Screw this

Adam,

I and others tried asking for this politely, both off- and on-list.
That, appearantly, does not work.

The background: I intend to re-implement an open source application for
survey management (no, not /. polls) using a new technology for the front
end. The current application is written in PHP which totally does not cut
it. This application could be a showcase for replacing a web application
at work which is totally transgressing the lines of what a sane person
would attempt in a web-ui. My current choices are:

1) Frameworks like Millstone or Echo{point}. Better than what I have,
   still slow and cumbersome in user interaction
2) XUL. Much better, but complex, and limited to a browser that not
   everyone will have installed by default.
3) Flash. Pretty ubiquitous, good dev. environment, offers the
   functionality I need, but proprietary (and expensive to boot). And not
   (yet) totally geared toward apps, but more to games and animations.
4) XWT, which seems to offer a sweet mix of the good sthing of 1, 2 and
   3, and throws in simplicity.

                                *BUT*

Explain to me why it would *not* be insane to invest large amounts of my own
time implementing it in XWT when I have *ZERO* guarantees that this
will not just drop out of the sky again tomorrow for an undetermined
length of time, without notice, with *ZERO* opportunity to fix it myself
and *ZERO* response from the only person who can, by his own choice. As
we all know, this is hardly a hypothetical question.

It took *weeks* to get a very well-known problem to the launcher/shoehorn
fixed because, essentially, it wasn't broken for you. Offers to fix it for
you went totally ignored. Yes, you fixed it, whoopty-friggin-do,
but while it was broken you couldn't/wouldn't even acknowledge us on
the issue. Looking back to the archives, it would appear you pick up
whatever pleases you, which is your damn good right, and as long as
that's a clear and acknowledged policy I can plan on that (by getting
the hell out. Life's too short).

And besides the now-fixed launcher/shoehorn, the 'trusted' DNS resolver
is *STILL BROKEN*, with not a single statement on if this is *ever*
going to be addressed, and this is appearantly not a priority because,
guess what, it isn't broken for you. Which leaves me in a bind.

So my problems with XWT in a nutshell:

1) A critical piece of XWT, the shoehorn, is not available in CVS, nor
   is any information available on under what terms it *would* be
   available. Not a peep, and frankly, you're categorically dodging the
   question. J'acuse!

2) I hate the 'trusted' resolver for two reasons: it's STILL BROKEN, and
   I don't like centralized control as a matter of principal. Someone or
   something takes it out and guess what, *I* have angry users to answer
   to. It's also going to be a tough sell to my boss, especially since
   he will be a) affected by it since he's behind the same frigging
   proxy as I am, and b) smart enough to snoop through the mailinglist
   to find out instantly that this is a STRUCTURAL PROBLEM.

Go on. Explain to me why choosing XWT is not insane, or tell me to bugger off.
Any which one answer will provide me with solid arguments to choose a route for
my app, and I've been holding off an important client (my girlfriend)
for MORE THAN A MONTH because I told her I had a great solution lined up.
She's getting damn impatient, and dammit, so am I.

Once again, frustratedly yours,
Emile

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