Skramsoft and Faraday Intellectual Property: Skramsoft Project

This page was published on the 14th of January, 2007.

So who owns what software?

There is software owned by Skramsoft. This was written by Jan Skarbek. It includes a Macintosh application called First Cut and written using the now obsolete PowerPlant Application Framework. The First Cut code is based on other code written for an application I have been told was used in movie post-production by Ashley Revell.

There is also software owned and written by Faraday. This includes two kinds of table classes and code that integrates these table classes with Skramsoft's code. There was also a demonstration application for each table class. The first table class was written using a new Application Framework called PPx. The second uses the same obsolete Powerplant Application Framework as used by Skramsoft. This was the most important piece of software produced by Faraday.

Skramsoft later rewrote their application to use the new PPx Application Framework and so its possible they based their new version of First Cut on code that I wrote.

There is a contract written by Faraday and signed by Skramsoft. This specifies that the intellectual property created by Faraday would be transferred to Skramsoft once all invoices were paid. There are two invoices outstanding. Consequently the software created by Faraday remains the property of Faraday. Skramsoft has not disputed this position. Those readers outside Australia should be aware that USA intellectual property law is different from Australian intellectual property law.

When it became clear that Skramsoft was going to use all possible means to justify non-payment it was obvious that they would attempt to attack the quality of my workmanship. In a court of law expert witnesses would be called to give evidence for both sides. As there are very few Macintosh programmers in Australia with the necessary experience this would create some difficulty.

As I believe in defence-in-depth, I executed two counter-moves to frustrate Skramsoft's attempts to discredit my professionalism.

The first counter-move was to have a professional programmer with commercial Macintosh development experience review a representative sample of the code that I had produced for Skramsoft. The review I received was positive. This gave me and my solicitor confidence that I was not deluding myself about my own capabilities. I was less that frank with the person I asked to review the code, as I did not wish to violate the non-disclosure agreement that I had with Skramsoft.

The second counter-move was to continue development of one of the demonstration programs that I had written. It became quite a good video logging program. This had a built-from-scratch XML-based file format and a robust copy protection/user registration system. At the time that I ceased development it was about two weeks away from a beta-release. This software has never been released or shown to anyone. It remains a private Faraday project.

By distributing this program as freeware I expected to be able to obtain feedback from actual users as to the quality of the software. This would be good evidence for the quality of my work.

In the end a public release of this software proved unnecessary. If I wished to produce a commercial prodcut of this kind I would have written it from scratch using Apple's Cocoa Framework.

Skramsoft's counter-counter-move was to claim that the notification letters that I had sent were stalking and caused extreme psychological damage to Jan Skarbek. Skramsoft also claimed that I had stolen their software.

I have never actually had Skramsoft's software in my possession. All work on Skramsoft's software occurred at Jan Skarbek's home office, on his computer.

It occurred to me at later time that the appearance of the video logging application, just a month or two after I finishing working with Skramsoft, might cause Jan Skarbek some trouble. Jan might have had to explain to Ashley Revell how it was that I was able to produce a working application, while he had not. Consequently I have speculated that the stolen software story was originally produced by Jan to "answer" this question.

I found it ironic that it took Skramsoft 8 months to produce a beta version of First Cut, especially as Jan Skarbek claimed on two separate occasions that he was a better programmer than I and able to complete the software in a shorter time. Of course this is unfair as he may have had many other tasks to complete at the same time and he did undertake a major rewrite of the application using PPx. Then again it appears in the end he did not write his own table software, but used Apple's table software instead.

Skramsoft deregistration