What Happened?

[dovy]

@fairwinds @motin @mital

So what happened?! TideKit was in "beta" and being deployed to actual users and you up and disappear? If you really worried about the competitors, why not just open-source the code?

Can we get a refund? We'd really like to get our money back, it has been 2 years since I signed up.

And if not, PLEASE give me the source code. I'll keep it free and the community will make something better.

P.S. Who were your competitors? I don't know anyone who could compete...

Devs, post how much you paid and when so we maybe can get a refund.

[TheBrousse]

@dovy, it might be good to update the thread with the proper Twitter names.

• @fairwinds_dp (but he since canceled his account)
• @mitalvora

[philgin]

Number 436 here. Paid $29 on Feb 21, 2014.

The terms linked above talks about billing and partial usage and since nobody seems to have used it yet (anyone?!), I think it doesn't apply. I need a refund. It's not like I paid much but based on my seat # 436 x $29 = $12,644 rip off from us and that does not even include those who paid $99. I think they actually don't have a product. They're just very good marketeers luring innocent developers. Unless they can prove otherwise!!!!!!! Show us something!

[meeech]

if it's any consolation to people, i am out 500$. live and learn. :S

IMHO at this point, you are better off focusing energy to find framework that works for what you need. You could burn time trying to get to fairwinds et al, but the time/value tradeoff makes it seem not worth it. There are obviously lots of directions you can go now to get the benefits that made you interested in tidekit in the first place. electron, node-webkit, marmalade, corona, fuse, and there's many others that i'm sure i didn't list. I do believe they were genuine in their desire to make it, and just didn't get organized correctly, and we're maybe a bit unrealistic in their expectations and what they promised. reminder: when it was tidesdk, both fairwinds and mital were contribs, and were part of the group actually pushing it forward. So I don't think it wasn't a case of "good marketers luring innocent developers" as @philgin puts it

[ThinkDevStudios]

maybe at the time of tidesdk but with tidekit it only shows that they had nothing up to 2015. Its just that it became more obvious of what they are actually doing. If they were really able to start tidekit they could have easily shown a video of the tool itself working. but they never did it because they had nothing to show. Its actually a good thing though that they already closed down so nobody else will be on the same situation as we are right now. I think its very unprofessional. They owed as a beta and a 30 DAY Trial of their vaporware but instead of showing a proof. they just bailed out just like that. They need to pay for what they did. I propose a class action law suit for this guys. It would be a shame if they used our money for other project. Plus if they were able to get away with this. I am prettty sure that they will be doing this again with another project using a different name or something.

[ThinkDevStudios]

By the way. I paid for $99 and im on #979.

[meeech]

@rovillesarate I'm not saying it was good or right. its basically a failed kickstarter

[philgin]

@meeech is right. For me, I've already found an alternative a few months ago when I lost hope in tidekit. I actually made my TideSDK codes run on nwjs and cordova with just a few tweaks. I agree that they might have started with the right intentions until they are pressured when they started collecting but they shouldn't have quit. It only makes them look very bad. They keep telling the users of TideSDK to keep using it with the promise of the great TideKit. Frankly, I had delayed lots of my projects because of this. TideSDK was great but it had 1 big flaw: window.error event handler (that was all I need. I didn't care about the old webkit and stuff. I actually prefer it over chromium on TideKit). Anyway, I hope they will open source it to show that they actually have a good intention. There's nothing to loose now since they have collected a lot already which I hope is more than enough compensation from us.

[JonKernPA]

At some email communication early on, they referenced "lawyer recommendations" about various technical/proprietary things. My "Spidey Sense" was up back then, as it was so early on to be driven by legal crap. Wonder what the lawyers say now?

[philgin]

I'll give them some time to think straight and communicate with us but until then, I agree with @rovillesarate about the class action lawsuit.

