NATS and Strongbox

Yup, works fine.

Yep. Interegrates nicely w/ CARMA too.

You have members data in mySQL or htaccess?

Yes for one of the sites, for everything else im using Proxxypass it works better

we do works just fine

Ray will make anything work with Strongbox. The guy is a genius.

Yes we use both.

Strongbox will work fine with NATS in either of the two modes NATS can run in.
Some NATS sites still use a password file for authentication, some use mod_auth_mysql
to read the database directly. Strongbox can do either. If the site uses a password file,
Strongbox installs just like any other site. Strongbox can also replace mod_auth_mysql
and access the NATS database directly.
http://bettercgi.com/cgi-bin/wiki/wi...cation_Methods

Thanks, guys. Strongbox ordered, we try it on our last website.

out of curiosity, why strongbox over nats product sparta?

I think the NATS folks decided to focus on their excellent NATS product rather than
finishing Sparta so it would actually be usable. It looks like the NATS folks started to
create Sparta, but then lost interest right when they had their alpha version ready, so they
never got around to getting rid of the first round of big obvious bugs, so there isn't a version that really works at all, at least not yet.

I don't know, but the law suits they are fighting may have distracted them. Also the
law suits they know would have to be filed if they ever finish Sparta and really start selling
many copies may have discouraged them from persuing it. They stopped calling us
or even returning our calls and emails right about the time our patent application was
published, so my assumption is that they realized there were some intellectual property
issues there, as well as other legal concerns. I don't want to say too much, but while
NATS is great, it seems that lately they've run into a lot of legal trouble with different
companies when they've tried to go into other product lines, so I suspect they'll stick to
NATS for a while. That should be very good for everyone - by them focusing their efforts
on NATS they can continue making it even better, providing webmasters with the best
affiliate and cascading billing system available, making them money in the process,
and avoiding lengthly and expensive legal battles with other industry players.

Ray, I've never received a call or email from you and there is a ridiculous amount of false information posted here. Your product is a good one and I recommend it to our clients from time to time. I have no problem with you not liking us but please stop posting outright wrong information.

John, I recommend your product too because it's the best, or at least among the best,
of it's type, and the price is much more reasonable than the other software in it's class.
Up until about 18 months ago or so I was telling people what good guys there
were over at Too Much Media. When we needed to write a custom set up for someone that ended up being similar to a junior version of NATS, I decided not to release it as a
standard product just because I didn't want to compete with the fine gentlemen who do NATS.
When another developer initially told me that he had some intellectual property concerns
about one of your other products and he was all pissed off at you, I suggested to him that
IF one of your coders had in fact done something wrong, it may have been without
your knowledge. I told him that he should give you the benefit of the doubt and assume
for the time being that you wouldn't approve of any wrongdoing if you had known about it.
Since I mentioned that, let me be very clear about one point - I do NOT know if his
concerns have any merit. It is certainly possible that noone at Too Much Media did
anything wrong regarding the other software. Whoever was coding for TMM could have
come up with some of the same design features and wording without ever having seen
the other CMS that it resembles. I just want to be very clear that I'm NOT making any
accusation regarding TMM and any other company's product - the point is that when a
concern was expressed I told people that John didn't seem like the kind of guy to do that.

That's why I wanted to talk to you - because I was going on the assumption that you
wouldn't approve of anything that even created the APPEARANCE of impropriety,
so I wanted to talk to you directly and let you know about what your employee had told
us when he asked for the privileged information, what we gave him, and what it appeared
he had done with it, believing that you would check it out and do the right thing.
I encouraged the other developer to also contact you directly with his concerns, believing
that you would do the right by him as well.

I don't dislike you, though it is very frustrating to have your employees contacting me
repeatedly asking for information but as soon as SPARTA was released and I needed to
talk to you no one would answer phone, email, or ICQ. If you tell me that you didn't get
the voice mails or emails I'm willing to take you at your word. If you tell me that you
didn't see any of my posts on the message boards saying that I needed to talk to you
about copyright issues I'll trust you on that too. You personally have never given me any
reason to distrust you, though obviously I won't be giving your developers any more inside
information!

My hope was that IF it turned out that there were indeed copyright or patent problems
with SPARTA we could work out a mutually beneficial arrangement, either a license deal
or we could cut you a really good referral deal so you would make good money recommending Strongbox.
You're generally a smart business man and as I say I have no reason to distrust you
if you personally tell me something, so I figured we could come up with something that
would let us together provide the best combination of technologies to webmasters and
work out very well for both companies. (The very public Naked Rhino fiasco notwithstanding.)

I'm sorry if any of the ideas I mentioned in my post were not correct.
As I clearly stated, these were the assumptions I came to based on the information I had.
As I mentioned in my post, I haven't heard anything from you, so I don't know your
reasons for doing anything that you've done. When it appeared that you were focusing on
your excellent flagship product NATS rather than focusing on your two new products,
my assumption was that you had been busy dealing with the law suit that you
were dealing with and I thought it logical to assume that you weren't in the mood for
another legal fight with other companies regarding both CARMA and SPARTA. Again
I apologize if I was wrong about that. If you or anyone else at Too Much Media would
like to set me straight I'd be more than willing to listen to the facts as you know them.
I shouldn't have said anything at all about what you are doing or why you may be doing it,
and will try to refrain from doing so in the future, but still if I'm wrong about something and
you want to tell me what's really going on please feel free to contact me at [email protected].
Other than that I'll try to keep my mouth shut about you. Just please get in touch with either
myself or if you prefer my lawyer before you really promote SPARTA so that we don't
have to get into a big ugly fight that costs us both money.

