Support

[Buster]

@Norm:

Having the main developer of, in your own words, "the core piece of technology inside of our successful commercial product that is running in over 25,000 enterprises worldwide" supporting the forum was just crazy. I am glad the company finally realized this situation could not continue any longer and it will be solved soon.

Now my questions:

This engineer you will be hiring, is going to do something else than just replying "we will look into this" when it comes to problem reports (programs not running fine under Sandboxie)?

You know I have been voicing a lack of support. As I wrote in the mail I sent to support, monami described it perfectly:

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 61#p106361

I am an old timer here as well though I do not post very often, however, I do visit the forum almost every day to keep up with what is going on with Sandboxie. As a mostly passive onlooker I too can clearly see the reduction in support/problem solving by the new administration. It was much better when Ronen was running the company! My intention is not to deride Sandboxie, the new adminstration, or any of its users/forum members. My intent is to hopefully spur on the new administration to take a more active role in the forums and hopefully take a proactive approach to problem solving instead of just reactive which is currently poor to say the least! I have stopped reporting any problems I run into because of what I see in the forums and that is they are either not addressed at all or have typical responses like the following:

1. Don't run/use/install this or that
2. Run/use/install this or that instead
3. Hardly anyone uses this or that
4. Sandboxie runs this or that just fine on my system
5. People don't realize how much development time is required to fix this or that (sorry this is what you are paid for...In my working career as an engineer I would have loved to have been able to go to my manager and say that is to much work so I am not going to bother doing it...my butt would have been out the door so fast)

There is more but you get the idea...more exuses then real solutions!

Will there be real solutions (fixes) to problems and this new engineer will help Curt to solve them or we will continue with a policy of "we fix things based on a priority basis"?

This priority based method of support has made that on last and a half year, more or less, almost no problems non related to web browsers or security problems, like print spooler, have been fixed.

When Ronen was running the product, he was able to fix security problems, web browser problems and all kind of problems related to programs, big or small. Now that Sandboxie is being run by a company, we are said Sandboxie can not support small programs and a problem priority scheme must be stablished.

I am sorry if I insist, but this is like having the main developer as forum supporter, I simply can not understand how this is possible!

Before one person was able to do everything, and now an entire company can not? How comes that?

Do you see any sense to that? Because I do not.

So I would like to know if this new person will debug and will do research to attend compatibility problems/problem reports so the support can be again what it used to be.

Other question: What do you think about the "Pain in the neck" title? Do you consider the forum admin can do bullying to a customer which is demanding his rights as customer?

Imagine you buy a car and after a while it starts to give problems so you go to where you bought it as ask to get it fixed. You are ignored so you insist. What would you think if the company creates a banner with your face and a "Pain in the neck" behind?

[Curt@invincea]

Other question: What do you think about the "Pain in the neck" title? Do you consider the forum admin can do bullying to a customer which is demanding his rights as customer?

Imagine you buy a car and after a while it starts to give problems so you go to where you bought it as ask to get it fixed. You are ignored so you insist. What would you think if the company creates a banner with your face and a "Pain in the neck" behind?

Ok, hold on there, Buster. I'm not going to accept you accusing me of "bullying" in any way, shape or form when the exact opposite is true. Ronen became sick of your constant harassment and banned you permanently. You are very close to that same point right now.

Your rights are spelled out completely in the EULA. You do not have the right to continue bullying me, Invincea, or anyone else in this forum. This forum is private property owned by Invincea. You are allowed to post here at Invincea's discretion.

If you tried protesting and creating a scene in the car dealership's showroom until you got your way, you would be arrested for trespassing. I offered to personally refund your Sandboxie purchase. You now have the option of either dealing with the situation, or voting with your feet.

[Buster]

First: Ronen did not want to talk about the security implications of the usage of "OpenWinClass=*" and he banned me when I insisted to obtain information. No user in the forum agreeded with Ronen about doing that. People saw it very unfair and many users also wanted to know about the implications. You know it perfectly because in this thread and in others too they expressed it like that.

In your case you were denying the lack of support until one day you admitted it in a private message and explained why was happening.

In what position do you think put you that?

