacceptable to the AveDesk fans. Ave was "part of the community", the rest of us were not.

That was when I threw up my hands and gave up on the forums. It reminds me a bit of the whole Style XP thing where at first its developers were giving it away and had no forums so users gravitated over to Neowin and because Neowin is a neutral site, it gave the impression that Style XP (and later msstyles) must be really popular because everyone was talking about it there and few were talking about WindowBlinds. That effect hasn't gone away entirely but now that its developers have their own forums, things on skinning sites have evened out much more though msstyles discussion, not having an official home, tend to gravitate out on various sites.  So in other words, I'd been through that pain before and I wasn't going to go through it again. 

If the site's users want Aqua-Soft to be THE AveDesk marketing/channel where other developers could expect to have AveDesk fans pile on every time there's a discussion/post/news item about a "competing" program then forget it.  Soon after that the owners (who again I want to stress are very fair minded, this is not their fault and as an admin I know the feeling have losing control over the direction of the site, JoeUser.com often feels like it's gotten totally out of hand) closed the forums.

And bear in mind, all this came to a head over the same exact news item we have here on the DesktopX object video tutorial which received about a dozen responses total.

Hopefully things will return to normal as it is a good site and the people who run the site are great guys. But I also think that the AveDesk fans need to be a LOT more tolerant and realize that Aqua-Soft is supposed to appeal to all users who are trying to "Aquify" their PCs. If they want to have a partisan site to promote AveDesk then they need to create their own, not latch onto a site with a proud 3+ year old history.