we are looking for mikko the APC plugin developer

Whatever happened, he certainly owes quite many people an explanation, at the very least.

@Ravenor

Thanks for enlightening with the background. I did not know all that....I totally understand that what you are doing is outcome of what Mikko did to his users/clients and I am sure for some you would God send.

But,

I still believe that his code is his intellectual property. I know he failed to meet his commitments but that does not allow anyone to take over his property. Its like I leave my house for 3 months and come back and find someone living in my house. I am pretty sure in the court of law his side will hold and then "your" users/client will be in the same situation as Mikko.

I am glad to see that is working for now for some, and hope it remains like this and when Mikko comes back he is OK with it and the user/clients are happy at the end.

Post edited by: vish, at: 2008/08/11 01:39

All Mikko needs to do is to take 30 seconds to post somewhere saying that he is alive and hasn't abandoned his project. Many of us have bought his product in good faith and have disappointed clients and damaged reputations. We all have dramas in our lives, but when we place ourselves into a position of responsibility to others we need to think of the bigger picture. Hope he is well and that this component takes shape in some form or another. A lesson to all about license keys in an open source world.....................

Time to speak out.

Put it straight, Mikko Ronkko has coded the best CB add-on under the wrong license (property), encrypted the code, set up a paranoid licensing system, had some health issues about 5 months ago, apparently recovered from them and went on the loose ever since.
Personally, i have always found his behaviour a bit too childish regarding the license and its implementation, like a brat who's afraid to get his lollipop stolen.
More than once he has stated his dissatisfaction with the open source model by assuming that most folks do not contribute, which is true, but not valid as an argument. Each one contributes within the realm of his/her knowledge. My little company has contributed to Mikko's pocket a few months before APC became publicly available. Besides some cash, our main contribution back then was to report him bugs we have spotted here and there. Later on, when the extension was released as a closed source commercial extension, we bought a couple of licenses.

Finally, the one who breaches licensing policies and releasing ethics in the 1st place is Mikko himself. APC is a derivative of Joomla, built on the Joomla API (and the CB API as well). Without Joomla it can't do shit. Joomla, as you all know, is released under the GPL, which enforces certain compliance rules for derivative products. This is not exclusive to Mikko (i know of worse cases), nonetheless, and can be regarded as plain money making opportunism.

As a vendor, Mikko has been the most irresponsible one i have ever dealt with.

Unless he has been kidnapped by deers in Lapland since April, there's no excuse for his professional misconduct.

A shame, because the guy has got loads of talent and created a wonderful piece of software.

I still remember the times when he used to be helpful and responsive, whether paid or for free.

This said, i wish joomladevil.com the best of luck. You have my full (though modest) support and appreciation. Soon you can certainly count me among your steady subscribers (this is what Mikko failed to realize; it is possible to make some nice cash from FOSS). You guys took the step we have all been waiting for.


Nuno.

Post edited by: nzimas, at: 2008/08/11 09:42

@beat

It has been almost 2 weeks since you got in touch with Mikko. Is there any chance you can get in touch with him again? And may be make him do something official about his status?

If he really does not care, I would also go with JoomlaDevils and go for APC and then may be try to convince them to take over the ListTab 2.0 project of Mikko too....

Beat

Any luck getting reply from Mikko?