Second: Stop using what Ronen did as excuse because you are not Ronen. Not to mention is an invalid excuse.

Third: If I consider you are doing bullying to me, and that is what I think, I am free to express it.

I doubt many people would agree with you. Most of them would agree about the fact that putting me that title is bullying.

There is other user who considers you did the same to him. He accused you of running the forum with prepotence. Do you want I put the post?

Fourth: You pretend what I do is bullying but a customer demanding support is not bullying, it is requesting rights.

You mention the EULA. Ok, let´s review it. It says:

SBH shall provide maintenance and support Services in accordance with the terms set forth in Exhibit A.

EXHIBIT A
...

SBH shall provide LICENSEE maintenance and support
Services consisting of the following: (i) online access and/or email support
regarding use and deployment of the Products from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Eastern Time on Monday through Friday excluding SBH holidays, and extended
hours at an additional charge if available; (ii) Major and Minor Releases of
the Software licensed by LICENSEE and (iii) support with respect to Errors.

See? "Support with respect to Errors".

Now we could go in a discussion about what "Errors" mean. If a software gives an error and doesn´t run, that´s an error?

But I think that´s a waste of time as we would not agree because the EULA is not clear enough.

In any case what I am doing is not bullying at all. I am demanding support as the EULA allows me to do. Meanwhile, "Pain in the neck" is an obvious case of bullying.

So far I do not know of any company doing anything similar and I have been in internet for a long, long time.

You have been running this forum as it was yours, not as representant of the company you work for. I doubt anyone gave you permission to entitle a customer as you did.

Fifth: How is possible I am near of the ban? Look what Norm wrote:

"The resulting conversations that you sparked inside of Invincea have made us realize that the rapid growth of the Sandboxie community now requires us to hire a full-time support engineer that will be dedicated to our free products, Sandboxie and Invincea Research Edition."

My complaints have had an effect, a good, positive effect, for users. And you say I am near of the ban.

@Norm: Do you agree with Curt? Am I really near of the ban?

[Norm@invincea]

There’s no need for the tension here guys, we’re all on the same team. @Buster, we are going to do everything we can to provide you and the rest of the Sandboxie community with outstanding support. Yes, the new support engineer will help debug and research issues that are reported and I think the addition of this dedicated forum support person will greatly improve your overall experience. But I think we should all agree that Sandboxie will never be capable of running every piece of software in existence. Curt has always been right about prioritizing fixes and developing support for the most common applications, and that is what we will continue to do, only better.

You mention that one person was able to “do everything" before but now an entire company cannot. I would argue that your perception of perfection when Ronen was both developer and support engineer is likely not correct. While Ronen was a skilled developer just like the developers on the team are here at Invincea, we know that Sandboxie did not support every application in existence when he was running it, just like it doesn’t now. We want Sandboxie to be a useful tool for you, and that means answering and solving as many support requests as we can and that’s one of the reasons we’re hiring this dedicated support person. My hope is that you notice a significant improvement in the coming months as we hire them and they come up to speed.

One clarification: Curt is not the only developer on the project - we have an entire team doing development and engineering on our Invincea products. What we didn't have previously was a dedicated support engineer, someone that can focus on providing forum based support for Sandboxie and Invincea Research Edition. Not every forum question requires a developers time to answer, so by splitting these functions I hope to achieve two things, 1) More focus on development by the developers, which will increase production on features and functionality, and 2) more focus on the forum questions and threads which should increase the responsiveness that all of you experience when interacting with us in this way.

Have faith in us, we want to provide you with the best products and the best support possible. We’re very proud of our products and our team, and want you to be too. We’ll work hard to deliver for you, let’s just keep the conversation in the forum positive and respectful please.

Thanks for listening,
Norm

[Buster]

First I want to say I am glad to read that new person will debug and will do research work.

I never pretended Sandboxie was capable of running every piece of software in existence. Other users and myself reported that support quality had lowered considerably: one thing is prioritizing fixes and other very different is what was happening in last year or more. If you read monami´s quote I posted before, that´s the exact resume of what was happening. And it is not good. Now things seem will go in the right direction.

