California Case Update

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Just finished reading it, I would say I'm surprised, but having read horror stories about IB in the past and the recent spate of people "resigning" or "retiring" from VBulletin, it doesn't surprise me at all.

It was good to read Kier's account though, sure did shed some light on how IB operates, which at best, is sickening.
 
Wow. Just finished Kier's declaration.

I firmly believe in a very simple principle in life; if one is competent, logical, honest and sincere to himself and his profession, it is always easy to communicate with people whom you interact with, even if they don't belong to that profession. Being a doctor myself, I have seen my teachers always being able to communicate with the most unknowing and uneducated of patients, because they were able to bring themselves to the level of the patient and make him understand his disease. The same applies to a good mechanic, who can explain the most sophisticated car problem in easy words to a customer, and applies actually to any other profession I know of. What convinces the patient or customer isn't incomprehensible, difficult words...it's the fact that you, an expert in your field, were able to make him, a layman, understand what the problem is.

That is the same feeling I get after reading Kier's declaration...it almost drips of honesty, in absolute contrast to the crap that IB has been throwing so far. My best wishes are with you Kier, and with XenForo. I'm pretty sure you shall come out of this with your heads held high. (y)
 
A piece of software can be made by anyone but once the developers build a bonding trust with customers, he is well on his way to success. That's the sense I have from Kier, more enforced so after reading his statement.

We are with you, Kier and Co.
 
So far the emails I've read communicating after Kier left.... is Kier helping the development still by explaining things? Unless I'm reading it wrong ;p
 
Having reviewed and considered the papers submitted by the parties with
respect to Defendants XenForo Limited’s and Kier Darby’s Motion For Summary
Judgment (“Motion”), and finding good cause therefor, IT IS ORDERED THAT:
1. The Motion is GRANTED.
2. The First Amended Complaint is dismissed with prejudice.
3. Judgment shall be entered in favor of Defendants.
4. As the prevailing parties, Defendants are entitled to seek recovery of
their attorneys’ fees and costs of suit. Defendants shall file their motion for
attorneys’ fees and costs of suit within 14 days after entry of judgment. The
judgment shall be amended to reflect the amount of Defendants’ award.
IT IS SO ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED.
DATED: ________________ __________________________________
HON. MANUEL L. REAL
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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Who else has a real good feeling he will sign and date this :D
 
We reviewed the features of a popular third-party vBulletin add-on called vBSEO, developed by Crawlability, Inc., of Puerto Rico. We noted on a whiteboard a number of the features from vBSEO that we felt would be of benefit and could be developed for vBulletin 4 quickly and easily. At the meeting I took a photograph of the whiteboard rather than transcribe its contents onto paper and emailed a copy of the photo to the other attendees so that they could have a record of the whiteboard, too.
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So IB essentially wanted to steal rip copy functionality from a third party and now claims XF copied stole said functionality from them?
 
Shamil said:
Can we stop with the erratics? I don't think it provides value to this case, and whilst he does have a high return rate, it would be disingenuous to predispose the outcome relevant to his history.
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Yes, it would be horrible if things said here were to jeopardise XF's case at this stage in the game.
 
Man, read through the third party expert's testimony in 80-3 - [Exhibit Deitchle Decl. Exh. A-I] starting about page 61. All I've read from the plaintiff were accusations and circumstantial (anecdotal) evidence. This is technical breakdowns of the different platforms. Good stuff!
 
Long read !
Selling Jelsoft in 2007 was a very smart financial move by Limm / Percival.

Now I know why IB doesn't use vBulletin 4 on it's sites ! They know it was a buggy rushed product. They are waiting for vBulletin 5 too !
 
Its interesting to read the 'expert' they got in to debunk XF's technical expert who compares XF and VB3/4 & comes to the conclusion that there was no code copying between VB and XF. He openly admits to not comparing code, rather stating that the crux of the copyright claim was down to Kier, Mike etc.. reusing the design they originally did for vb4 before the rewrite was axed.

This design & development plan Kier states in his deposition was contained within 1 side of A4 paper! The expert them goes onto detail the software development life cycle (complete with diagram!) and how this was all copied.

This is despite Kier announcing in a VB post in 2008 that it was going to be developed in an Agile manor (i.e. not standard sofware life cycle style).

Anyway, this all reminds me of when Anders Hejlsberg left Borland for Microsoft.

Who I hear you ask!?

Well, in a previous life, I was a Delphi developer, Anders worked at Borland on Turbo Pascal, which was superceeded by Delphi. Delphi was ground breaking at the time due to it being a Rapid Application development tool, similar to Visual Basic, but Delphi was compiled and hence, ran much quicker than Visual Basic. (To this day when I see VB referred to on here "Visual Basic" is always first to pop into my head!)

Anyway, it also included an application framework called the VCL, which is sort of similar to Zend, in so much that it helps speed up development by encapsulating complex or common features in easy to reuse packages.

So, what's this got to do with the court case - well, Microsoft basically poached him off Borland and he went to work on Microsoft J++, forerunner to today's C#. Indeed, some aspects of both J++ and C# can be reconised by Delphi developers as being very similar to features and procedures in Delphi & the VCL.

My point being, Borland didn't sue Microsoft when they released J++ because of these similarities, even though J++ was in direct competition with Delphi & C++ Builder.

IB's main insulation appears to be that XF is built upon the design work done during Kier's time at IB. Judging by the single A4 sheet of paper which comprised the plan, I would have said its very hard to prove this!

Similarly to the Borland & Microsoft situation, Anders left & developed a competitor with Microsoft using his experience gained from his work at Delphi, he's even said as much in interviews. Any developer who works on one product and then goes off and works on another, similar product will more than likely use the experience he learnt the first time and do things along the same lines, but using that experience.

In any case, the code was developed after Kier left IB, so I don't really know how they can claim that XF is their copyright - that's clearly not the case, XF wasn't developed during Kier's time with IB / Jelsoft.

The only grey area is if the court decides that the design aspect was reused, but that requires proof and from scanning through the PACER docs, I didn't see any proof, just conjecture from their 'expert' witness, after all if the 'design' amounted to 1 side of A4, the design was pretty much bullet points anyway and I can't see that taking the 8 months their expert is suggesting. Such a design document would be much, much bigger.

Anyway, we finally found out what was on that whiteboard that Kier photographed - excerpts of which vbSEO features they wanted to put into VB4. Perhaps vbSEO have grounds for suing IB for copyright theft - I'm sure they'll be going over VB's source code with a fine tooth-comb now, if they haven't already.

All in all, I don't know if this will make it to trial or not, I guess it will come down to whether the Judge thinks there is enough evidence to support the defence's argument or whether it needs to be heard before a jury.
 
I was also told that Internet Brands’ lack of involvement with Jelsoft before the acquisition and for a full year after the acquisition occurred in June 2007 was due to Internet Brands’ management’s focus on preparing for a public offering of common stock in Internet Brands.
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creating "shareholder value".....
 
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