Originally Posted by raymor

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.