Grafx out of business

[Richard Wooters]

Hi All,

It would appear Grafx is closed for business.

I went to there website and at the top of the page, has "As of 12/31/2017 GrafX Database Systems Inc. is closed."
http://www.grafxsoft.com/

[Jamal]

Hardly anyone noticed!!

"Richard Wooters" wrote in message
news:77076da1-d77d-464b...@googlegroups.com...

[Wolfgang Riedmann]

Hi Richard,

but they have opened a new company to sell Vulcan.NET, Visual Objects,
Clipper and ReportPro: www.visualobjects.net

Wolfgang

--

[D.J.W. van Kooten]

Replying on message of Tue, 20 Feb 2018 17:46:24 -0800 (PST) from
Richard Wooters:


Hello Richard,

>
>It would appear Grafx is closed for business.
>

What a pathetic "website" Brian made. His first change of a website
since 1998 and he couldn't even create a 1 page websites without
spelling errors.

First he's neglected his paying customers for years, by not delivering
the promised 3-5 updates a year, not communicating, not making any
changes in his websites, not even keeping his NG working for more than
3 days in 2 months. Nothing.

Next, a completely fair request from Robert to corporate ended in a
totally unrealistic sum Robert would have to pay to acquire Vulcan.
Fortunately, anyone can make any software product using legally owned
installed software from others. I don't need to ask Microsoft
permission to create an Excel sheet from a VO application and X#
doesn't need to ask permission to use Vulcan libraries (if installed
legally) to compile a program.

Finally, seeing all his customers going to X#, he starts with accusing
an "X-Contractor" of theft of intellectual property. Probably all VPS
customers should start a website against Grafx demanding a refund of
the last 3 years of VPS money.


And he writes:

"We thank you for your continued support ! "

Yeah, we thank him too for his failing support. With a reasonable
effort for our VPS money from Grafx I and many others would have paid
Grafx for VPS for years to come and Robert would not even think of
starting X# - which is, no doubt, certainly no money maker.

Pathetic.

Dick

[Wolfgang Riedmann]

Hi Dick,

> Finally, seeing all his customers going to X#, he starts with accusing
> an "X-Contractor" of theft of intellectual property.

IMHO the copyright situation of the Vulcan version of the VO libraries
is very unclear. The VO libraries are intellectual property of CA, I
have my doubts they (CA) would ever have acknowledged the use of their
sources in a concurrent product.

I'm pretty sure the X# team does nothing to copy GrafX intellectual
property. When they release their runtime library, theoretically GrafX
had the possibility to check that they have not copied any code. But
since GrafX is now out of business, they have not any chance to take
legal actions.

But anyway, I'm sure nobody from the X# team will do something that
breaks other copyrights - I had enough contacts with them the last
months to be sure.

Wolfgang

--

[Karl-Heinz]

Hi Dick and Wolfgang,

> Finally, seeing all his customers going to X#, he starts with accusing
> an "X-Contractor" of theft of intellectual property.

The main problem i see are the allegations Brian puts into the world: "theft
of intellectual property" and "software piracy". In Germany we call such
publicly raised allegations - if they are not proven - "Rufschädigung" (
reputational damage ). With the help of a lawyer its possible to force the
initiator to delete such written allegations and forbid him similar future
statements - not sure if cease and desist is the correct translation for
"Unterlassungserklärung" ?. The problem here however is, that different
countries ( US / EU ) with different laws are involved.
So it´s not that easy in that case.

regards
Karl-Heinz

[Karl Faller]

Karl-Heinz,
well, at least i think even in the US having an "Impressum" on a
commercial site is mandatory - couldn't see one...

Karl

Regards

Karl

[Wolfgang Riedmann]

Hi Karl-Heinz,

IMHO if there were a small possibility to take legal actions against
XSharp BV, Brian Feldman would not haven closed down the company GrafX
Software Development Tools (or GrafX Database Systems).

At least in the first year of the project, Brian Feldman was a
subscriber on FoX and therefore he could look at the compiler sources.

Wolfgang

--

[Robert van der Hulst]

Karl-Heinz,

You are right, Brian/GrafX accuses us of illegal actions, without proving anything. I compare this with the accusation of someone on his death bed. There is nothing you can do about it. Who should we call for justice to sue for reputational damage? And what would that cost? I prefer to spend our energy to work on new development and helping our customers to create great products with our tools.

