Author: Sinan

InstallAware 14.02:

A new Microsoft Report Viewer 2012 runtime is available, including its pre-requisite runtime Microsoft System CLR Types for SQL Server 2012.

InstallAware NX version 14.02 (launching this week) contains the following bug fixes:

Re-creating a previously existing virtual folder incorrectly changed the root website path.
Multiple OneNote Table Of Contents.onetoc2 files were included in the build and runtimes by mistake.
The Glass setup theme had a bug on destination dialog where the full space and remaining space positions were swapped.
IIS virtual folder creation crashed on Windows 8 when MIME types were not specified as part of the operation.
The help file incorrectly indicated that the build engine was redistributable.
Due to a memory leak, random failures occurred when passwords were specified on the command line.

InstallAware 14.01 had fixed compiler variable resolution issues.

IDE

The Summary, UAC, and ISO design view now lets you set the ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009 software identification (SWID) tag for your application.
The New Project dialog now lets you promote any setup project into a project template.
The Replace dialog now replaces all instances of text found in a setup command, instead of replacing only the first instance.
The Authenticode Signature design view now has an option to automatically code sign all .EXE, .DLL, .OCX, .SYS, .CPL, .DRV, and .SCR files being installed by setup for Windows 8 logo program compliance.
The Build Settings design view now has an option to automatically build all setup layouts as MSI files.
The Project Manager now opens all script and dialog browsers inside the active project folder.
The Add Dialogs to Project window now permits adding more than one custom dialog simultaneously.
You may now create and navigate to bookmarks inside the MSIcode script editor.
The code navigation drop-downs now include the full list of available MSIcode script bookmarks.
The IDE now prompts to confirm when you attempt to save a read-only file, to ensure your project folders remain synchronized with source control.
The IDE most recently used file list now accommodates double the number of projects and displays full project paths on mouse-over.

Tools and Libraries

The Dialog Editor now automatically refactors rules when the name of a dialog control is changed.
A Visual Studio 2012 Add-In is now available. The add-in automatically generates and builds InstallAware setups for your Visual Studio 2012 solutions. These may then be built as App-V virtualized packages using the Build App-V Package tool.
All Visual Studio Add-In generated projects have been updated for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 eco-system, automatically including the new Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 runtimes as necessary.
Group Policy Wizard generated MSI files now do not display dual User Account Control elevation prompts. Elevation prompts are no longer hidden in the background.
Group Policy Wizard generated MSI files now display progress feedback with cancel support when extracting large payloads.
The App-V Viewer tool has been updated with performance and stability improvements.
The command line build tool may now add patch references not included in the original project.
A new MiaBuildProjectEy function is available as part of the automation interface which displays the build window with a parent handle.
A new .NET assembly is now available as part of the automation interface for use within the .NET eco-system.
New MFC, C#, and ASP.NET samples are available for use with the automation interface.
The Product Name and Product Version fields in the version information structures of built EXE files are now populated.

Plug-Ins

A new .NET Plug-In Bridge is available for calling managed code plug-in assemblies from your setups.
A new runtime is available for Microsoft SQL Server 2012.
The runtimes for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, 2.0 with Service Pack 1, and 2.0 with Service Pack 2 have been updated to enable installation on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft Visual C++ 11 Runtime in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft IIS Express 8 Web Server in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.

Setup Engine

The new $CHARSET_OVERRIDE$ pre-defined variable permits to automatically change dialog font character sets without having to duplicate dialogs in multi-lingual setups.
Setup billboards now resume automatically from the last billboard shown instead of resetting to the first billboard between different displays of progress dialogs.
The $NATIVE_LOGGING$ pre-defined variable can no longer be overridden unless a full file path (including full folder information) is provided.
Double-buffering for setup controls is now selectively enabled based on the active system theme, for improved display of setup controls.
The new #SIGN_ALL_INPLACE# pre-defined compiler variable controls whether code signing occurs in-place or out-of-place during a build.

New Scripting Commands

The new Evaluate XPath Query command runs an XPath query against a specified XML file.
The new For Each and Next commands allow for the construction of for loops.

Updated Scripting Commands

The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now run applications as administrator on operating systems with User Account Control (or run them with alternate credentials on operating systems older than Windows Vista).
The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now prevent the automatic inclusion of shortcuts on the new Windows 8 Start Screen.
The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now prevent the user pinning of applications.
The Break and Continue commands allow for immediately terminating or continuing to the next iteration of for loops.
The Get System Settings command now supports Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine detection.

