…continuing to follow the Entity Framework critics I mentioned earlier…
If A == B and B == C,…
A lot of life and nearly all business is based upon relationships. In business, it’s possible to lose money and remain afloat – and thrive in some cases – so long as you maintain positive cash flow. A business that is turning a profit can also fail by not properly managing or maintaining a positive cash flow.
In the economy of relationships communication is the currency and courtesy is analogous to cash flow. This is why people will say things to you in business like “Pick your battles.” If you’re going to fight (ie, become discourteous) for something, it better be important.
So let me ask the participants in the Vote of No Confidence Petition a hypothetical question: As a technology professional who will – hypothetically – enjoy the benefits of a relationship with arguably the largest and most influential ISV on the planet, are five bugs worth it?
Let’s look at what you’ve done: Rather than communicate with Microsoft through one of the several readily-available methods, express your concerns, contribute to the conversation, and then help with any gaps in the implementation of which you are aware by blogging and posting ideas and suggestions and providing feedback for future releases, you’ve decided to exercise what Josh Holmes aptly describes as the nuclear option. In Farmville, we call this “throwing a hissy fit.”
In Response
In my opinion the Entity Framework Team at Microsoft has responded to an irrational attack with dignity and grace. Kudos to them.
It seems the uproar is being mostly generated by one person. It also seems this isn’t the first overreaction for this particular individual. I am a huge fan of developer communities. Were I a member of the Alt.Net community I would not be afraid, I would be ashamed.
Free Speech
This isn’t advocating censorship of free speech, this is advocating responsibility for free speech. Sometimes people stand up for their right to free speech; sometimes (this is one of those times) the right to free speech stands up for an individual. Regardless, one is never free from the consequences of exercising their right to anything – free speech included.
This is about responsibility.
Stuff Happens
In Farmville, we call this a “mistake”. When you make a mistake the best thing to do is admit it, clean up the mess, move on, learn from it, and definitely do not repeat it.
Whatever you do, don’t continue justifying it. That’s another mistake.
:{> Andy
Completely agreed. While I agree with a few points in the petition, I did not sign it because it achieves nothing productive. Microsoft will not look at this petition and say "Oh my, some people in the community don’t like this product. Let us just shelve it." No, they are going to listen to the community and make a v2 release that will hopefully fulfill more customer’s needs. This would have happened without the petition, that is the way Microsoft works. People had been lodging complaints about the Entity Framework for a while, and it takes a while to turn a ship that large.
And as far as the petition’s claim that it is going to make people write bad software…well, people have been writing bad software since software existed and if they think that the Entity Framework is suddenly going to make tons of developers start producing bad apps then they are mistaken. Good developers will spot flaws in tools and work around them, or not use the tool.
I for one do see big problems from a DDD perspective with using the Entity Framework. The issue here is that some people cannot see anyone else’s perspective.
As for the people who did sign the petition, well, I don’t think many of them quite understood how big this would get. I imagine that many of them are DDD/agile developers who are frustrated that Microsoft was not producing a framework that met their needs, and so when they saw the petition they just jumped. I know that I almost did.
Stephen Forte is part of the advisory council established by the EF Team at Microsoft. He has excellent comments on this topic at his blog: http://www.stephenforte.net/PermaLink,guid,1f988309-0969-4115-8e09-77c746a32f57.aspx.
:{> Andy
See also here: http://www.codethinked.com/post/2008/06/An-Open-Letter-to-the-ALTNET-Community.aspx