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Teknidermy Magazine - Issue 2 , Vol. 1
January/February, 2001

Kiss the Frogboy (He's Really a Prince..)
An Interview with Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell
Interview by Migellito

Brad Wardell, also known as Frogboy, is the CEO of Stardock, the company behind WindowBlinds and Desktop Objects. Tek Reporter Migellito got an opportunity to talk with Brad about the past, the present, and the future...


Tek: How long has Stardock been making software?

Brad: Since 1993.

Brad: In 1993 I founded Stardock as a way to get through college. I soon began writing a game for OS/2 called Galactic Civilizations.

Tek: You still offer that game, don't you?

Brad: The game and its derivatives did so well that I made Stardock my "real" career after college. For OS/2, yes. We're working on a Windows version now.

(www.stardock.com/products/galciv)

Tek: Many skin designers may not realize how many products Stardock actually produces.. could you run down a quick list?

Brad: Sure.

In the OS/2 days, we made quite a few games and utilities -- on the game side we made Galactic Civilizations, Star Emperor, Avarice, Trials of Battle, Entrepreneur, and the OS/2 version of Links Golf.

On the non-game side we made Object Desktop, Process Commander, OS/2 Essentials, PMINews and PlusPak.

Around late 1997, we began migrating our development to Windows since the OS/2 market was in decline.

Our first Windows product was Entrepreneur for Windows (a game). The second product was Object Desktop for Windows. We decided that the best way to do that was to divide up Object Desktop into its component pieces (which is something OS/2 users had wanted us to do on the OS/2 version).

So we could sell each component individually as well as part of the whole "Object Desktop".

Thus, the pieces of Object Desktop became pretty well known on Windows -- WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX (now), WindowFX, ControlCenter, etc.

Tek: was it easier or better writing the titles for os2? how is win different?

Brad: The OS/2 APIs are definitely better than the Windows APIs. But Windows has much better tools available for it. So it ends up kind of a draw overall. The main problem on Windows is that there are two very distinct versions, the Win9x/WinME versions and the WinNT/Win2K versions.

The Win9x versions are not stable and cause lots of problems. The NT versions are very solid. So people using software on Win9x are much more prone to have problems that they tend to blame on the program instead of the OS. OS/2 provided a single platform that was very stable and consistent.

Tek: i myself run wb and icon packager on NT.. very transparent and solid. Microsoft is planning a convergence with windows as well.. how do you think that will affect you?

Brad: This will definitely be helpful to us. First off, it's a lot less of a paint to support NT based platforms. SO much of our resources are wasted having to work around problems in Win9x.

Secondly, the APIs in WinNT have more features, especially visually. You don't hear about WindowBlinds problems much on WinNT systems, it's virtually all on Win9x. It is painful when we hear someone say "I tried WindowBlinds and it was buggy." becase we know WB isn't buggy, but Win9x and its drivers and such can be problematic at times. Though for most people luckily on Win9x, it works fine.

Tek: I've heard a lot about the problems with win9x arising from it's 'shell' nature, or the interaction of the os with the x86 chip.. do you feel this is part of the cause?

Brad: The main problem with Win9x stems from its resource handling. All programs use two types of resources: GDI and "User" resources. They can only have 128K of these resources total no matter how much ram is on the system. Many many programs leak resources (including Explorer itself) when they repaint.

Programs like WindowBlinds can cause programs that leak resources to leak them more often. Not a lot more often but most people don't pay much attention to their resources and would be shocked to find out that after loading of Windows and running a few programs that they're down to under 30%. When you get under 20% free resources, crashing can occur. So a program that leaks a few resources can make the difference between teh system being "stable" and "unstable".

If MS had eliminated the resource issue, I suspect that most problems would go away.

Tek: i see.. as in NT, where i notice many programs load a bit larger, but almost never leak. continuing with microsoft, i assume you've been keeping tabs on the anti-trust case with some interest.

Brad: Yes.

Tek: one of the things microsoft is up against are claims that they've pressured 3rd party developers, or taken them over. have you ever felt any heat in this direction?

Brad: Hmm. Not really. Though our relationship with Microsoft is a tricky one. They tend to "innovate" by taking other people's ideas and implement them poorly. ActiveDesktop, for instance, was a rip off of Pointcast. Pointcast is now out of business.

They often "innovate" only in areas that there are people already there. You don't see too much "innovation" on information environments or distributed computing, two big areas because no one has really done much there. But you bet the second someone does something in those areas, MS will suddenly discover a need to "innovate" in that area.

Tek: currently, they appear to be 'innovating' with OS theming, with developments on their Whistler OS. How far do you think this will go?

It's hard to say. Their current "Visual style" format is pretty modest. If they continue on that path, it shoudl help us as it will help introduce people to the concept of customization. Obviously, if they go and make something that is just like WindowBlinds, that woudl hurt us but that would require them to greatly greatly expand what they are currently doing.

To use an analogy, right now, they're putting WordPad in the OS while we make MS Word. This helps us. But who knows, maybe in Windows 2005, they'll keep expanding it. Though it's not likely they'll ever expand it to where we are because of all the additional functionality we provide that they're not likely to get into.

Tek: do you think they might stay away from WindowBlinds level simply because of their concentration on the 'typical' user?