The Most Recently Used Files listing was half empty.
Unpin from Start Screen was not functioning correctly with the final release of Windows 8.
Set Breakpoint was not displaying the breakpoint after a bookmark had been inserted.
Edit XML File lacked a Browse button to pick the XML document to edit visually.
64 bit ODBC data sources were not created successfully using the Native Engine.
The automation interface lacked a build function which permitted specifying the parent window handle to the build window.
Read-only files were always overwritten when saving projects.
The Impact theme contained a production progress dialog from InstallAware Virtualization, instead of the actual template progress dialog with interactive HTML.
Inserting AVI animations in the Dialog Editor caused seemingly random errors with locating the AVI file.
Multiple files could not be selected to add to a setup project as new dialogs.
The Project Manager did not remember the previous folder and/or the project folder used when last adding resources to a project.
Patch references could not be added via the command line Build Tool.
Single Instance setups, when launching second or more instances, would crash with random errors.
The Native Engine did not properly load old installation data in certain cases.
Patches did not properly load old installation data if the product name was changed between versions.
Run commands in the IDE did not run new direct MSI built setups.
Some duplicate compiler variables were re-injected in duplicates (or more) when a build failed with a compiler variable conditional error.
Batch builds set some build mode compiler variables incorrectly.
Patches built after batch builds may have failed to enable the patch compiler variables, causing problems with actual patch application.
Compiler variable override values sometimes failed to override their desired targets if a default value was previously defined.
Patch references did not accept new direct MSI built setups.
The Group Policy built MSI files lacked payload extraction progress report.
The Group Policy built MSI files could not be aborted once starting extraction.
The Group Policy built MSI files caused double User Account Control elevation prompts.
The Group Policy built MSI files caused User Account Control elevation prompts that were sometimes hidden in the background.
Adding new scripts did not default to the current project folder.
Saving existing scripts did not default to the current project folder.
Automatic code signing for all setup binaries failed after one effort, instead of accounting for intermittent network connectivity issues.
The application user model identifier was sometimes not being properly set on Windows 8.
If Visual Studio 2012 was started at least once before installing InstallAware, the InstallAware Add-In for Visual Studio 2012 would not be registered with Visual Studio.
Very slow runtime performance with InstallAware setups using large scripts.
Incorrectly overriding the NATIVE_LOGGING pre-defined variable without path information caused complete system drive deletion.
Some feature descriptions in the InstallAware setup were not fitting in their allocated space.
Shortcuts could not be pinned into the Start Screen with the final release of Windows 8.
Low resolution icons were incorrectly used in the New Project | Custom tab when promoting setup projects into user made templates.
There was no programmatic method to update the character set of dialog controls.
The documentation for Set Access Control did not make it clear that the command is non-recursive in nature.
The Display Dialog command editor control states malfunctioned in certain cases, leaving certain settings disabled until the command editor was re-initialized with the same command line twice in succession.
ASP.NET version 4 application pools created by the Create Virtual Folder command sometimes contained superfluous versioning information in the application pool name.
ASP.NET version 4 application pools created by the Create Virtual Folder command sometimes were accompanied by an unintended ASP.NET version 2 application pool in the desired name.
Literal file exclusions were not honored by the Install Files command – unless wildcards were used, the exclusions would be still included in setup.
The If command editor control states malfunctioned in certain cases, leaving certain settings disabled until the command editor was re-initialized with the same command line twice in succession.
The GlowLabel control malfunctioned when double buffering states were being intelligently managed,
The .NET Plug-In Bridge did not properly pass the state of variables back to the setup script.
Installing .NET versions 2 through 3.5x failed on Windows 8.
InstallAware built plug-ins did not correctly set their parent window handle to the InstallAware IDE.
The Dialog Editor did not refactor rules when a component name was changed, instead deleting all rules referring to the old component name.
Progress billboards did not resume from the last billboard shown between different displays of HTML progress enabled billboards, all activated within the same setup session.
Search and Replace did not replace all occurrences of a given string literal in a single setup command.
The Set Variable command editor sometimes did not reset the state of the “Persistent” option.
The Continue command did not re-evaluate the loop conditional for While loops, unconditionally skipping to the next loop iteration.
A superfluous PackageAware folder would be created every time the InstallAware IDE or a built setup was run.
When setup invoked system tray commands, and the Explorer shell was unavailable or not started yet, setup would fail with a runtime error.
All list views used in the IDE and setup engine lacked translucent selection rectangles.
The SQL Server 2012 (Denali) runtime installation failed on Windows 8.
Virtual Machine detection failed to detect Hyper-V based virtual machines.
The Portuguese spelling was incorrect in built setups and various places throughout the InstallAware tool chain.
The command line Build Tool had intermittent build failures when running on 64 bit Windows.
The InstallAware IDE instance name was incorrect.
The Convert Path command behavior was undefined when the specified path did not already exist.
Editing a Create Shortcut command in the visual designers sometimes lost the associated icon.
In rare instances, when a lot of identically named files were being included inside a single Web Media Block, the Weblock processing could fail at runtime, resulting in misleading extraction failure errors.
Hybrid installation projects which combined 32 bit and 64 bit driver installations inside the same Web Media Block or the main setup executable would succeed in installing only the last referenced bitness driver in the setup script.
The product name field in built EXE files was not injected.
The product version field in built EXE files was not injected.