Anyway, given the situation that GrafX has closed shop a new and interesting and confusing situation was created:
- Computer Associates had a deal with GrafX Software. Now that that company no longer exists, all the rights for Visual Objects and Clipper are back with CA. But I can tell you that CA doesn't even know who is responsible for these products. I have approached them 2 years ago to see if I could buy the rights to this source code and they had no idea.

- DataPro / Larry Atkins had an agreement with GrafX about sales and development for ReportPro. Now GrafX no longer exists this agreement has ended too. So the copyright and distribution rights are back with Larry Atkins. I know Larry can't want won't work on this.

- GrafX owned the copyright to Vulcan.NET. Now that company no longer exists who has become the legal owner of this product now? And who can sell it ?

The GrafX website speaks about "a new business" without giving any details.
The new sales website of GrafX speaks about "legal copies" of software without disclosing who is behind the website. To me that is in contradiction.
It looks like a fishing website, or a desperate attempt to squeeze some final money out of the Visual Objects community without doing anything in return.

I think this is a sad, sad situation that could have been avoided.
There are no winners here, only losers:

- The VO and Vulcan Customers because GrafX has left a chaotic legal mess.

- Brian/GrafX because he could have come to an agreement with us and transfer his work and walk away from this with pride and money in his pocket.

- XSharp because we are accused of unfounded software piracy by a company that no longer exists.

However there is good news as well. We are making good progress on the XSharp Runtime. In a few months you will be able to run your VO code in X# with a X# runtime.


Robert van der Hulst
XSharp BV
The Netherlands

[Pilks]

I am mostly a watcher on this forum and have been since 1992. I purchased a legal copy of Clipper 5 and then Visual objects and kept up to date until VO 2.7 when I moved on to another platform. I still visit daily to see who is around and what they are up to.
I agree with the others, it is sad to see the animosity and disrespect between former friends and co-workers (one-sided??).
I am very encouraged by the efforts of the XSharp team and have even downloaded and experimented with the latest public release.
I feel for those that have systems that depend on this technology and am happy to see that they will be able to continue with XSharp. I only hope that there will be no more attrition of our ranks due to the situation and that XSharp grows and benefits from the loyal developers that have stuck with XBase all this time.

All the best to Robert and his team. Well done on your efforts so far.

Richard Pilkington

[Marc Verkade [MITCon]]

Good to read and you are right, Brian left a mess..
Good luck, perhaps we'll meet again!
Regards, Marc

"Robert van der Hulst" schreef in bericht
news:c458c018-8435-459e...@googlegroups.com...

[Sherlock]

Robert van der Hulst
XSharp BV
The Netherlands

snip[ Anyway, given the situation that GrafX has closed shop a new and interesting and confusing situation was created: Computer Associates had a deal with GrafX Software. Now that that company no longer exists, all the rights for Visual Objects and Clipper are back with CA. ]

No necessarily.. but an approach to CA they never handed over all the rights to their development and acqusitions. I was at the handover from CA to Brian all those years ago. My understanding it was so they did not have to develop and it lived on.

That situation exists again.. but I am sure Grafx would own what they developed surely.. but maybe the contract does not allow this is company suspended. I would think contract is complete.

But I am not the lawyer,,, but CA legally would be looking for a future and a submission would need to be made to them. But from memory the stuff was handed over so how would it be handed back from the contract if this is what the contract stipulates.

Glad I did not build anything in VULCAN.
Lets hope X SHARP boys can fill the void and maybe CA might lend an ear.

I thank Brian, Grafx team old and older.. for VO2.8.. nice product.

Phil

[Wolfgang Riedmann]

Hi Phil,

> No necessarily.. but an approach to CA they never handed over all
> the rights to their development and acqusitions. I was at the
> handover from CA to Brian all those years ago. My understanding it
> was so they did not have to develop and it lived on.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand completely what you mean.

AFAIK CA stopped the development, but continued to sell both the
product and support for it.
I don't know the details, but they should have passed the sources to
GrafX and should have received a part of the sales money.

In fact, they don't passed the most recent sources they had because at
that time there was a c release in beta (but ready to be released),
with some errors fixed, and these errors were also in the first GrafX
release (2.6), so GrafX had received the last production sources.

