Hello, Michiel.
Thursday May 19 2011 at 21:47, you wrote to me:
MV> I have tried to contact Charles several times in the past year. Even
MV> tried the "fellow FTSC member" aproach. (He is an ex-FTSC member.) My
MV> objective was to try to talk him into letting go of the source so that
MV> someone else could continue. I never got a reply, I have given up. :-(
Evidently he has his phone number published somewhere that most of us wouldn't
know where to look. I think he's taken the same route that Tim Strike, the
author of Telegard BBS took: I'm making real money now after college, the hell
with the people that use my BBS programs since I'm not making any money off of
it.
I was told by someone that has been around a while and I know I can trust that
Charles specifically had said to this person that a) he had lost the source
code and b) even if he had the source code, he couldn't release it since it
used a couple of commercial programming libraries that were registered in his
name. So I'm hearing two or three different stories from people and quite
frankly, I've lost a lot of respect for Charles since while he's still an
active NC and has an active BBS, he can't take five damn minutes to tell his
paying customers what is going on with his program and/or its support.
Only when I started bandying around threats of wanting my money back did he
bother to show up in this echo, irate at me, and offering me my money back. I
told him then, as I'm speaking now, all I want is the "straight dope" of
what's really happening with Internet Rex.
I can understand that his family and work absorb a lot of his time, but
screwing over people who believed in you when you were a "starving" college
student isn't exactly a good way to conduct yourself and it sure the hell
isn't a good way to treat people who PAID you to have a reasonably NON-BUGGY
program.
How damn hard would it be for him to create a dynamically-linked Linux version
and fix the bugs in the email and FTP server? If he did that and then said,
"Okay, I'm done with Internet Rex", I think many of us could understand. Or
as you said, he could perhaps give the code to someone trusted to continue
developing Internet Rex "under license".
I might have a reputation for being cranky, but it's common sense and the
polite thing to do when it's involving paying customers. At least Tim Strike
had come on my BBS and announced to the world that Telegard BBS software was
dead so we all knew where we stood with it. It's ironic that he'll take
people's money still but won't do anything until he's pushed or pissed off.
I mean, if he didn't want to develop the program anymore and didn't want to
open source it, at least release a "freeware" key so other people can use it.
I don't think it's right for people to pay for software and get zilch for
support.
I know there's several BBS-related programmers in this very echo that while
they do not charge for their programs to be used, I know that if something
happened that they could not develop their programs anymore, they would at
least make an announcement to explain what's going on.
All we get is silence and rumors. Yet Charles gets pissed when he hears of
"key sharing" because most people I know think Internet Rex is DOA. If he was
just fairly active and let people know what's going on, that wouldn't happen
now would it?
I'll leave the subject alone after this message. I think I put my feelings
across pretty clearly on this subject. :) I still like Internet Rex, I still
feel I got my money's worth, but you know, it amazes me that people are still
registering the door and Charles is still doing stuff he was doing ten years
ago.
Later,
Sean
... All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1
* Origin: Paragon BBS - 423.434.0851 - paragon.darktech.org (1:18/200)
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