When open source goes bad...

[Jared Anderson]

JD Austin wrote:

> 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
>
I paid for a Mandrake Membership a few year back when they were* 
desperately searching for capital.  Beside a bottomless can of spam, I 
have no idea what this membership provided that was not already 
available elsewhere for free (not that spam is scarce or expensive). ;-)