I don’t consider myself a political person, but recent events in Europe have strongly prompted me to produce this piece reflecting on the state of continental politics. Specifically, the current crisis in the Euro-zone and how it relates to the ongoing issue of Turkish accession into the EU.

Disclaimer:

There’s two disclaimers before we may begin:

1) I am Turkish by birth. This naturally biases my perception of things.

2) I had a Greek employee at InstallAware who was the most proficient liar I have ever seen. Towards the end of our relationship, this person was actually getting so outrageous with his lies, that his defense of their truth was based on the suggestion that lies so outrageous would defeat their purpose, so they had to be true. It turns out this was only part of his lie-ability!

The West Needs to Get Over Greece

OK, today pretty much everywhere is “the West”, but I’m referring specifically to Europe and North America. Because these cultures trace their ancestry to ancient Greece – a most reasonable hypothesis – it is understandable that they are fascinated by Greece. However, this has been taken to extremes in modern times.

Sure, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle – they’re all cool dudes (Plato being a personal favorite of mine). But the West has become so obsessed with Greece, that fraternities/sororities on US campuses are choosing three letters from the Greek alphabet for their names and soliciting participants for the “Greek Life” on campus. Greek Life? Please. It’s really just a self-made delusion.

Leaving aside the issue of the under-representation of Indian and Asian thought in Western philosophy curriculums, there’s virtually nothing modern Greece has in common with ancient Greece.

Greece Lied Its Way Into the EU

Economically, for about half the time since gaining independence from the Ottomans (disclaimer: the Ottoman Empire is the precursor of modern Turkey), Greece has been in economic crisis; and for about the other half, in a state of declared bankruptcy.

Those aren’t good odds. Yet, the EU welcomed Greece in.

By now it is well established that Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government cook the books so they could be admitted into the EU.

In this day and age, how this could happen is beyond me on a rational basis.

However, given the fascination that the West has with Greece, this is understandable from an emotive basis.

And despite the knowledge of how modern-day Greece sneaked in their economic Trojan Horse into the EU being common knowledge, the EU continues to award Greek deceit by letting them remain in the Union, without any penalty for their gross misrepresentation.

In fact, this too I understand; given my previous experience with my Greek employee in the disclaimer: it’s simply so outrageous, that it could not possibly be true that this is a lie! But it’s still astounding when you get to see the same dynamics at play on a sovereign state level.

You really wouldn’t want to be a German taxpayer right now.

Double Standards Against Turkey

Turkish citizenry has long complained that the EU discriminates against Turkey through the application of double standards: a different set of rules by which Turkish progress is measured, compared to the remainder of the EU applicants.

Thanks to the whole Greek affair, we now know for a fact that, the EU is in the practice of applying double standards against Turkey.

The Irony

The irony in this all is that, Turkey is actually doing remarkably well.

In fact, for the first time in modern history, Turkish economy has had inflation in the single digits during the past decade.

This is nothing short of a miracle, given that the country endured 70% inflation for about five decades prior – the only country in the world to have had this experience of chronic inflation.

Other countries went to hyper-inflation (in the thousands), thereafter bringing their inflation down to single digits.

It appears the dream of accession into the EU has motivated Turkish performance very well.

To Be Fair…

Again, it’s completely understandable from an emotive perspective that the EU are not welcoming what would be the first non-Christian state into their Union with open arms. Turkish ancestry, after all, had invaded their way into half of Europe a few centuries ago.

However one would hope that the irony of the current situation is not lost on the EU.

A strong world needs a strong EU economy, and Turkish accession into the EU is still a dream cherished by many a Turk.

