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Circle Dock / Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« on: August 11, 2010, 11:08 AM »
Sometime on Tuesday night, my time, mouser had a telephone conversation with his server administrator regarding the availability of Circle Dock's executable files hosted by DonationCoder and he instructed his administrator to remove those files. At the same time, he amened my pinned message informing people of the latest version and providing the download links to read "All downloads suspended until further notice". However, his server administrator obviously couldn't be bothered to check which of the various files stored on the dcmembers site were publicly available or were related to the current release of Circle Dock and which files were not. He simply scrubbed my entire space clean, removing ALL files in the process.
Not only did he remove the current (1.5.6) 32-bit and 64-bit executables, he also removed the only backup copy of the source code, some private files pertinent only to "Team Circle Dock", but also two programs that I had recently written and made freely available - "CleanDesktop" and "WallpaperChanger". He also deleted the "live help" section which contains the very latest help and is automatically loaded by a constituent of Circle Dock. These, like almost all the files deleted, were my original work and my sole copyright.
Needless to say I was only informed AFTER THE EVENT. It is fortunate that both gentlemen concerned are not UK-based for if they were, I would be filing a complaint with the Police under the Computer Misuse Act, 1998.
To add insult to injury, he concludes his message to me with the following words "it's not such a horrible thing if the downloads are down for a week."
There is no excuse for way mouser or his server administrator have behaved. Had they requested me to remove those files, I would have done so immediately. Instead they have acted in a rude and overbearing manner and, I believe, it was a thinly veiled attempt to get me to continue hemorrhaging financially by simply making all future versions open source - but so long as they're not hosted by DonationCoder (they wanted the downloads off their servers, remember) - in his words "if you do decide to release the source code for all of your additions and modifications to circle dock, it would be a joyous cause for celebration and would be a happy outcome for dc users." Yes, at my expense.
I've resigned as a moderator of this site as I wish to have no further part in an operation that encourages you one minute and then pulls the rug from beneath you. I can not and will not remain a member of a site such as this which arbitrarily and without warning deletes many months of work. I've also asked/told mouser to return all $192.79 which has been donated to me since September of last year to those who so kindly donated. If you are one of those, please don't think I'm ungrateful but I don't think it is at all appropriate for me to receive those credits under the circumstances. And please, do make sure he returns the money to you - as far as I am concerned neither he nor this site should benefit from unrepaid donations.
There are some good people on this site and many of them have made themselves known in this corner of DonationCoder only quite recently and I wish to thank all of you for your input into recent threads regarding the GPL and the future of the Circle Dock program. Thank you one and all and goodbye.
Mark
Not only did he remove the current (1.5.6) 32-bit and 64-bit executables, he also removed the only backup copy of the source code, some private files pertinent only to "Team Circle Dock", but also two programs that I had recently written and made freely available - "CleanDesktop" and "WallpaperChanger". He also deleted the "live help" section which contains the very latest help and is automatically loaded by a constituent of Circle Dock. These, like almost all the files deleted, were my original work and my sole copyright.
Needless to say I was only informed AFTER THE EVENT. It is fortunate that both gentlemen concerned are not UK-based for if they were, I would be filing a complaint with the Police under the Computer Misuse Act, 1998.
To add insult to injury, he concludes his message to me with the following words "it's not such a horrible thing if the downloads are down for a week."
There is no excuse for way mouser or his server administrator have behaved. Had they requested me to remove those files, I would have done so immediately. Instead they have acted in a rude and overbearing manner and, I believe, it was a thinly veiled attempt to get me to continue hemorrhaging financially by simply making all future versions open source - but so long as they're not hosted by DonationCoder (they wanted the downloads off their servers, remember) - in his words "if you do decide to release the source code for all of your additions and modifications to circle dock, it would be a joyous cause for celebration and would be a happy outcome for dc users." Yes, at my expense.
I've resigned as a moderator of this site as I wish to have no further part in an operation that encourages you one minute and then pulls the rug from beneath you. I can not and will not remain a member of a site such as this which arbitrarily and without warning deletes many months of work. I've also asked/told mouser to return all $192.79 which has been donated to me since September of last year to those who so kindly donated. If you are one of those, please don't think I'm ungrateful but I don't think it is at all appropriate for me to receive those credits under the circumstances. And please, do make sure he returns the money to you - as far as I am concerned neither he nor this site should benefit from unrepaid donations.
There are some good people on this site and many of them have made themselves known in this corner of DonationCoder only quite recently and I wish to thank all of you for your input into recent threads regarding the GPL and the future of the Circle Dock program. Thank you one and all and goodbye.
Mark