Yeah, Rob gets knocked for providing free software. And after people complained about the registration, he removed that too.

O gimme a break here.

First I didn't understand the complaints his customers were having, because a customer of a signed assembly (you know, all .NET assemblies are signed!) is not confronted with that aspect IN ANY WAY.

Second of all, he promotes the plugin as if it is gods gift to mankind and it creates 1 freaking line of code.

ONE LINE. :)

For a plugin-development experience it is ok, for a 'great tool wanted by many' it's completely off base. I simply enlisted easy steps to produce the same PLUS you understand what's going on.

But that's not what's allowed apparently. Noo... by doing so, you 'deride' the poor thing. What's this blogging community coming to? And what's your problem, Andy?

You don't have to memorize any paths, thats what the VS.Net Command Prompt is for...

You know... VS.NET had this type of thing built in in the betas... but somewhere along the line it disappeared. I thought it was kind of sucky.

Speaking of strong naming... did you know that strong naming an ASP.NET assembly will cause all kinds of interesting errors if you put that assembly in your bin directory? Apparently, you must GAC it if you are going to SN it in ASP.NET.

It isn't the way Robert makes things, it is the way he promotes them.

As I said in anoother post, I thought I had understood the strong name stuff, then I saw Roberts new product and I wasn't sure anymore.

The discussion around the whole thing has made it clear that I understood in the first place.

Can anyone explain why/how this would affect people who wanted to buy his controls???

I agree - it's goofy that VS.NET doesn't do this. Here's a VS.NET macro that does the same thing - http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2002/July/AddStrongNamesMacro.asp

AndrewSeven,
I'm fairly certain that the issue arises because the controls are protected by xheo licensing in such a way that requires the consumer to have a key that the lisence is bound to.

Frans,
"First I don't understand" That's right. You don't understand. Maybe if you took the time to understand the problem, Robert's motivations wouldn't seem so silly to you. As I stated in my post, it's all about putting a discoverable GUI ( visual-style ) on top of an obscurely named command line tool ( nix-style ).

"what's your problem, Andy?". From my perspective, you have a problem with enthusiasm for helping customers, and choose to react with passive-aggresive posts and comments. That annoys me, especially when it's targeted at the same person over and over again.

"What's this blogging community coming to?"
Funny, that's what I thought when I saw people making a big fuss over somebody distributing a free vstudio addin.

"I'm fairly certain that the issue arises because the controls are protected by xheo licensing in such a way that requires the consumer to have a key that the lisence is bound to. "
What has that to do with signed assemblies? Not a single bit

"You don't understand. Maybe if you took the time to understand the problem, Robert's motivations wouldn't seem so silly to you. As I stated in my post, it's all about putting a discoverable GUI ( visual-style ) on top of an obscurely named command line tool ( nix-style ). "
No, YOU should take some time and look better. It's not his plugin, it's the way he presents it as gods gift for mankind and how great it is and how it will save problems a lot of people suffer from. How come that I can do that in some simple steps without the hassle of a plugin?

"From my perspective, you have a problem with enthusiasm for helping customers, and choose to react with passive-aggresive posts and comments. That annoys me, especially when it's targeted at the same person over and over again. "
And you annoy me, Andy. If you can't take it if some person has another opinion, you should get some help, seriously. Look at the guy's replies in the comments on my blog. He calls everyone Prima Donna's, even Sam Gentile.

And I don't have a problem with helping customers, I do that for 18 hours a day, and have helped people for years in newsgroups and fora.

Why can't someone post a simple list of steps to do the same as his plugin? Because that hurts the feelings of McLaws? Or you feelings? That's why I asked, Andy: what's your problem? Last time I checked you weren't posting a plugin which makes you jump through hoops to sign an assembly and leaves you in the dark without a clue however you seem to be insulted.

Andy, creating a plug-in is fine, offering it to everyone for free is great, explaining how to create plug-ins is even better.
But does it need to be done this way? "People, I'm your savior, praise the Lord that my Great Company XXX is there to help you, and by the way, buy that product YYY from us and that other one from ZZZ!"

Come on, you do that right with your controls, Andy. A post stating what the add-in does, and where to download it is enough here on these weblogs. We don't want all that commercial fuss!

