Following the blatant lies and falsehoods being propagated by this individual we feel it necessary to set the record straight regarding his participation in the development of this program.
Work on the application VistaBootPRO came about as a result of work done by the Betas Team on bcdedit.exe which is the program built into all current versions of Windows Vista. It can be used to effect changes to the Windows Vista Boot Configuration Data store.
This work was moved to our Beta Testing forum for discussion amongst the participants there. All members of our Beta Testing forum are subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and each of the members of that forum agree to abide to its terms before being granted access there. Furthermore, all members of PROnetworks agree to abide by the PROnetworks Terms of Service (TOS) the day they sign up as members. The TOS can be viewed HERE. It clearly states that PROnetworks “have ownership rights on ANY and ALL material publicly/privately posted on its board by any member or visitor to the PROnetworks site boards”. This is standard practice by major sites such as ours and is deemed necessary to curb copyright theft.
In terms of the NDA, PROnetworks “have ownership rights on ANY material publicly/privately posted on its board by any participant in the area. By posting any content it becomes the property of the PROnetworks, and is bound by the conditions found herein. PROnetworks or its owners may use this property for any purpose as they see fit, including in any legal action or as evidence. Any reproduction of this content requires the written permission of the Chairman of PROnetworks”
We have on record, a written confirmation by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi (aka Computer Guru) wherein he agrees to be bound by the terms of this NDA.
The development of this program had its origins in the work of the Betas Team and subsequent input by many members of the Beta Testing forum, which resulted initially in batch files (.bat and .cmd) being used to run some of the commands to effect changes to the BCD store. This evolved to the point where various members of the Beta Testing forum wrote sections of the program independently, all as members of the Beta Testing forum. At a point the code written by those members was given to and consolidated by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi (aka Computer Guru) into the initial program now called VistaBootPRO. A number of names for the program were proposed, amongst them VisualBCD and finally the name VistaBootPRO was agreed on.
VistaBootPRO is therefore clearly the property and intellectual property of PROnetworks. It was conceived of in the Beta Testing forum and fully developed and tested there.
Although the final code for the program was written by Computer Guru as a member of the PROnetworks Beta Testing forum for PROnetworks he has repeatedly made claims variously that he is the author, developer and publisher of the program and that he initiated the work on this program. He is actually none of those and the program would never have seen the light of day had it not been for the initial work of the Betas Team and the Beta Testing forum members.
Despite being warned about the fact that his claims are false and unlawful, he has persisted with this and to our dismay we found that he had sneaked references to the foregoing into the code and the installer of the program.
This was to be rectified in a new version (VistaBootPRO Version 1.1) which was due for release approximately a week ago. None of that was rectified and we in fact found that he had included more references to he and his website as being the authors, publishers and developers of the program.
The decision was therefore taken by the Officers of PROnetworks to BAN Computer Guru from PROnetworks.
He has now gone and first of all launched the exact same program with the exact same code and User Interface with the name VisualBCD. We served him with a legal Cease and Desist Order. Then his response was to take that same code with some minor cleaning up and to re-launch our program with the name EasyBCD. We have also examined the source code of EasyBCD and found it to be similar to ours in most respects.
We are continuing to take action against this individual and his website as well as others who are in cahoots with him and are sure that justice will prevail. What in our opinion amounts to the effective theft and illegal distribution of copyright material and the theft and illegal distribution of the intellectual property of PROnetworks, cannot be left to continue without the appropriate preventative action being taken.
Continue to Who REALLY Developed VistaBootPRO