"I would argue that your perception of perfection when Ronen was both developer and support engineer is likely not correct. While Ronen was a skilled developer just like the developers on the team are here at Invincea, we know that Sandboxie did not support every application in existence when he was running it, just like it doesn’t now".

Of course when Ronen used to run the project not all the applications were supported. I never said that. Here we are talking about what support became since Invincea run the project. I will post monami´s quote again because seems like it is being ignored:

I am an old timer here as well though I do not post very often, however, I do visit the forum almost every day to keep up with what is going on with Sandboxie. As a mostly passive onlooker I too can clearly see the reduction in support/problem solving by the new administration. It was much better when Ronen was running the company! My intention is not to deride Sandboxie, the new adminstration, or any of its users/forum members. My intent is to hopefully spur on the new administration to take a more active role in the forums and hopefully take a proactive approach to problem solving instead of just reactive which is currently poor to say the least! I have stopped reporting any problems I run into because of what I see in the forums and that is they are either not addressed at all or have typical responses like the following:

1. Don't run/use/install this or that
2. Run/use/install this or that instead
3. Hardly anyone uses this or that
4. Sandboxie runs this or that just fine on my system
5. People don't realize how much development time is required to fix this or that (sorry this is what you are paid for...In my working career as an engineer I would have loved to have been able to go to my manager and say that is to much work so I am not going to bother doing it...my butt would have been out the door so fast)

There is more but you get the idea...more exuses then real solutions!

Read it carefully because it is the reality. No more nor less.

The only thing that can be said is "we realize things has not been as good as it should but we are working to improve". Which it is more or less what you just wrote. Rest of things that have been said and done, like saying the support was as good as before, the problem reports completely ignored, the menaces of banning me, threads closed, the "Pain in the neck" title, ... are something to forget because it is a black episode.

Just to put in perspective how bad support is actually take a look to these posts:

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 58#p109058

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 43#p109243

BUCKAROO wrote: "fixing it shall solve a great many inexplicable error reports".

A user reports what seems to be a very important bug and he did not receive a single reply about it. For me that has no explanation!

Also take a look to the big effort that DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR had to do to get several bugs fixed:

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 11&t=15820

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 11&t=18412

Do not miss this post because it is very symptomatic:

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 91#p102491

"Considering DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR's accurate analysis in the other memory leak thread, it would behoove current developer to look into this matter further - instead of doing corporate denial with minimal testing."

Good thing DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR is like me and he did not give up and insisted until things were fixed.

Well, I hope things will change in the near future and we can forget this period.

You did not reply my question: Am I near of the ban or not? Is Damocles' sword hanging over my head?

[Joe_]

Hi Norm,

I'm glad you finally made it to the forum.

At first, I thought to myself that I'd better remain quiet (as I thought I had my last say), but then again I thought I shouldn't pass up this opportunity.

Without further ado, I would like to bring my thread to your attention:

http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... =5&t=20729

It's only 3 threads away from this one, but still, you may have missed it.

Let me get straight to the point: As you can see, Curt closed my thread (on another topic) and, IMHO, he was wrong to close it if someone else (i.e. Buster) was probably getting on his nerves. Next, he compounded this wrongdoing by threatening to close my other thread when I brought it to his attention. Based on my personal experience, Curt is a failure as moderator. His poor judgement would not do these forums any good. In fact, I'm very pleased that you have decided to find someone to serve as a dedicated support engineer. I think this is an excellent move and I really look forward to its implementation.

Thanks you.

[BUCKAROO]

BUCKAROO wrote: "fixing it shall solve a great many inexplicable error reports".

One wrestler to another wrote:
I put off using WinDbg to locate source of 4.x heap problem because: mood. (Or an ear-bashing infection!)
[I think one or more SbieDll-hooked Windows function prototype have changed between Windows 6.1 and 6.2.]

Maybe it is a heat problem. One can't ask Buster to tone it down without creating more friction it seems.

[Norm@invincea]

@Buster: As long as everyone stays professional and respectful, no one gets banned.

@Joe_: I’m sorry about your closed thread, and am glad you’re looking forward to the dedicated support engineer. We are too. I don’t share your opinion about Curt though – I have the benefit of seeing all of the amazing things he does on a daily basis and what a skilled developer he is – but I completely understand your perspective.