Frans: Posting the explaination was great, but you came off as an asshole with all of the sarcasm inside the tutorial.

"*Pfew* I have to lay down now to take some rest after this long, thorough lecture. Sorry people, but you don't need a plugin which requires registration to do this easy stuff."

That really wasn't needed. Trust me, Andy isn't the only one annoyed by you. You make a big deal over the dumbest issues. Since you help customers 18 hours out of the day, do you bitch for the next six?

Some people react negatively to commericial speech. I react negatively to passive-aggressive behavior.

I generally try to stay away from personal controversy online, but sometimes... you know how it goes... you get sucked in.

I'm with Andy and Darrell here. I don't understand why there is such controversy over Robert's posts. Yes, Robert's posting style is often positive and has a certain marketing-like style. As far as I can tell, it is that style that really bothers some people. Okay, I can understand why that might bother some folks. But why, Why, WHY do some people think that the answer is some kind of attack?

I'm not against controversy and debate. Certainly we got some useful information out of the stored procedure debate. But what is anyone getting out of the "Robert is bad" vs. "No he isn't" debate? Nothing. Okay, it is a free country, Frans and Sam don't like Robert, they can say or write whatever they like. But why give Robert so much attention if you don't like him? Why not ignore him? Further - if your point is "No need for an add-in", isn't there a less hostile (more professional) way of presenting that information? Something like "Or, if you'd rather get your hands dirty, take a look at the steps I've published here".

I also react more negatively to negative crap than I ever have to marketing. You know what it reminds me of? When companies first started to really develop sites on the web. All the folks who had been using the web for years for their non-commercial stuff got really huffy because the evil commercial sites started to take over. Now a segment of this blogging space has decided it has to stay "pure" and commercial free. Oh brother.

Holy crap, I just put some satiric comments in my blog entry and it seems to be the worst possible flame you can get. I don't know but the reaction your wonderboy posted was more of a flame than 1 character in my blog ever will.

What really makes me sick is that I spend serious time telling mr McLaws what's wrong in a thread on your blog, Andy. I understand the situation, I explained why the situation is there, I also explained what he can do about it to become what he thinks he is today.

Do you think it was appreciated? Not a single second. I had the patience to explain it, hoping he would pick it up and work on it.

What do I get? Flames that my English is bad (duh, ik ben Nederlander geen Engelsman) and I'm a prima donna and what have you.

I've tried, but without any luck. Others have too, also without any luck. I'm not at the point that I regret that I ever spend those 2 hours typing those long posts in that thread (which I know he's read because he reacted on them in a lame fashion).

Bms, Andy and others: you don't get what this is all about. Because you don't get it, stay out of it, instead of getting involved in it, making dumb accusations. I f*cking tried to teach him stuff that would be very valuable for his further career for crying out loud. Thanks for nothing!

What's wrong with the plugin:
At first face nothing.
But it's brought in a way that you would think it is something:

1 everybody needs.
2 99.9% of all developpers can't figure out for themselves.
3 that the inner workings are so complex one should not even try to discover what it actually does.

Do I have a problem with this, not really it's a free thingy. It does something some people might need.

But for me personally I liked to know what it does... I know that now also.

Ain't blogging sites great :)

Uh, gee Frans, it seems to me that this whole dispute has been fairly public. If you were having a dispute with Robert that you wanted us (meaning the rest of us schmos) to stay out of, then it should have happened as an email exchange, not as several posts + comments.

I'm sorry this whole incident has made you so ENRAGED that you can't even see other points of view on the subject. Certainly some of Robert's responses were not any more appropriate (yeah, the spelling things was dumb and uncalled for), but part of the problem you have in this situation is that from the outside, it looks like you attacked first. That doesn't make his response any better, but it is easier to sympathize with.

Anyway, I hope you are ALL able to put this stuff aside, and have a good holiday.

The marketing way of that guy's blog is really annoying.
"I then asked for some volunteers to help me with a project"?! Do you need help for that stupid add-in that "is desperately needed"? Come on!
I agree with Frans completely: the guy is trying to "sell" colored glasses to the poor .NET newcomers... Trying to position yourself based on other's ignorance is silly, to say the least.