Blog | NewsFire | Avoid.

NewsFire

Slick RSS newsreader.

Version: 1.6 (v84)

[ Views: 527 ]

Avoid.

Feedback Type: Commentary

Contributed by: versiontracker2007 Saturday, December 06 2008 @ 10:37 AM PST

Product Platform: MacOSX

Used Product For: Less than a month

Recommend Product: NO

Avoid David Watanabe products at all costs. Because it will cost you, and more than just the shareware fee.

NewsFire is dead as a duck anyway, which is business-as-usual for Watanabe: steal code, slap a UI on it, sell it at 2 x the going rate, promise bug fixes, don't deliver (due to the stolen code either not being fixed or having its license adjusted to prevent it being stolen), discontinue product without publicizing as such, so that any poor sap who stumbles over it and doesn't know better will hand over money for a dead, abandoned product.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawn_grimes/511696579/

6 of 9 users found this helpful.

Rate this Commentary

Was this Commentary helpful? Yes | No

Comments

Avoid. - younkint

I concur. David Watanabe is the worst developer of Mac software there ever was. His disrespect of customers is the stuff of legend. How MacUpdate and VersionTracker even allow him space is beyond me. The guy is 100% a crook. Totally avoid this scam artist.

Reply to This

Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 11:26 PM PST

Avoid. - bousozoku

I'm confused. It seems to me that NewsFire has been a free product for more than a year. I got it as part of the first MacHeist bundle, which was quite some time ago.

I have no idea about whether the code is stolen or not, but perhaps, some proof should be given for all to see.

Reply to This

Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 12:38 PM PST

Avoid. - xjja

You call it "free" because it's in MacHeist? You need a better definition of the word "free". Maybe one that actually involves zero money being exchanged.

Reply to This

Saturday, July 25 2009 @ 12:51 AM PDT

The stolen code. - xjja

As the other poster said, the crap surrounding Watanabe is legendary. However, if you actually need satisfaction, Google: transmission license xtorrent

The upshot is that Watanabe stole code from Transmission. Although it is an open-source project, there are requirements that developers must satisfy in order to use it. And Watanabe steadfastly refused to. In the end, the Transmission team ended up applying a different license to all new code, and then gradually fully rewriting Transmission (that's why it's gone through some buggy times recently, because they're gradually abandoning all the code that Watanabe was ripping off). Since he cannot actually write any decent code, Xtorrent is now trapped with the old Transmission code that he ripped off in the first place, with nowhere to go, since the new code is under a more enforceable license. So, Transmission gets almost fully re-written (it does leverage some open-source projects, but unlike Watanabe, they do comply with the license requirements) -- all because of one developer with no morals stealing code.

Reply to This

Saturday, July 25 2009 @ 01:02 AM PDT