With the “EU dream” officially on the verge of collapse, maybe what they really need to do is dream bigger – and not smaller.

This great continent, apparently, cannot afford any less.

~S.

2012 is turning out to be a fantastic year for InstallAware, with InstallAware finding recognition across an entire cross-section of the industry:

• Software Developers have been voting for us for three years in a row (Windows IT Pro, Visual Studio Magazine).
• Development Toolkit Resellers have given us Top Publisher awards for two years in a row (ComponentSource).
• Software Development Editors have now joined in the wave of recognition, giving us the prestigious SD Times 100 Award!

For starters – InstallAware 2012 is everything you’ve told us you wanted in an installer, and more:

Visual Studio 2012 Support: InstallAware 2012 ships with Visual Studio 2012 support out-of-the-box. The fresh release candidate build of Visual Studio 2012, released less than a week ago, is fully supported by InstallAware 2012. One-click setup creation has never been so easy – or so up to date!

App-V Builder for Visual Studio 2012: Only InstallAware 2012 provides a royalty-free, one-click workflow for creating App-V virtualized packages out of your existing Visual Studio 2012 solutions. Forget about digging through manuals to learn how to use the App-V Sequencer. Just click to virtualize any Visual Studio 2012 project!

Windows 8 Support: The fresh release preview build of Windows 8, which was also released less than a week ago, is again fully supported by InstallAware 2012. Have you taken a look at how good InstallAware 2012’s setup themes look under Windows 8? Or at our pinning capability within the new Metro interface?

Beating “The Shield” Every Time: We’ve previously covered how “The Shield” are getting more than just inspired by InstallAware. We’ll now mention that all of the above benefits – some of which are still lacking in “The Shield”, and some of which became available only a few weeks ago as part of an exponentially expensive upgrade – were already supported in InstallAware 2012 for over six months!

Once again, we are thrilled and honored to be the recipient of so many industry awards and so much recognition. We could not have done any of this without you – so again, thank you very much for your support!

For the second year in a row, InstallAware has won ComponentSource’s Best-Selling Publisher Award. This year we’re in the Top 50, up from last year’s Top 100. We’re glad to be working with terrific partners like ComponentSource in bringing you the best installation product in the industry.

In fact, InstallAware is so good, InstallShield have begun copying our features. We won’t make it easy for them – so in this email, instead of covering our unique benefits which save developers like you time and money – we’ll cover features of ours that InstallShield have had to copy, in order to save their developers the time and money that we’ve already been saving you for as long as 8 years now!

Partial Web Deployment (8 Years): InstallShield are calling this Installation Streaming. Of course, we’re still 8 years ahead of them in the game. Seamless proxy detection, automatic resume of broken downloads, automatic retries when end-users are away from their terminals (so setups don’t stall waiting for input), bandwidth saving LZMA/BCJ2 compression, and Shared Web Media Blocks are among features you won’t find in InstallShield.

Shelling to Other Setups (8 Years): InstallShield are calling this Suite Installations. InstallAware has always enabled you to run any Windows Installer setup, silently installing/modifying/removing features; as well as seamlessly capturing native installation progress feedback, and displaying any interactive dialogs so user input may be natively handled – all within your own installation UI.

Aero Wizards, Glass UI (5 Years): While InstallShield have finally built an Aero Wizard compliant setup theme, as usual, everything happens behind the scenes leaving you no control amongst so much hard-coding. InstallAware’s implementation lets you build your own Aero Glass user interfaces which render terrific on all 4 Windows Themes: Aero, Basic, Classic, and Luna (XP) – a major feat given the total lack of hard-coding.

32-64 Bit Mixed Installations (2 Years): InstallShield can finally combine 32 bit and 64 bit installations. But only InstallAware can switch at runtime between 32 bit and 64 bit installation modes intelligently; selectively installing files and registry keys in their proper locations based on the state of the target system that the installation is running on.

We’re thrilled to have been selected as the launch partners for a terrific product, MagicRAR! I’ll let their press release do the talking – please enjoy the product, its not everyday that we find software so thoughtfully designed.

 

Simon King`s MagicRAR 5.0 is the only data compression utility which opens up compressed files as ordinary folders in Windows Explorer, completely eliminating the need to learn a custom archive management user interface. MagicRAR 5.0 is also the only data compression utility offering full disk compression with on-the-fly data decompression.

