Stef, you were right to warn us about that guy, he approached me as well, but I somehow have a feeling to detect such suspicious "business" people in advance so I declined upfront.
Best regards Janko On 03. 03. 2011 19:46, Stéphane Ducasse wrote: > Hi guys > > Marcus was mad against me that I sent this mail public but I TAKE > RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS MAIL! > I was ***really*** thinking before sending it. I send this mail to protect > our community. > > In the Ruby community, YYY XXX (not our guy) was asked to leave the Ruby > community by both Matz and DHH, and that's after he was asked to leave the > PHP community by Rasmus. > > Stef > >> Hi guys >> >> I do not like to do that but in the past we got problems with Merik >> Voswinkel. So I would like to warm you against >> him. Several of you got approached and my advice is run away. Here are some >> simple facts that happened to us. >> >> Stef >> >> From Lukas: >> >> Starting in 2007 Merik contacted various people from the Smalltalk community >> offering them to take part in his startup. His projects and goals constantly >> changed and nobody quite followed what he wanted to do. When he discussed >> with me it was a mash up of Pharo, Seaside, Pier, Cola, and Croquet all >> running on some custom cloud hardware ... >> >> Merik was working together with a "fake" research institute that only >> existed as a website. I also learned that Merik is broke and lives from >> support of the dutch government. Merik aggressively applies for venture >> capital and writes huge proposals with weird ideas. On some of these >> proposals (that I found on the web) he added Avi Bryant and myself as key >> team members (with picture, bio and all), even if we both never accepted to >> do anything with him. >> >> >> From marcus: >> We got a note from the local organzier that a "Venture Capitalist" wanted to >> attend ESUG and we could even use his Boat for the social event. But >> strangely, this Venture Capitalist was not able to pay 400 EUR to attend. >> But he was not able to say that. (we later learned that he is living of >> social wellfare... so it would have been no problem to get him a free >> entrance). So he offered to make videos. With very expensive "Professional" >> equipment. >> >> Later it turned out this kamera was actually the one of the guy organizing >> the remote croquet talk, and he got somehow pissed too because Merik >> promised him something for the camera use... >> >> Of course, Merik did have to operate the "Professional" Camera himself (not >> often, maybe a day he did?). We had to threaten him violently to get the >> completely useless tapes. (which are in some strange format and unprocessed). >> >> so, that's Merik. >> >> He was sending around "Business Plans" to people using team members that >> never agreed. For example Lukas was used like that. If Lukas does not >> object, I can send these "professional" business plans.. so you can ROFL, >> too. >> (Lukas an me did a course right at that time about venture funding: >> http://venturelab.ch/, so we know a little bit about these things...) >> >>> Then people could hack his machine on his seaside hosting because the ports >>> were open so :) >> No, he was running seaside with development tools enabled. He is completely >> clueless. >> >> So pay attention. >> >> Stef > > > -- Janko Mivšek Aida/Web Smalltalk Web Application Server http://www.aidaweb.si