[ThinkDevStudios]

If you actually read through this thread. Someone mentioned about @fairwinds bringing up a ticket at Webinos. When i check webinos. I found out that its actually similar to what they are trying to achieve at Tidekit. Webinos is opensource. Maybe, this is the one they are trying to get recommendations from their lawyer. But if you do check webinos. This project isnt done yet. So again. Promising to something you have'nt done or created yet is BAD. specially when you took money from people who taught that you were already half way through the development. if you can still check their old site from timemachine. You can clearly see that their roadmap stated that they were already atleast 75% on the development. And when people started to ask question about what happen. They just bailed out plus taking out even the repos of tide sdk. If they really was able to finish something from this project. I think they owed the people that paid atleast a proof what they actually promised. not finishing the project is different from not actually starting it and then asking money for something that never existed. IT is pure scam. Thats the reason why we are mad. It was never about the money. Its basically how we were left on the dark then just bailed out just like that plus taking out even an open source repo. That is just LOW!

[damienstanton]

I paid $29 back in January. I was #812 in line.

[ThinkDevStudios]

This is what made us pay $29 or $99. Coz we taught they were on something. Yes we were never promised of getting the actual software. But they promised a beta of what? It clearly states on their roadmap where they at. but to get mad with the community for asking where they are with the developments and asking for some proof. Instead of showing a video or just a tiny sample they just decided they cant take the heat anymore and decide to bail out. I think their competitors are not geniuses that will be able to know the actual code for just viewing a video.

Their action speaks louder than what they are actually posting on their site and by the way, there already been groups from kickstarter that got suid for not delivering their promise. They need to pay for their actions so that they wont be doing this again.

[damienstanton]

I can't speak for others but my main gripe is not that they bailed out necessarily (must have just not been a good product to begin with), but that per the agreement I should have gotten something for my money. I paid for early access to a beta, and nowhere in the terms does it indicate that they can keep my money if the beta never materializes and the company vanishes.

[philgin]

by the way, I also have a fork https://github.com/philgin/TideSDK. I think I forked this after the latest beta as I somehow suspect this was gonna happen. :(

[prashaantt]

@philgin Do you, by chance, also have a dump of their downloadable API docs? It's a pain to get it back from the archives.

[alexweber]

+1 for wanting my money back, this is ridiculous. And shutting off emails and twitter account just cowardly.

[cobalamin]

"CoastalForge Inc., founded in November 2012, will launch TideKit later this week, making the platform available to developers worldwide." -- in January 2014: http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1176990-tech-startup-aims-to-ease-way-for-apps

lmao

[ErickRodrCodes]

Basically what I will do is to get as much gits mirrors and merge them into a main fork, so we do not loose TideSDK.

Documentation can be found here http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/# and I don't care about mobile, but desktop apps, so I was able to retrieve how to build TideSDK:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5ShMWKuE9-YJ:https://github.com/TideSDK/TideSDK/wiki/Windows7-x86-2010-Express+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Hope this helps you guys to build your own tidesdk app. If I'm succesful building tidesdk, I will publish the full tutorial in youtube. this will make sure we can be able to understand the core code and how to modify it in our benefit.

[rwdim]

@philgin , what did you choose as an alternative? I have checked out electron and kivy, the latter is python based and works on desktop and mobile, but to what extent I am unsure.

Thanks - R

[damienstanton]

@rwdim I have some experience with Kivy (built a toy game to learn the process). It's a solid development tool and is probably the closest thing I've found to Electron/NWjs etc. in the Python sphere.

[rwdim]

from what I have garnered, TideSDK worked by using a cross platform "kernel" application, along with "plugins" that provide platform-specific language-specific access (php, javascript, etc.) and when bundled together (the "build" process), make an app that works cross platform.

This is Appcelerator, which was the foundation of TideSDK before the Appcelerator guys dropped the licensing of the Titanium engine (see fairwinds_dp ask about it here ) >> https://developer.appcelerator.com/question/137934/tidesktop-kroll-licensing--lack-of-appcelerator-support-leaves-tidesdk-transition-in-question

This leads me to believe that BOTH parties split (Appcelerator, TideSDK) from (at least) the original krol portionl, forking and maintaining it seperately as they both tried to create the same platform.

https://tidesdk.atlassian.net/browse/TIDESDK/component/10101/?selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:component-summary-panel

Given this, my hunch is that TideSDK could not secure the licensing they needed. I have no formal knowledge that this is the case, but given the tone of the message thread between Appcelerator and @fairwinds_dp , I'm guessing there was a fair bit of bad blood between the two parties.

