Copyright theft

[Jean]

I have enjoyed make free astrology software for more than 40 years. But every now and then things happen that are not so pleasant. For example, for 20 years I worked for the nvwoa, a Dutch society for scientific research in astrology, for free and for nothing. I made all kinds of modules for different members to support their research and also further requests. For instance i did a lot of work for the former president making software to aid their research.

With my software comes a user agreement, which says that you cannot make money from data from my software without my permission. And yet that happened, last year I found out that one Wendy Guy, moderator of a facebook group about declinations, sold data from my planetdance software for 500 euros behind my back. I have the emails here for anyone to read.

I posted about that on my own facebook group, and was then told by one of the members, Jan Kampherbeek that this Wendy was just allowed to do that and that I was blackening her. This is, of course, the world turned upside down. That man is going to decide for a moment what my copyright is. He does have motives for this, because he wants attention for his own software and that is why he makes many functions with declinations in his own software, in order to get attention by that group, and then it is not so convenient that the administrator of that group is accused of theft, so he lends her a hand.

So I protested to the association about this, however, was ignored from the beginning. They said it was not theft at all, I got one vague argument after another, and for a long time I tried to argue that it was against my copyright, but after several months the word finally came out, they don't care, they are more loyal to him than to me, and that's the end of it for this corrupt club. From the beginning they didn't seem to want to listen.

So this club shows that they don't care at all if I suffered damage, they just want to condone one of their members.
This has caused me months of anger and frustration, and it has made me sick, very unhealthy for me. As thanks for 20 years of free work, I get a dagger in the back, a scar on my soul. Some of these are people were my friends for 20 years, what a fool I was.

I'm lucky one of their former members, Fokkelien von Meyenfeldt, has investigated my case, she ended her membership and wrote them a letter, telling them she was shocked, but they did not care at all, they persist in ignoring me and this case.

[Jan Ruis]

Ha Jean, ik kan me goed voorstellen dat je kwaad bent over deze gang van zaken. Je hebt al die jaren gratis al dat werk voor NVWOA gedaan en die Wendy Guy had gezien het copyright dit niet mogen doen en op zijn minst vooral jouw toestemming moeten vragen om jouw data te gebruiken voor haar persoonlijk gewin. Het zou mij verbazen als de NVWOA jou hierover binnenkort geen excuses gaat aanbieden inclusief een vergoeding voor het geleden leed.

Veel sterkte Jean, je kunt me altijd bellen.

[Jean]

Hartelijk dank Jan Ruis.