ADM -- in case u were wondering

Date: Monday, February 12, 2007
Subj: ADM situation

Hi Arne, We’ve not corresponded before but—in desperation… well,
maybe extreme frustration & a little anger—I’m writing you as a
last resort.

From early in ADM’s development, I spent hours & hours of my time
testing, suggesting, discussing, helping & proselytizing for ADM. My
testimonial for ADM appears on http://www.adm21.net/testimonials.html.
I had the time to spend on ADM because I’m semi-retired & I was
interested in the product as I have been in Lotus Agenda, Ecco Pro,
& Zoot.

As a consequence of my participation in ADM matters, Eric Sommner
voluntarily offered me a free lifetime license to ADM &, later, a
‘piece’ of the company if I would help write part of the help system.

Except for the ADM license I excused myself from any formal
relationship w ADM. And to be honest, I would have paid for an ADM
license & told Eric so.

I continued being supportive, reporting bugs, making suggestions &
helping other users master ADM. I started a support email list on
yahoo (which I eventually folded for lack of interest). When Eric
moved to China I helped debug betas via Skype, a tedious process to
say the least.

Then ever so slowly, it became apparent that Eric was withdrawing from
the process & communication with him was sporadic despite pleas from a
number of users to tell us what was *really* going on. Everyone
understood that there might be financing problems & I believe all
anyone wanted was some kind of *realistic* status report.

Some of us became privileged members of the development list and some
of us took that membership & the responsibility that came with it very
seriously. I know I did. So did others. Those who were most critical
of ADM’s seemingly haphazard development path were removed from this
list early on. Communications with an editor at the SKYPE journal was
severed for perceived slights on Eric’s girlfriend.

After asking for clarifications & asking about further communications
and after asking about the status of the program & after trying to
mount intelligent dialogue about the direction of ADM & after getting
responses that seemed less than candid from Eric & after closing the
users list down for lack of interest—there hadn’t been a posting in
months—Eric summarily removed me from the developers list because
he thought I was being negative. He recently removed another
supporter, citing a program he saw in China about censorship. Can you
imagine what this looks like in the public domain when someone pops up
& asks about ADM & is told this story?

I had a guy write to my personal address (from somewhere in Europe)
asking about ADM 4 because he had been unsuccessful contacting anyone
@ ADM. I responded & forwarded his email to every ADM address I had. I
don’t know if he got his answer but I certainly had no response.

So why do I tell you all this? Not for a pat on the back. Not for a
thank you. Not for money.

But to say that, in my opinion, the current state of ADM—from all I
know—is truly shameful. It’s a good product. I use it even today
but w/o tech support, no sense of progress for western markets, an
uncommunicative CEO who seems immature, vindictive & petulant at
times, it’s hard—nay almost impossible—to remain committed to
the project. It seems I am by myself when it comes to ADM.

But what do I know? Not much. And why is that? Because Eric, the front
man for ADM, has alienated so many of us that everyone I know who, at
one time, were enthusiastic ADM supporters, have moved on for lack of
communication from Eric, no customer service or tech support, nor a
meaningful road map of product development, and a sense that they paid
for a beta (true) since—to date—a commercial, final version of
ADM 4 has ever been released to the best of anyone’s knowledge. I
can’t defend that any more as, at this point, even I have to admit it
seems to be true.

As I understand it, Arne, you have a viable company with many
impressive clients. The only way you got there was with a good
product, hard work & customer support. This is what was lacking with
ADM.

Zoot, a 16 bit competitor is now being converted to 32 bits & then
moving into RTF, etc. Yet this 16 bit, text only product still has
thousands of users & supporters. These people, who constantly,
periodically & respectfully communicate with Zoot’s author, Tom Davis,
even volunteered to give him up front money if it would help him in
his development because they have confidence in him, something he has
engendered simply by communicating with the Zoot community in an up
front manner. This is what Eric missed out on.

As a practical matter, I don’t actually know what purpose this email
will serve. I have nothing against ADM or Eric, certainly not you but
I am frustrated.

The only practical matter that I can think of is that I’d like my
testimonial on the ADM site removed since I can no longer support the
product.

Ref: http://www.adm21.net/testimonials.html

Well, Arne, thank you for your time & early support of ADM. I don’t
know what your interest is in the program at this time but I wish all
this had turned out differently. I’m convinced it could have but I
fear it’s time has passed. Hopefully, I’m wrong.

Sincerely,

|—————————————- [ End ]—————————————| 

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jul 5, 2007 at 04:02 PM

Stephen, I originally thought as you did.

I think Eric was certainly ADM’s front man, that he may even had originally conceptually ADM.

In reality I think Eric’s life has revolved more around various social causes.

Arne seems to have been the successul business person.

For some reason I thought Arne was doing most of the technical stuff on ADM. But I am told that was not the case; whether he had the technical capability to do so is another matter, however. Perhaps he did, and was responsible for hiring the outside help. Again I do not know.

Who really knows?

Daly

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>They seemed to have a rather complete division of labor, Eric, commercial, Arne,
>technical. If Eric jumped ship, Arne would probably be at a loss on how to proceed. I
>reported one interaction with Arne, not favorably, but unlike Eric, I did not
>conclude Arne was dishonest.
> >To me the initial attraction of ADM was its monolithic
>outlining orientation. Everything was—at least potentially—one big outline.
>Some outlining features remain unique to ADM 2 and 3. (I’ve never seen 4.)
>Unfortunately, the features contain flaws, and going into version 4, I saw no real
>intent to correct the defects. 

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