When open source goes bad...

[JD Austin]

I have a client that wants to build a large database application on a 
shoestring budget so I thought I could give Rekall a try
since I heard about it from the teacher in the access class I took last 
year. 
Last month I thought I'd give back to the open source community by 
buying one of the commercially available products.
Sounds good right?
In this case it went horribly wrong.

I purchased the full version and the runtime from 'theKompany' and 
things seemed ok until I got into the thick of it and couldn't get 
things to work.
It just didn't seem 'finished'.. so I went on the internet looking for 
an answer.

That is when I realized that the version that theKompany is selling is 
from 2003! 
There were no warnings/disclaimers on their site, no clue whatsoever 
that I was buying an ancient version anywhere prior to purchase.
I sent several emails to the company before I purchased, they replied 
but never disclosed that important information.

After a little searching on Google I found the open source site that you 
can download the current version from ( http://rekallrevealed.org )
and downloaded the source for linux, compiled it, and ran that instead 
and my problems went away.
Thats when it got interesting.  I sent an email to theKompany asking for 
the current version. 
They said that it wasn't a high selling product and wasn't a high 
priority but they'd get around to it.

After much searching around I found out that their rights to the product 
ended with version 2.2 in 2003, the current version is 2.4.
They don't according to the author in the UK have the right to 
distribute the current version.
To get the new version I have to buy it from http://totalrekall.co.uk. 
The new version works fairly well but the project is a no-go without 
windows runtimes to run it on their windows machines.

theKompany/Shawn Gordon won't refund the purchase - they're taking the 
stance 'you downloaded it, you bought it'.
I've never dealt with such an unethical company in my life!
Anyone else had an experience like this?

JD

-- 
JD Austin
Twin Geckos Technology Services LLC
email: jd at twingeckos.com
http://www.twingeckos.com
phone/fax: 480.288.8195