I can immagine that the contract defined that even the developments
made by GrafX would remain CA's property (I cannot think that CA had
NOT added such a clause).

> That situation exists again.. but I am sure Grafx would own what they
> developed surely.. but maybe the contract does not allow this is
> company suspended. I would think contract is complete.

see before - for sure CA had protected their interest, but this
contract was made in 2002, and since them many has changed in CA, and I
have my doubts they have the contract anywhere.
And I don't know what consequences the development of a concurrent
product and the use of CA's intellectual property in such a product
would be have - if that would not make the contract invalid (again
something that for sure CA's laywers had considered).

So, if CA decided to give the distribution rights on VO and Clipper to
Xsharp BV, GrafX cannot do anything against because they don't esist
anymore.
Another possibility CA could do: release the Clipper and VO sources as
open source, so the X# team could take them and move them to X#. But I
don't think CA would do that.

> Glad I did not build anything in VULCAN.

I had a few things in Vulcan, but they are in X# now, and much more
projects are developed in X# now.

> I thank Brian, Grafx team old and older.. for VO2.8.. nice product.

yes, after all, VO survived thanks to Brian, and also the Vulcan exists
because of his ideas.
But I think he has made it's money with it, so we don't owe him
nothing, and the times have changed. And sincerely, he has lost its
interest in VO and Vulcan - otherwise he had continued the development
- and maybe also started a new compiler version based on Roslyn.

Wolfgang

--

[Sherlock]

Wolfgang

I am sure Brian never got rich off VO or VULCAN.
It is tough for any small player and team to really make money.

Grafx demise does not impact me as VO does what I want and works fine.
The last legacy systems have been ported over to Delphi and Postgres.

They are now being rewritten in PHP / Wordpress web systems.. Amazon S3.
Lots in C# as well.

The future is all cloud, well that is where the sales are.

The world changes constantly.

Of course will get into X# if I can leverage previous knowledge.
I have never needed DotNET development personally and one of my developers does a lot of C# but the remainder all web languages and techniques.

Tough to sell windows programs now against web offerings and lots of APple users.

Phil

[D.J.W. van Kooten]

Replying on message of Wed, 21 Feb 2018 05:46:09 -0800 (PST) from
Robert van der Hulst:


Hello Robert,

>Anyway, given the situation that GrafX has closed shop a new and interesting and confusing situation was created:

Another interesting question is: did GrafX Database Systems Inc really
close? Or is this to put extra drama on the childish web page (with
404 error etc) Brian created?

Brian's problem has always been: communicating. As Phil correctly
says: he did 'save' VO and no doubt he didn't get rich from it.
Although I do think that extended maintenance of VO would have yielded
more money than creating Vulcan. I think lots of VO programmers are
still using VO, a second (smaller) group completely moved to something
else (C# or web based solutions with PHP and MySQL for example) and
the users who (partly) moved coded to Vulcan is, I think the smaller
group.

Part of the VO users would certainly have paid for extra features and
maintenance, with or without investing in Vulcan. But Brian did not
give us that option.

I am not sure if you can check if an USA based company is or is not
'in business'. Here in The Netherlands you can check that at the
Chambre of Commerce but even if I withdraw my registration there, I
can still have my company (for the tax authorities) - and keep the
rights for everything I bought or created with my company.

So I think GrafX Database Systems Inc still exists so people can rush
to buy a Clipper license from them as Brian announced on his 'website'
(forgetting to add Clipper to the sales options) <g>.

Dick

[apolon...@gmail.com]

Hi, I have not commented in this forum for years.

I applaud what is done by x # but it has the same defect of brian is very expensive: java, c #, node, phyton, php, are free

the correct thing for x # in my humble opinion is that it should be free software,

since 2006 it changes to java although there are some clients with programs in vo2.8 that even I did not know existed ... and they keep running perfectly.

[Otto Christiaanse]

On Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 7:18:55 AM UTC+1, Sonsonora wrote:
> El martes, 20 de febrero de 2018, 18:46:26 (UTC-7), Richard Wooters escribió:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > It would appear Grafx is closed for business.
> >
> > I went to there website and at the top of the page, has "As of 12/31/2017 GrafX Database Systems Inc. is closed."
> > http://www.grafxsoft.com/
>
> Hi, I have not commented in this forum for years.
>
> I applaud what is done by x # but it has the same defect of brian is very expensive: java, c #, node, phyton, php, are free
>
> the correct thing for x # in my humble opinion is that it should be free software,

Hi, XSharp is free. There is however a support program that gives extra support.