As though the post wasn't already long enough, let me add that my sincere hope is that a
10 minute conversation would clear all this up and we could get back to recommending
each other without being distracted from what we need to be doing - finding the best
ways to serve the webmasters. If, as appears to be the case, you don't intend to go full
force with SPARTA anyway, instead focusing on NATS, I'm not worried about any of this
and you you and I are cool. If you DO intend to do the necesary development to bring
SPARTA up to the level of quality you've achieved with NATS and promote it, it may
save you time and money to talk to me first rather than waiting until you've invested too
much into a product that may have legal issues that you weren't even aware of.

You've accused us a number of times of stealing things from you. SPARTA and Strongbox are completely different. Strongbox is a collection of scripts written in scripting languages, SPARTA is a compiled apache module written in C. They are totally different from what I know and have seen of them.

Your mention of a CMS developer saying we "stole" from him I assume is a reference to the person we spoke with about that. His claim was that we stole the idea of having a calender in a CMS. I don't think is a very revolutionary idea. Kind of like GM claiming Ford stole the idea of tires on a car from them.

I have never received a voice mail or email from you. We maintain a staffed office from 10am to 6pm or later and you can always reach someone by telephone if you have a concern. We have NEVER heard from you. In fact we have tried to contact you without success.

Rather than a contact from you I have just continued to see baseless claims of us doing things we would never dream of doing over and over again on this and other message boards.

If you have a claim to make, then make it please, don't just continue to attack us with things you've heard from other people and assumptions you're making because Fabian, who is no longer with us, asked you a few questions 2 years ago about your system.

I really hope we can one day work together in a more productive manner. However, if you continue to just make baseless claims against us I don't ever see that happening.

Give me a contact telephone number for you and I'll be more than happy to contact you on Monday. You may email it to albright[]toomuchmedia[]com if you have a problem posting it here. I think you're sitting on a LOT of misinformation and assumptions. That is a very bad thing to be doing when making accusations in public as you have been doing repeatedly.

You may reach me at 732-385-1536 x111 Mon-Fri 10am-6pm.

I will second that Ray is a genius....LITERALLY

His product is something that no one has come close to touching, the concepts that go into Strongbox are on a GENIUS level, and from what I understand they are only about to get better

I have no doubt about that. His product is a good one and I continued to recommend it as an alternative to SPARTA even when we started selling SPARTA. I only stopped when he started to directly yet vaguely accuse us of steal his code or concepts. Hopefully, he can explain to me in detail what he thinks was done wrong and we can explain to him how thats not the case

Wow can..we say drama? ;x

Thanks for the compliment, Jace. Indeed we do have some neat
new stuff coming out that _I_ think is pretty darn cool.
We'll see exactly how useful it really is in the real world.

John I apologize for venting my frustration publicly.
I would also like to thank you for responding. 90% of
what bothered me, actually, was that it seemed my concerns
didn't merit five minutes of your time. Just by posting an
acknowledgement that you are aware of Fabian's interest
in Strongbox during the development of SPARTA and that
I have concerns about that, and saying that you'll speak to
me about them, you've made the situation a lot better from
my perspective since my concerns are not being totally ignored.

As you mentioned, I have posted a couple of times mentioning
that there was an issue to discuss while trying to remain vague
enough to avoid an outright accusation.
I should say clearly that I'm not accusing anyone of stealing anything.
As I've said repeatedly, I don't think you would steal, John.
If anything were ever stolen by Fabian or any other TMM
employee I would have to assume that it was without your knowledge.
I've just be wanting to talk to you to be sure everything was cool
because as you mentioned Fabian was getting information from
us for "integration" purposes while secretly developing SPARTA,
which resembles Strongbox in some ways.

I didn't know about the guy saying the calendar was stolen
from his script.
It was other people with other issues who have contacted me,
but we'll discuss that privately.

I'll give you a call on Monday or you can call me at 1-979-530-1300.
Because I wrongly aired this dirty laundry in public, I would
imagine that
you are a bit irritated with me. Our conversation could get
heated if either of us was in the middle of a particularly
hectic time, so please let me know when the best time is to contact you.
If you prefer to call me, any time other than 10:30AM-3:30PM CST
would be best, though whenever you call I'll make time for you.

Again I apologize for bring it up publicly, more than once.
That was a stupid decision brought on by the emotions of
feeling first mislead, then ignored.

I accept, appreciate, and understand that.

Whether we decide to go ahead with SPARTA or not, I don't see why we can't work together to bring us both more business. I look forward to speaking with you tomorrow.

hey man, while I have you right here, do you have a demo of rssdish set up? I need to get in there and fuck with it, I have clients asking me to get them rolling with it and I have never been in there to play with it

I'd like to have Fred walk you through a demo. Will you be available tomorrow via telephone?

I have one long phone call tomorrow after noon around 4pm with epoch, how about 5pm est?

edit: let's email....dropping you one now

Apparently Sparta is being discontinued.. We are looking at StrongBox to replace it now.

Source for this info?

As of March 15th, 2007, Too Much Media will no longer be distributing SPARTA for any new clients due to compatibility and support issues.  As newer versions of popular server operating systems, web server programs, and other SPARTA dependencies are becoming available, programming and maintaining the product is no longer feasible.  There will be no further bug fixes, additional features, or enhancements released for SPARTA.

From the mouth of TTM several days ago in ICQ.

Funny story.

I get Strongboxx, it works.