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January 5, 2007

software

Lesson for the day: Don’t sell to MacZOT

Posted Jan. 5, ’07, 5:11 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Software

xPad Garrett Murray, developer of xPad, recently sold xPad to Brian Ball of MacZOT. It turned out to be a total disaster.

I sold the application and all related files, source and rights to Brian Ball of macZOT. Here are the simple details of the contract:

  • He agreed to pay me a total of $5,520 USD all rights and materials (including the website)
  • I agreed to consult (without developing code) on the project for a minimum of 50 non-scheduled hours over the period of 12 months
  • We agreed to monthly payment terms—since he didn’t want to pay completely up front—which involved a two-month initial payment and then payments of $460 per month for 10 additional months
  • I also agreed not to create, distribute or pitch a product that directly competed with xPad for 12 months

Sounds pretty fair to me. That was good until Brian stopped making payments. Unfortunately, the contract included this clause:

If the buyer fails to make a payment after 90 days, this contract shall be void and terminated at which point all rights and license will revert back to the seller. At such a time, the buyer will no longer have rights to publish or use any of the materials covered in this contract. No refund will be made to the buyer.

Brian turned control back over to Garrett perfectly legally, but that’s weasel behavior. Totally immoral. Not cool in the least. There’s no way to prove it, but someone claiming to be Brian posted on Digg basically claiming the application was overvalued to begin with and that Garrett ripped him off. Nice spin.

The way he’s handling this alone is enough to make me completely lose respect for him. I think I might learn the lesson to not buy anything from MacZOT.


4 Comments

DarthMac said:

I've been following this story as it unfolds.

I've deleted my MacZOT RSS feed.

Maybe this sort of behaviour is why MacAppADay turned into MacAppEveryThirdOrFourthDay.

If you want a piece of shareware buy it from the developer.

January 5, 2007 5:34 AM
James said:

After being burned by Brian, Garrett turned around 1 month later and stopped selling xPad. He then refunded the money to all the people who bought the software through him in the previous month and turned the product open source.

I don't know the full reason for doing this, but I imagine it had to do with the fact that Brian continued to sell the product even after the breach of contract was disclosed.

I can understand defaulting because you don't have the money, but who is to prove that Brian didn't sell extra copies of xPad after the 90 days, making all proceeds illegal. I suggest anyone who bought it through MacZOT should contact their credit card company and tell them that they want a refund because MacZOT was selling stollen goods.

Who's to say Brian hasn't done this before and won't do it again?

January 5, 2007 5:55 AM
Lonnie said:

I would have been willing to give Brian the benefit of the doubt - BUT - watching how he flooded the market with xPad licenses before it was defaulted back to Garrett seems like a low thing to do.

He was practically giving away licenses at MacZOT to help sell other items - mysteries, etc.

This combined with some shady actions with macZOT purchases has made me lose all respect for Brian and macZOT.

January 5, 2007 9:39 AM
Stacey said:

I agree... I'll never get anything from MacZOT again... one good thing that came from this for me, I found Garrett's podcast. Man, it's great stuff!

January 5, 2007 11:39 AM

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