[D.J.W. van Kooten]

Replying on message of Fri, 23 Feb 2018 22:18:53 -0800 (PST) from
apolon...@gmail.com:


Hello apolon...@gmail.com

>I applaud what is done by x # but it has the same defect of brian is very expensive: java, c #, node, phyton, php, are free
>
>the correct thing for x # in my humble opinion is that it should be free software,
>

In addition from what Otto says (X# IS free but only premium support
is paid) I don't find that so logically "should be free". I know that
this is the case for quite some programs but how do you think the X#
team and others can make a living if they don't get paid for their
work?

So I'd say: quickly register and install it!

Dick

[Wolfgang Riedmann]

Hi Luis,

please permit me to be a bit provocative:

do you work for free, without taking money?

Unfortunately even the X# development team needs money to live, and to
pay their bills.

The other languages you are mentioned are sponsored by some companies,
and even the PHP company asks money for some tools that give PHP
applications a performance boost.
And the future of Java is not very clear: Sun has lost money for years
with it, and even Oracle was not able to find a way to finance the
development.

So the good notice is that X# can be used freely, even for commercial
purposes. That means that YOU can earn money with it without paying the
people that brought it to you, and that supports it.

My reason to pay the (IMHO very reasonable price) for the FoX program
is very egoistic: for me, my company and my customers the success of X#
is very, very important, and when X# fails, we have a very big problem
that will cost us much, much more money that I will ever pay for the
FoX program.
My company has about 2 millions of lines of VO code, and it is totally
impossible to rewrite that code in another language. X# gives us a
perspective that your code can be moved to the .NET platform and can
live there for another 10 or 15 or maybe 20 years.

So the money invested in the FoX program is spend very well - but, as I
said, everyone can use X# also without paying for it.

Wolfgang

--

[stavros...@gmail.com]

I agree with Wolfgang totally!

We support Fox program for the second year although yet we have not started the VO>X# trip. I like very much what I have seen yet and it helps me feel more secure about the future.

I also would like to help Brian for what he did for VO in the past but I think we was working like being out of business the last years...

Stavros

[Sherlock]

All

I got a price off Robert about a X# a year or so ago. I have a very good C#/VS guy and good at VO as well so he will be my resource to move forward. I only have one legacy app in DBF and this will be replaced in next 18 months with PostGres rewritten system but not in VO.

But there is other work I want to do and .NET could bring a level of collaboration on libraries.

New community,new ideas.

Phil

[apolon...@gmail.com]

Of course I sell my programs and they are expensive but java, node, php, mariadb, jquery, bootstrap and spring mvc are free why pay for some development software? and I am not criticizing them or anything similar, they are just existential doubts.

[Otto Christiaanse]

On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 6:19:37 AM UTC+1, Sonsonora wrote:
> Of course I sell my programs and they are expensive but java, node, php, mariadb, jquery, bootstrap and spring mvc are free why pay for some development software? and I am not criticizing them or anything similar, they are just existential doubts.

Like I said, and others, (why didn't you respond to that), it is free, there is however an extended support program. You are free to download, use etc the free versions.
Even Java, PHP, several Linux distros etc have an additional paid extended support program.

Regards,
Otto

[apolon...@gmail.com]

> Like I said, and others, (why didn't you respond to that), it is free, there is however an extended support program. You are free to download, use etc the free versions.
> Even Java, PHP, several Linux distros etc have an additional paid extended support program.
>
> Regards,
> Otto

.... and there are also millions of free support articles on the internet.

but you're right, I really sell the support. software like mine there are some that are free

[FdW]

Hi All,

Maybe it was time :) and maybe X# will be the winner.

Just wanted to say goodby,
Frans.
www.signatureorigin.com


On Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 2:46:11 PM UTC+1, Robert van der Hulst wrote:
> ...

[Marc Verkade [MITCon]]

We'll see....
p.s. Hey there!
Grtz, Marc

"FdW" schreef in bericht
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