David (@fairwinds), I'm going to ask this of you.... Come back. As a group we can work this out. Some of us have connections that you did not try to tap. Come back, retain ownership, and open this project up so we, as the community you claimed us to be, can fix what needs to be fixed, and make it all work.

Randy

[Paratron]

Hey guys, I've took a look and crawled out the open source repos of TideSDK from github. It looks loke none of the opensource repos got deleted, only the repo that hosted the TideSDK website from github somehow got under the wheels during the shutdown of TideKit. So here is what I found:

TideSDK https://github.com/fairwinds/TideSDK

TideSDK Developer (a compiler app) https://github.com/fairwinds/TideSDK-Developer

TideSDK Documentation (online under: http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated) https://github.com/fairwinds/TideSDK-User-Docs

---

@rwdim You are right! TideSDK in fact is the opensourced Titanium Desktop. The docs have been made by me back then in an efford to convert the old Titanium docs to something we can work on with. Sadly the TideSDK project died very quickly.

I final not to everyone: Do not build anything upon TideSDK. Its just very very old and outdated and your applications will run very unstable. I strongly recomment to switch something else - for example node-webkit (I did so for my apps), or someone of the projects @meech mentioned above.

[philgin]

@prashaantt here's a copy of the docs the I have http://philgin.com/TideSDKDocs/#!/api

[philgin]

@rwdim I ended up using nwjs (node-webkit) with @jyapayne's packager https://github.com/jyapayne/Web2Executable I then used the free part of the MSI tool on http://www.advancedinstaller.com/ for distribution on windows

[rwdim]

@philgin Thanks! Any project that is Python based is cool with me :) I'll check it out.

[rwdim]

@damienstanton Thx! I am using it now to build a mobile app for one of my sites. Fingers crossed! :)

[dovy]

Hey all, setting up a new GitHub org, TideKit-Community. About to finish putting up the old site and merging in a fork of the last version of TideSDK.

That way things can at least stay up.

[dovy]

@philgin care to get me a copy of those docs? Would love to host them on GHPages for that org.

[Paratron]

@dovy The docs hosted on the multipart.net server are out of Davids control. They're hosted by an old opensource contributor of the TideSDK community there. Nevertheless it won't hurt to mirror them ;)

You can simply fork the docs repo I posted above. I have documented the process of how to build the docs from the repo in the README file.

[philgin]

@dovy here's the repo for the docs http://philgin.github.io/TideSDKDocs/

[ErickRodrCodes]

Im trying to build tidesdk with VS11.0 and scons 2.3.5, and I need to find this file:

http://tidesdk.multipart.net/thirdparty/tide-win-x86-v2.tgz

So far somebody can help me finding this file? I need it to get this deployed properly.

[tpisto]

Christian Becker maybe needed the money for http://wearekiss.com/about-us to build http://insite-feedback.com/en/. Hope that we all get lifelong access to it since we paid it.

[ErickRodrCodes]

nah... I think I will move to electronjs... Seems it has everything I need and I only need to change my core functions which is a real relief.

It does not mean TideSDK/TideKit are left behind as soon we can get the source code.

[Paratron]

I can understand that people are angry, but @tpisto would you please stop linking to MY companies?! Wearekiss and InSite is NOT RELATED to anything that happened with Coastalforge and/or TideKit. I was part of the TideSDK opensource team (I set up the docs) and am even active here and try to clear things up and carry the spilled resources together and again have to see blackmailing against MY companies!

