Craig White wrote:
On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 18:24 -0700, 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?
----
Anyway, I am getting prepped to do something in the db realm and I was
looking at rekall and wondered about that but I want probably what
everyone wants...rapid development, attractive user interface toolkit
that runs on Windows and Linux (possibly just Linux) and maybe MacOS and
obviously stores in something like pgsql and I keep thinking the only
answer is gnue
Craig
I just purchased the full version from totalrekall.co.uk so that my
project can move forward.
I called my bank to dispute the charges with theKompany/Shawn Gordon
we'll see how it goes (grin).
For me it isn't about the money, it's that that Shawn Gordon knowingly
deceives people and think's it's acceptable to do business that way.
If he had posted the version number and such so that consumers could
make an informed decision I would have just accepted that I didn't
read it closely enough.
In my view they misrepresent their current rights:
http://thekompany.com/products/rekall/ :
Rekall is now dual licensed under
the GPL, theKompany and the developers retain commercial rights to
continue to use the code and provide for non-GPL versions to customers
and companies that want it. Rekall will be supported via a community
portal
www.rekallrevealed.org.
The codebase will be available as source tarballs, and CVS access will
also be available for those who wish to stay on the (b)leeding edge.
Feedback, bug fixes and contributions are actively sought. This is
meant to be totally community driven and oriented.
Pre-packeged
versions, commercial licenses, run times and commercial database plug
ins can still be purchased from us
I'll keep you posted how development with Rekall goes, it looks
slightly rough around the edges but will certainly save time.
JD
--
JD Austin
Twin Geckos Technology Services LLC
email:
jd@twingeckos.com
http://www.twingeckos.com
phone/fax: 480.288.8195
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