Brad: I think it's more of a compatibility perspective. I mean, how much "stuff" do you add to the OS?

Tek: True.. of course, that brings to mind the current developments with Mac OSX. It's shaping up to be a very 'internally' customizable system.

Not really, Apple has made it clear that they don't intend to make it easily customizable. MacOS X, for instance, will break Kaleidoscope, the one successful "skinning" program on MacOS. Consider that contrast from Microsoft who has actively FIXED bugs in Windows that were hampering WindowBlinds in particular instances.

Put another way, WindowBlinds on Whistler may not need an exclusion list except for extremely rare cases. Whereas Apple is closing the door on third party customization.

Tek: do you see windowblinds as a 'colleague' of kaleidoscope?

Brad: We don't have any relationship with them.

Tek: i see.. what began your interest in customizing the look and function of windows?

Brad: Well we started doing it on OS/2 back in 1994. The idea is that users should have more control over how their systems function. on OS/2 first and now on Windows, we want to give users the power to make their PC into a "black box" that looks and functions exactly how they want it to and not how IBM or Microsoft decides.

Tek: [nods] how often do you change the way your own system looks?

Tek: and might we trouble you for a screenshot?

Brad: Sure. hold on.

Tek: no problem :)

Brad: http://pooh.stardock.com/brad-nov00.jpg

Tek: great! thanks :) i'll take a quick look. Have you thought about creating interface modifications for other OS's, or other genres? My digital cable screens aren't very interesting :)

Brad: hehe. Well, we're pretty much sticking with Windows. We had looked at things like Linux and BeOS but the problem is how competitive this market is going to be getting.

There are companies like Neoplanet with tens of millions of dollars in venture capital who just focus on making a skinnable web browser. We don't want to spread our resources too thin.

Tek: That does make sense.. the ethernet port on the back of my cable box looked so intrigueing though.. lol. You mention the competitiveness of this market being on the rise. Where do you see the future of GUI modification heading?

Brad: Well I tend to see other companies eventually jumping in with competing "environments".

You won't find someone competing with say WindowBlinds but instead larger companies providing really complete solutions that allow individuals and corporations to customize Windows completely.

Right now, what is the difference between a Gateway and a Dell? The price and that's about it.When these environments begin to take off, what they provide as an environment will be what matters. Afterall, the real difference between a Macintosh and a PC is really the "environemnt" they offer.

Right now, Object Desktop is the only complete environment available.That's why we're very careful in how we work with users, skinners, etc. Because it sets a precedence. For instance, we have made it clear that when someone uploads a skin to us, it remains the property of the skin author. It doesn't become our property.That way, if some big company comes in, they will have a harder time in usurping the rights of the skinning community if those who came before them gave priority to preserving the rights of the skinning community.

Tek: That's very community concious thinking. Do you see the health of the skinning community as directly related to the health of Stardock?

Brad: Definitely. It is very important that everyone involved in skinning succeeds this early on. We've put a lot of work into helping third parties get coverage. For instance, there was a Wired magazine article on the skinning community late summer which we had put a lot of effort into making sure they were aware of all the other programs out there that skinned.

There is an article we use as the basis during our pitches to the mainstream media for instance called the dekstop revolution that talks about lots of other progrmas that do this:

http://www.stardock.net/article_guirev.pdf

And we work with third parties to get our programs to work closely with theirs. For instance, we've been helping Winstep make NextStart be able to include WindowBlinds skins with their program so that if their users have WindowBlinds installed, it will change the WB skin running when they apply a NextStart skin.

Tek: [wow]

Brad: The *business* reason for doing this is that when we approach a magazine or corporate buyer, we need to demonstrate that the skinning movement isn't some sort of niche hacker thing. That it's a growing, healthy market. So then I can point to Winstep or Hoverdesk or Thematic or whomever and say "See, it's not just us, there are thousands and thousands of people contributing to this market and millions of people using these things.

Tek: Excellent foresight, I must say.. there are many markets which would be better off today had their early history been like this. You said above that OD is the only complete environment available. Some might say that shell replacements like LiteStep would qualify as well. What is the difference on a 'day to day' end-user level?

Brad: good question...lemme think about that

Tek: sure :)

Brad: Litestep is a shell replacement, it's not really an environment in itself. That would be like saying DesktopX, by itself was an environment.

Litestep is a piece of the puzzle but for a complete environment, you still would need a GUI changer, an icon manipulator, a system behavior modifier, and quite a few other things. Also, while I like Litestep, it is exceedingly hard for a casual user to use it or modify a theme made for it.

You're not likely, for instance, to see a Library using Litestep as their UI for letting people use their machines.

Tek: True :) Finally, I'd like to ask if there's anything else you'd like to cover, and also a general interest question: Is there a big concrete building somewhere with a 'Stardock' sign on it? It's hard to know sometimes in this market :)

Brad: hahah. Yea, there is a big concrete building with a Stardock sign on it.

Our head quarters is in Livonia Michigan. If you're ever in the area, feel free to stop in. We're also still the HQ for the Detroit area OS/2 user group.

Teknidermy thanks Brad for Taking the time to speak to us. If, by some wild course of events, you have never been never been to the Stardock Website, by all means, head right over and see what your computing environment could look like...

 

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