As some of you may know, I've started working for a Windows-based software company after a short stint at a Linux company that never paid me after promising to do so for months. The company, Future Technologies, originally employed me way back in June of this year. I was happy to be working again on Linux/KDE, and happily put their company name on some of my KDE work such as Liquid. I gave him hourly updates on what I was doing, and we were both happy with my work. That was way back in June. After sending in my first invoice, Future Technologies' president, Dr. Giovanni Orlando, promised to send me my paycheck by wire. Weeks went by with nothing being sent, and I had to pay my rent. Eventually I insisted that he just FedEx it, a request that resulted in him giving me a fake FedEx number (it never even showed up in the FedEx.com tracking site). Finally he just admitted that he does not have the money to pay my salary. This was almost 5 months ago, and I still haven't seen anything from them.
I understand these are hard times for technology companies, but you shouldn't hire people and agree to their salaries when you can't even pay their first paycheck. Then he strung me along for months saying he'll pay me and never did. I wasn't even making that much money, it was about what an entry-level computer programmer makes. Since I was depending on them being able to follow through on their commitments, I lost my apartment in Chicago and had to hold off surgery that I required (nothing serious, if you must know I had a nasty hernia that I couldn't get fixed because of this).
After a couple months, I understandably removed Future Technologies' name from my software such as Liquid. They never paid for it. I placed a note on the Changelog stating that their name was removed because they never paid my paychecks. All true stuff. Since then Dr. Giovanni has been sending me nasty emails, even going so far as threatening me with hell ("Now all the KDE people and the world knows that I don't pay you. I will pray that god give you want you deserve.") ;-) Sorry, but this is what you get when you screw over people who are supposed to be working for you, don't pay them their paychecks, then lead them on for months. What people like this don't realize is that their employees depend on them to pay their rent, bills, and do silly things like buy food. You can't continually promise to pay their salary for months, knowing that you can't, and expect goodwill from them.
That brings us to the present. I so far have refused to remove the comment on the Liquid style's changelog because it is completely true and is totally legal and legitimate for me to make such comments. Nonetheless since they don't want people to know they cannot meet their obligations to pay their employees, they are trying to shut down mosfet.org.
As of Sunday, 10/28/2001, Dr. Giovanni of Future Technologies has requested that the web host for mosfet.org shut down my site or he will contact lawyers in the US on Monday. Thankfully, these threats are groundless and the host for mosfet.org has refused so far. I originally put up a copy of the email from Future Technologies here, but it has been recommended that I take it down for the time being. I would like to thank my website hosts for their understanding.
Sad and a completely empty threat since all comments made on the Liquid webpage, as well as this page, are completely true and can be verified through email logs. If anything I have a legal complaint with him never paying my salary and back pay. I will not remove the comments, nor will I submit to the threats of this company.
So as you can see, I've understandably haven't been in a rather good mood lately. The good news is I've made up my mind, I'm back coding again, and mosfet.org is being redesigned and will never die despite the efforts of companies like Future Technologies.
Daniel M. Duley
mosfet@interaccess.com