 

Sydney, Australia, April 23, 2012 – Simon King`s Utilities Group has launched MagicRAR 5.0, a data compression utility for Windows end-users, power users, systems administrators, and large corporate networks. Simon King`s MagicRAR 5.0 introduces several unique benefits not found in veteran competing products like WinZip or WinRAR These benefits eliminate data compression related IT costs and training, while exponentially increasing the possibilities of what may be achieved with data compression utilities.

 

The magic of MagicRAR is the ability to browse inside 60 different types of archive files, including the ZIP, CAB, RAR, ISO, and 7ZIP formats, as if they were ordinary file system folders. Especially on large corporate networks where the average user may not be computer literate, this is an indispensable convenience. Double-clicking a file inside an “archive folder” automatically extracts it and launches with the owner application; even offering to update the original copy inside the archive if changes are saved. Dragging and dropping, or copying and pasting files between “archive folders” and the physical file system transparently compresses and extracts files on-the-fly.

 

“Shell Namespace Extension Technology is what enables this perfect illusion,” says Simon King. “Despite the necessary programming interfaces having been disclosed by Microsoft in 2002 as part of the Microsoft – Department of Justice settlement (www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/23/those_ms_api_disclosures_errors/), neither WinZip nor WinRAR have managed to implement this technology in their own products for over a decade. MagicRAR has risen up to the challenge, filling the void created by these industry veterans in their inability to adapt to the new era of convenience in computing technologies.”

 

MagicRAR also integrates with all versions of Microsoft® Outlook™, transparently compressing all email attachments, together with optional 256 bit AES encryption to protect the integrity and privacy of data. While WinRAR completely lacks Outlook™ integration and WinZip charges extra for it, MagicRAR’s Outlook™ integration is provided free of charge. Together with Archive Folders, MagicRAR’s Outlook™ integration offers an end-to-end data compression solution for all corporate users, completely eliminating traditional business process bottlenecks associated with legacy data compression products such as WinZip or WinRAR. With support for over 60 different compression formats, no user will be stalled trying to extract an odd file they were emailed or downloaded from the Internet. Of course, MagicRAR’s built-in anti-virus scanning ensures this level of convenience doesn’t come with any risks attached.

 

While MagicRAR’s support for the types of compression technologies available today is exhaustive, MagicRAR is future-proof thanks to its plug-in based architecture. Adding support for as-yet unknown archive types is as easy as installing their supporting plug-ins – after which, previously inaccessible files become browsable folders just like any other. MagicRAR may even browse inside Windows XP Mode hard disks as if they were ordinary folders, putting all data contained in legacy applications at your fingertips; without the hassle of mounting virtualized operating system disk drives. MagicRAR has also been designed from the ground-up to leverage the power of modern hardware, and leverages the power of SSDs (solid state disk drives) by executing multiple compression/extraction options in parallel; exponentially reducing task completion times.

 

In addition to corporate and home users, MagicRAR has thought of power users as well. Right-clicking any collection of files in Windows Explorer and choosing the “Find Smallest Archive” menu item benchmarks a total of 40 data compression algorithms against that live data set, reporting the optimal data compression algorithm for that collection of files. Right-clicking any archive file and choosing the “Recursive Extract” menu item extracts the selected archive, together with any other archives nested inside it; until no more data remains which could be decompressed – all in a single, convenient click. Both time-saving benefits are unique to MagicRAR. Also unique is the right-click “Extract to Subfolders” option, which does not create redundant top-level folders when all archive contents are already located inside a single folder within the archive. This exemplifies the intelligence behind MagicRAR’s design, fixing a common pet peeve of power users, which legacy products like WinZip and WinRAR have failed to address over the years.

 

MagicRAR ships with a full version of Drive Press, another novel invention with no counterpart in any other data compression utility. MagicRAR Drive Press converts any Windows hard disk to use on-the-fly data compression, while ensuring all user data and program files remain accessible as if they were uncompressed. Unlike built-in NTFS compression, Drive Press completes drive compression in record times, especially on modern SSD based hardware, thanks to its ability to use up to double the number of CPU cores available on the system during the drive conversion process. Of course, safely decompressing an entire hard drive is equally fast, should it become necessary for any reason. Indispensable on expensive solid state hard disks, Drive Press easily grows the capacity of any hard disk by an average 25%, with no visible performance penalty, and at no additional cost – reducing the cost per gigabyte of every hard disk.