At this point, let’s all of us put the past behind us and focus on the future. Finding and hiring this dedicated support engineer is a high priority for us now, and I’m hoping that all of you start to feel the benefits very soon. In fact, if any of you know a skilled support engineer in the Washington, DC USA area please let us know!

[Buster]

@Buster: As long as everyone stays professional and respectful, no one gets banned.

Talking about staying professional and respectful: I still have the "Pain in the neck" title.

[Joe_]

I have the benefit of seeing all of the amazing things he does on a daily basis and what a skilled developer he is – but I completely understand your perspective.

Thank you Norm. I must set the record straight though. I never ever said Curt isn't a skilled developer. In fact, this is what I said...

I have no doubt that as the Lead Developer for Sandboxie you must be doing a great job but you fail as a forum moderator.

...and I still maintain that he makes a poor moderator. Please forgive me, but it just has to be said.

One last thing, I hope you continue to visit this forum every so often. It would be a mistake for you to remain blind to what goes on in this forum. IMHO, you can find no better way to keep in touch with what users have to say and the issues they face.

[Buster]

I agree with Joe in both things: Curt has failed as moderator and Norm, you should keep visiting the forum to keep in touch with users.

I wanted to open Invincea´s eyes to what was happening with support and I succeeded. In 6 months I will comment my thoughts again about the support.

I want to say to the people that told me I would not change anything with my complaints and that nothing would be accomplished: you were wrong.

Staying in silence is when nothing gets accomplished or changed.

[Dun]

Ok let me put here my 2 cents.
When tzuk was the only one dev & forum support etc. I almost never had any issues with sandboxie. Even if I had those issues were already fixed in latest beta versions or already known and the fix has been posted in a day or two. Worth noticing that at those times I was beginner sandboxie user with free license.
When he sold Sandboxie I thought it's gonna be even greater software. More people maintaining, more devs, more heads to care. Nope.
After few months I decided to uninstall Chrome to get rid of compatibility issues and I don't regret this decision. Firefox is not only better but not (yet) broken if runs inside sandbox.
I've tried to help fixing Chrome issues but for some reason minidumps have never been created. I offered my free time to test random software, posting bugs and findings in exchange for 3 months beta license. I needed it to write my graduation work. They could deactivate it any time. The deal has been ignored. Finally sandboxie chapter wasn't as long as I previously wanted.

They temporary get rid of personal lifetime licenses (per user, all owned PCs) http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 44#p104044 and bring us back more expensive lifetime licenses (per PC) http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?HomeUse

In the meantime there was a possibility to buy personal lifetime licenses again (per user, all owned PCs) http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 66#p105366 If not this short, special offer I probably won't use Sandboxie anymore.

They are interested in bugs (are there any? what kind of bugs/where?) but no longer interested in fixing those if already know what those bugs are.

[bo.elam]

They are interested in bugs (are there any? what kind of bugs/where?) but no longer interested in fixing those if already know what those bugs are.

Dun, I think the issue that you have reported can not be reproduced by Invincea. And no one else can reproduce it either. You need to provide feedback. Like below, a couple of days ago, Curt asked you about the issue you are experiencing but you never replied.
http://forums.sandboxie.com/phpBB3/view ... 73#p109354

Bo

[Dun]

Yep, especially if I was able to reproduce them on 2nd PC with XP running, without AV, untouched configuration. I already did, more than once, once in the same thread you linked.

Also you were keep telling me that Chrome crashes at startup when dropped rights are enabled was some kind of sandboxie configuration or software conflict even when I proved it can be reproduced on clean boot state and with default sandboxie configuration. He asked for minidump file which never have been created and then just gave up until someone noticed it's caused by uac disabled. Gimme a break.

Today someone asked me to go to one website. Even so untechnical person noticed that Firefox freezes the computer when loading the website. Yes, he also has sandboxie installed

[Buster]

You need to provide feedback.

Such thing works in both directions and I did not read you telling that when users created problem report threads and they did not receive feedback.

Give Dun and rest of users that consider there was a lack of support a break.