Brian Ball of macZOT screws developer out of $5,520

maniacalrage.net — Brian Ball agreed to pay $5,520 for xPad by Garrett Murray - after one month in, he stopped paying, ceased all communication, and found a loophole to get out of his end of the contract. Very sneaky indeed, and I certainly won't be purchasing anything from macZOT again. Jan 4, 2007 View in Crawl 4

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burkesquires Jan 4, 2007

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An option that has not been mentioned here is to vote with our mouses by clicking on the ads on the xPad page so the ad revenue goes to Garrett and it offers a goodwill compensation to make up the difference that Garrett was cheated out of. (This is assuming Garret has access to the revenue generated by the ads)For those who believe Garrett was cheated out of money, do not support macZot and click now!

garrettmurray Jan 5, 2007

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@MajorMauser: When I speak of customers, I speak of people who paid the $9.99 over the three-year period when xPad was shareware. They are people who paid and supported the app, and I had a responsibility to tell them what happened. I stopped actively developing xPad a long while back. I had continual intention to pick it back up, but it never happened to due to other work, life, etc. When I saw the opportunity to sell the app to someone who wanted to continue it, I was thrilled.It might be hard to believe, but I really love xPad and there are a lot of other people who do as well. This wasn't all about money (obviously--$5k isn't much for the 9+ months of work I put into version 1.0), it was about keeping xPad alive even if it wasn't me doing the work. A lot of people used the app and I thought it should be updated, but I didn't have time and Brian Ball came to me expressing interest in buying it so I thought that would be great.I was very clear in all aspects of what Brian Ball was getting. I gave him sales figures, told him trends, estimated how much time he'd need to spend on further development before making money back, all of that. I was very clear. We had many conversations over the period of many days, and the end result was that Mr. Ball decided to buy it. I don't appreciate the argument that I was trying to "unload" junk on Mr. Ball. I wasn't unloading anything. I was very clear with him.So, then, why am I giving it away for free now? This goes back to what I was saying before: I love xPad and I want it to continue. The only realistic way to do this at this point, since I have no time to develop it, is to make it free and open source it and let the community make it better. I've said over and over that this is not about the money. The post that started all of this was written to warn people about unprofessional behavior, apologize to xPad users, and to announce the change to freeware.I hope that helps you understand the situation better.

feynmanfan Jan 5, 2007

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It's more than just a loophole.Imagine the negotiation for this. You're buying a product that you think **MIGHT** be valuable, but you're not entirely sure. So maybe you offer $2000 to buy it outright.The other guy counters with a pay as you go situation; if it looks like it will work out, then you keep paying, otherwise, you can terminate the contract. This arrangement significantly reduces your risk, so you're willing to offer $5500 (or whatever the deal was).This so-called loophole was part of what was purchased - a reduction in risk. I don't agree necessarily, even in hindsight, that it was a bad idea: it depends on what the alternative arrangement would have been. The alternative might have been no deal at all.

theonedigg Jan 6, 2007

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MacZot is DEAD! Long Live Any Other Site not equal to MacZOT!!Avoid MacZot like the Plague...Would be nice if MacZot ceased to exists 3 Months from now...

toecheese Jan 6, 2007

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Dude he is scummy enough to just rename the site. Remember the Camera Digg issue from a year ago? They had multiple sites. He would even try a different name with the developers. It's easy when most of this occurs via email.

alfawolph Jan 14, 2007

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I don't feel sorry for this guy at all. He didn't have a lawyer look over the contract- something you should _always_ do in business. And no, I don't buy for a second he was just "trying to be fair" by leaving that part out. I think he just plain didn't think about it. In the end, he bought himself some sense though and he should leave it at that.

adondr Nov 30, 2007