 

Simon King`s MagicRAR is available for a single flat fee of  $29.95, including all of the Drive Press, Outlook™ Add-In, and Shell Namespace Extension technologies. Volume purchasing discounts and annual maintenance contracts are available. A Group Policy based setup file with support for unattended network deployment on large corporate networks is available at www.magicrar.com/magicrar.msi.

 

End-users purchasing MagicRAR for home use enjoy delayed billing for 30 days, where they receive their product keys instantly but are not billed during the first 30 days of their use, and may cancel their purchase at any time without being charged at all. Together with the 30 day free trial download, this in effect extends the free trial period of MagicRAR to a full 60 days, one day for each archive format that MagicRAR supports.

 

About Simon King`s Utilities Group

 

Simon King`s Utilities Group, founded in 2009, is a software development company focused solely on state-of-the-art data compression technologies offering the highest data compression ratios along with ease of use and benefits previously thought unattainable. The company is a Microsoft BizSpark Startup. For more information, and a free unrestricted 30 day trial download, please visit www.magicrar.com.

 

####

 

MEDIA CONTACT:

 

Simon King
Simon King`s Utilities Group Pty Ltd.
Australia Square Level 33 Suite 5012
264 George Street, Sydney
NSW 2000, Australia
+61 (02) 9475 4019
simon@magicrar.com
http://www.magicrar.com/

 

WinZip® is a registered trademark of WinZip International LLC.
WinRAR® is a registered trademark of win.rar GmbH.
All other marks are property of their respective owners.

Embarcadero Proves My Point

We’re continuing to have an Internet conversation with Embarcadero, since they continue to ignore InstallAware’s efforts at a direct dialog.

As of my last blog post, the following events have transpired between Embarcadero and InstallAware:

1. Embarcadero issued an inline update for the Delphi family of tools, doing exactly what they tried convincing InstallAware they couldn’t do.

Of course we always knew that Embarcadero issued inline updates. They do this all the time. But now you know it too:

The original setup files for Delphi XE2 contain the InstallAware 12 web installer. The updated setup files for Delphi XE2 contain a small EXE which launches a web page from where the InstallAware 12 offline installer may be downloaded.

What is that, if not an inline update?

Embarcadero did this so they don’t have to deal with customer complaints about failing web media block downloads, which we are not hosting any longer. So they had to take out our web installer and replace it with a small EXE that downloads our full installer.

Of course, it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine why Embarcadero just didn’t take out our OLD web installer and replace it with the NEW one that we were trying to get them to accept – this is all InstallAware wanted in the first place. Embarcadero chose instead to have InstallAware air all their dirty laundry.

2. Embarcadero terminated the Technology Partner agreement between InstallAware and Embarcadero, while not purchasing any InstallAware licenses or issuing us any Delphi licenses in exchange.

This simply served to establish de jure what was already known de facto: Embarcadero had never provided InstallAware non-expiring Delphi Architect licenses, while continuing to enjoy non-expiring InstallAware Studio Admin licenses.

Embarcadero Continues to Abuse InstallAware Intellectual Property

Please don’t support intellectual property abuse!

Use the only version of InstallAware that we have allowed Embarcadero to bundle at: www.installaware.com/authentic-installaware.exe

E-mail the Embarcadero CEO Wayne Williams at Wayne.Williams@EMBARCADERO.COM and ask him to explain his company’s usage of an unlicensed copy of InstallAware to build his Delphi setups; as well as their ongoing, sustained, willful abuse of InstallAware intellectual property.

2011 has been the year of revelations from InstallAware’s “secret history”. From Viresh’s behind-the-scenes puppet mastering of InstallAware to the CodeProject scandal, I have revealed many a secret this year. What better way then, than to end the year with yet another big reveal?

 

Cautious Optimism over the Fate of Delphi

 

Our story this time starts in 2006, when Borland spun off their IDE businesses into a newly formed CodeGear unit back in 2006.

At that time, many of us were cautiously optimistic, hoping that this new formation would help improve the fortunes of this magnificent product. As you may know, InstallAware itself is authored in Delphi – so we certainly wanted nothing other than the greatest of success for the compiler that our business is based on.

 

The Best Working Month of My Life was at CodeGear

 

A most happy development for InstallAware at this time was the adoption of InstallAware – over InstallShield – for the first-ever CodeGear branded release of Delphi. CodeGear replaced both the setup program they were bundling with Delphi, and the setup program that installed Delphi itself: InstallShield was out, InstallAware was in.

As part of this transition, I worked personally out of Scotts Valley for about a month, shoulder-to-shoulder with the people who had become my legends over the years, helping them build their new setup program using InstallAware.