Christian was the most present face, because he was the guy who talked to the customers. He never saw a single cent of the money that has been collected from beta signups. Yes, he is my partner in that companies and thats because I know him for many years and I trust him far better than I would trust myself. Talk to him, he will certainly respond to any mails or tweets he receive because he's the last one to try and muck someone or steal money. He's neither the one to blame, nor the one to let out your anger against. But he's very surely someone you can have a calm talk with.

[ErickRodrCodes]

I agree with @Paratron, Is not related and angry itself won't solve the issue @tpisto, let's hope that the main responsibles (CEO and Founders) can tell us more and give us more details, possibilities of refund and even to get the current sourcecode as opensource for community development.

[dovy]

I agree with @Paratron. I am frustrated with @fairwind and @mital only until we learn more, but being belligerent won't help anything.

I was in a company that failed, it is quite frustrating. We will not get out money back, but I would like a strait answer as to what happened and hopefully get the code. ;)

[ThinkDevStudios]

Yup. I agree with dovy. Getting the money back will just result to a dead end. I also want straight answers plus the source code. Since they already abandoned the project it would be pointless to keep the code. Might as well make it open source to make it useful. Atleast there is no need to check with the lawyers for licensing issues.

[materazu]

But, if they are acting as their online content, they probably burn machine ...

[rupertlssmith]

You have to wonder.... was it all a scam?

[matthew-dean]

Man, from the very moment TideSDK was thrown under the bus and everything migrated to TideKit, this project had failure written all over it. It sucks for people who bought into the hype, but there was no proof of product nor progress at any point. I followed the project since it was Titanium Desktop through to open-sourcing and renaming to TideSDK through this debacle. This, unfortunately, was an obvious and inevitable outcome.

On the plus side, it's a great case study for open source horror stories and what can go wrong with "community" projects, even if they have great potential and a lot of buy-in.

[tsimms]

$99 on 3/2/14 - 00477. Yes to lawsuit. Looking into node-WebKit for my needs.

[rwdim]

Negative on legal.. just add the entire group to your DNH and KoS Lists... that's Do Not Hire and KICK on Sight... any misunderstanding of those acronyms that results in anything other than hiring or kicking is not my fault.

[petermonte]

Hello Peter Monte, Thank you for reserving your front seat. This statement details billing for your reservation ticket:

TideKit Reservation Ticket Peter Monte

Pioneer $99.00

Total: $99.00

We've billed your credit card ending in the last four digits XXXX for the amount of $99.00 USD. Your order number is #7A02A0AE05. CoastalForge is the creator of TideKit. That's why billing and payments are handled by "CoastalForge Inc".

If you have any questions, simply reply to this message or address your email to payments@coastalforge.com

Best—

Bill Fischer

---

There are three people, that I know of, that received money or managed it: David Pratt Christian Becker, CXO @ CoastalForge Bill Fischer, Account Manager

[petermonte]

Both David and Mital hold an account on Google Plus

https://plus.google.com/107505358900213140152/posts https://plus.google.com/+MitalVora1/posts

[itsmueller]

I really would like to know if they coded even one line ...

[itsmueller]

most probably they simply took our money and had a good time at bondi beach ....

[zoltanradics]

I have paid $99 for the Pioneer access. I have sent them several emails, somethimes got response, sometimes not.

Any chance to reborn TideSDK project with the documentation and downloadable TideSDK Developer application. (has anyone the sourcecode for TideSDK Developer application?)

[julkue]

That's mad....

[rupertlssmith]

I also gave them $99. I'm not too bothered about it, I saw it more as a crowd-funding contribution, than as payment for something concrete. That is to say that, I was aware of the risks of paying for vapour ware before parting with the cash.

If the code really exists, they should now open source it all, and help the community TideSDK project come back to life.

TideKit Reservation Ticket Rupert Smith

Pioneer $99.00

Total: $99.00

[TheBrousse]

I'll just leave this here in case any of you want to get in touch with them directly.

David Pratt Co-Founder, President & CEO https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=219303547

Mital Vora Entrepreneur https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=16974149

Christian Becker CXO https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=148294770