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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
CodeGear
So last week while I was in Madrid, Borland finally
announced what they're doing with "DevCo". Instead of selling their dev tools
division, they are spinning it out into a wholly owned subsidiary called
CodeGear.
People keep asking me for my reaction to this news,
especially because the name is so obviously similar to SourceGear.
Actually, I have a bunch of different thoughts. So, in the
spirit of my favorite scene from Roxanne,
here are twenty possible reactions I could offer:
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Flattered
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Wow! One of the most influential developer tools
companies has just chosen a new name which rides on the popularity of
SourceGear!
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Financial
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Wasn't the sale of DevCo supposed to provide the cash
infusion necessary to make Borland's enterprise strategy look credible?
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Childish
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Hey Joel! All the really cool companies have Gear at the
end of their name. Maybe you should change the name of your company to
FogGear! You're not cool if you don't!
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Bitter
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Hmph. IIRC, when we chose the name SourceGear, we tried
to register codegear.com as well, but it wasn't available at the time.
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Advisory
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Wouldn't CodeBeer have been a better choice? The domain
is available.
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Veterinary
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Okay, I've lost count. If Borland were a cat, would this
be its 8th life or its 9th?
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Skeptical
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Nick
Hodges says: "We are our own company. We decide how to run our
business. We decide what products to release. We decide how to market
our products. We decide what our budgets will be. We decide how
many people are on the R&D, QA, sales, support teams. We
decide. No one else. That feels really good. Believe me."
Every company is accountable to and subject to the direction
of its owners. No exceptions. I understand that CodeGear is being
structured as an autonomous, independent, separate company, but it is still
owned by Borland, and is ultimately under Borland's control.
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Snide
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Cool! Three years from now when SourceGear acquires
CodeGear, merging the brands will be simple!
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Bilingual
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I think the conjugation of their name actually works
better than ours: codegeo, codegeas, codegea, codegeamos, codegeáis, codegean
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Friendly
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I agree with Larry
O'Brien. To me, this seems like a big deal for the software industry. CodeGear
has some excellent products, and hopefully they have created enough
detachment from Borland for those products to become successful again. I
wish them the best of luck.
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Prophetic
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Obviously they failed in their first attempt to sell
DevCo, but CodeGear is still for sale. This move is just an intermediate
step. If CodeGear does well, it'll be back on the block within two years.
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Disappointed
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Hmmm. I've been waiting for the DevCo spinoff, expecting
it to be a company with whom SourceGear would want to partner (whereas
Borland really isn't). But now, the similarity of the two names makes me
pause and think. If SourceGear and CodeGear were working together on
something, wouldn't that merely increase the confusion?
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Approving
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Nick
Hodges says: "We are a company wholly and totally focused on
developers."
Welcome [back] to the world of selling products for
developers who choose their own tools. This is SourceGear's path as well.
Lots of companies prefer to sell products for developers whose tools are
chosen for them. Your parent company is one example. That strategy can be
quite lucrative, but it's not very satisfying.
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Stubborn
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Regardless of what the new company is called, I still
think it was a big mistake to stir the .NET stuff into the Delphi soup. It's
great that CodeGear is focused on developers, but that focus still isn't sharp
enough. You guys need to get your strategy and positioning really tight
and prune everything that doesn't fit.
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Naughty
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SourceGear will soon be announcing a compiler/IDE product
built on a Pascal-style language called Belphi.
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Sympathetic
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Sometimes it's not much fun to have a company name which
is spelled with CamelCase.
When you get sick of people spelling it "Codegear", call me to commiserate.
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Competitive
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Of all the dev tools companies that have Gear at the end
of their name, I wonder which one will have the most revenue in five years?
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Irrelevant
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You guys do realize your name is an anagram for GEODE CAR,
right?
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Optimistic
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The name similarity will definitely cause confusion, but
even though SourceGear has had its name longer, CodeGear probably still has a
much larger audience, so perhaps the confusion will work in our favor.
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Cinematic
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When they make the movie version of the full history of
Borland/Inprise/CodeGear, they'll get Leonardo DiCaprio to play Nick Hodges,
but what part will Kate Winslet play?
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:-)
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