I relished taking in all of the Borland history, sitting in David I’s office, looking at product boxes over a decade old but still in their shrink-wrap. I relished having the opportunity to listen to Allen Bauer’s stories of how he was tasked with working on Borland’s first-ever 32 bit DOS compilers, when the project was canned in favor of Delphi. Here were, and still are, my heroes. Working together with them was truly the best working month I have ever had in my life.

Here were found the pioneers of modern software – the true heroes of the computing revolution, those who may not have profited from it as much as other companies like, say Microsoft – but those who by all indicators worked to indeed better computer science (as opposed to profit).

 

Embarcadero’s Successful Acquisition of CodeGear

 

A little while down the road, Embarcadero acquired CodeGear for a mere fraction of an offer that Borland had apparently refused a few years ago. I retained my cautious optimism that still, everything would be in the best interests of Delphi.

To be sure, Embarcadero sounded like far less of an interesting brand name than CodeGear – I did find myself wishing they had kept the separate brand name intact. This is a thought that I also continue to reflect on recent version releases of Delphi. Delphi XE? Delphi XE2? Surely there could have been a better way to name the first multi-platform, 64-bit release of Delphi than “XE2”, where the meaning of “XE” itself is in question.

And while we never renewed the software bundling agreement we had signed as Borland and InstallAware, since to all intents and purposes everything was the same, the bundling of InstallAware with Delphi continued as-is.

 

Embarcadero’s Failed Acquisition of InstallAware

 

In 2009, InstallAware and Embarcadero entered into negotiations to acquire InstallAware. I thought so highly of my heroes, that I could not conceive of any ill coming through any of this. I openly shared all kinds of InstallAware trade secrets with Embarcadero – including the full source codes of InstallAware’s then-upcoming application virtualization product, ThinAware.

In hindsight, maybe this wasn’t the best decision of all. It turns out Embarcadero was owned by the same investment group that also owned InstallShield at the time. Needless to say, InstallShield is InstallAware’s primary competitor, and I find myself wondering whether any InstallAware trade secrets made their way back to InstallShield. InstallShield have recently cloned three previously unique InstallAware features…

Leaving speculation aside, Embarcadero’s offer for InstallAware was underwhelming. Written up on corporate letterhead, using rich verbiage such as “an all cash payment made in a single installment,” their actual valuation of InstallAware came out to only 25% of CodeProject’s valuation, where both were made in the same time frame. This was quite a shock, so much so that I asked Holden Spaht, the head-honcho at Embarcadero, to provide me with a written offer when I first heard of it: it just had to be a problem with the connection or my hearing. But needless to say, value lies in the eye of the beholder.

Of course, the acquisition failed. I chalked it all up to experience. Even though it was very unsettling that Embarcadero had valued InstallAware at only a meager fraction of CodeProject, it was their value to assign. They had done the same thing with Delphi too, after all.

 

Declining Optimism

 

Over the years, my cautious optimism about the eventual fate of Delphi began to decline. Product naming conventions aside, it seemed to me that the momentum Delphi had gained under CodeGear was bleeding off at Embarcadero. Moreover, my contacts at Embarcadero seemed less and less happy over time.

I know their dedicated installation engineer was let go, which certainly didn’t help the state of the InstallAware setup for Delphi I had originally built a few years ago. I noticed the installer gradually atrophy – of course, it was quite sad that InstallAware got all the blame for this; since no one could know that Embarcadero hadn’t even assigned a dedicated installation engineer to what might be considered one of their flagship products.

It also came as a big surprise that the partner serial keys, issued to vendors actively supporting Delphi with components and utilities such as InstallAware itself, were made to expire after only one year under the Embarcadero regime. These were perpetual during the Borland/CodeGear times.

We didn’t have much to be concerned about this at InstallAware, because our product was (and still is) being built using a CodeGear branded version of Delphi that had a non-expiring serial key. However, this level of growing stinginess was unsettling, to say the least.

 

Escalating Concerns

 

InstallAware was almost hit by a frivolous patent troll lawsuit in 2010. The summary of the allegations was that InstallAware’s ability to create password protected setups infringed on prior art.

While InstallAware wasn’t directly targeted by the patent trolls, MicroFocus – who had recently acquired Borland – were the active targets of the patent trolls. And MicroFocus threatened to come after InstallAware because, in their opinion, the expired bundling agreement between Borland and InstallAware made us liable.

InstallAware turned to Embarcadero for help, since they were our active partners in the bundling. Embarcadero did nothing to aid InstallAware in this potential lawsuit. InstallAware had to absorb the cost of the legal defense all on its own.

I was definitely unsettled with the ease in which Embarcadero disowned the entire relationship given the threat of the lawsuit – “it’s a hot potato, we’ll throw it right back” was the exact remark of one Embarcadero employee. But again giving Embarcadero the benefit of the doubt, I let this one slide as well.

 

A Very Stingy Owner for Delphi

 

While I could chalk everything up so far to this or that, inventing some excuse or the other for the benefit of Embarcadero, in 2011 things started to truly get out of hand.

In 2011, InstallAware decided to – for the first time since 2007 – acquire non-expiring licenses for an Embarcadero branded Delphi.

And InstallAware failed to do so.

Now just to put things in perspective: back in 2004, when InstallAware wasn’t even an Integrated Partner, Borland had sent us full product boxes of all requested Borland IDE products, at their expense, and very promptly, just for the asking.

In 2011, it took us about two months of emails back and forth to squeeze a non-expiring license out of Embarcadero. And when they did issue the license, it was the wrong edition, valid for a single user, and with just three activations permitted.

And we haven’t been able to get them to issue the correct product edition license ever since!

All the while, of course, Embarcadero continue to use the latest versions of InstallAware to build their setups – without paying us a dime for it.

Again, putting this all in perspective – while InstallAware was nothing to Borland in 2004, they went out of their way to support us. In 2011, Embarcadero uses InstallAware for their installations and bundles our product (making us an Integrated Partner), and while one might expect at least the same level of courtesy that we were shown by Borland in 2004, if not more; what we have ended up with is something significantly worse.

 

Embarcadero Lies Shamelessly

 

Keep in mind that all this while, Embarcadero hadn’t even bothered to renew the expired software bundling agreement between Borland and InstallAware (one that they were all too quick to disown in the first sign of trouble, as was the case with the patent trolls).

All the same, InstallAware continued supporting Embarcadero out of good faith. We even issued an updated version of InstallAware to Embarcadero for their bundling in 2011, on the condition that we could issue further updates to the bundle version as necessary.

However, when we did try to issue another update, Embarcadero shocked us with nothing other than a shameless lie: they claimed they did not issue inline updates for Delphi at all, something which we knew to be factually false given our working relationship!

When I personally escalated the matter to Wayne Williams, the Embarcadero CEO, instead of owning up to this shameless lie, he threatened InstallAware with legal action – over an expired contract at that, and again, one which they had disowned a little over a year ago.

 

A Stingy Embarcadero Takes Liberties with Third Party Intellectual Property

 

The latest we have heard from Embarcadero’s lawyers is that they intend to forcefully bundle all current and future versions of InstallAware with their Delphi releases, regardless of our consent. They have made this absurd claim which sounds like InstallAware at some point entered into indentured service with Embarcadero, for life.

Their current bundling of InstallAware is without our consent.

Moreover, Embarcadero are refusing to pay us for the copies of InstallAware they use to build their own installers, while simultaneously refusing to issue InstallAware with non-expiring licenses of their products.

This means that Embarcadero are not only distributing unlicensed copies of InstallAware with their products; they are also using unlicensed copies of InstallAware to build the installers for their products.

 

What Are You Doing, Embarcadero?

 

At best, Embarcadero is engaging in willful abuse of InstallAware.

At worst…connect the dots above! From a hostile purchase offer that suggests Embarcadero never intended to buy us, to stealing the source codes of ThinAware, the sky seems to be the limit.

 

How Should InstallAware Respond?

 

For now, we’ve stopped hosting web media blocks on the bundled version of InstallAware. Even by the terms of the expired license agreement, we are under no obligation to do so. If you are affected by this issue, contact Embarcadero and ask them to provide you with a download URL for the single file build of the bundled version of InstallAware.

We also declined to activate the bundled version of InstallAware over a 24-hour period, hoping that Embarcadero gets the message:

We will not tolerate Embarcadero’s abuse of InstallAware. Embarcadero have abused our good will and our concern for the well-being of the Delphi eco-system for far too long.

We continue to explore legal and other options to protect our interests in this matter.

While we will do our best to ensure our mutual customers are not affected by this dispute, we may need to decline activations on the bundled version of InstallAware based on how things move forward with Embarcadero.

If you are affected by any of this, please feel free to contact your Embarcadero representative directly.

And last but not least – what would you do if you were in our shoes? Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts, as always.