As another example of the general approach and attitude of the senior management there, I think everyone there vividly remembers the absolutely nightmarish experience during the time a Swiss guy be the name of Beat Knecht ran the marketing group a few years back. Since then, this name has become synonymous with apocalypse and nigthmare throughout the company. Although he is just one of several examples, he clearly stands out. He not only thought he was above the laws of space and time, as quoted above, he actually thought he was as good as god. In reality, he was the most arrogant, condescending jerk people there have ever met in their entire lives. He was delusional and completely out of touch with reality. For example, at one point he wrote a memo to the entire company on a change in direction of the company. It came completely out of the blue; nobody was prepared, not even the CEO. When he was done sending the email, he walked around the office, and just said, “I (!) have now re-programmed the company,” and then left to go home — at three in the afternoon. We were all shocked. The email contained “instructions,” group by group. Until then, I didn’t know that employees were there to be “re-programmed” by HIM. Was it the team? No. Was it the leadership who ran the company? No. Was it the CEO? Nope. It was HIM who dared “re-programming” us all via email. We all thought this was absolutely hilarious. Just hilarious, but also very sad. He obviously though he was some kind of Jesus whose mission was to save us mere mortals from the evils of this world. At the end, we all had to laugh out loud in total awe and disbelief. What a moron. We wanted to tell him that it may be a good idea to take a communications class, but then we decided that this would do more harm than good.

This is a very (read very very) niche product that is suited to a very small segment of users. The fact that one of these users is praising it, does not make Levanta a legitimate business (BTW this user bought one product years ago and nothing since..).

I applaud the owners of the company for making the tough decision. It was much easier for them to go and do yet another useless round of financing and keep a brave face while the business is going nowhere.

I’m not sure if the company shut down as I just spoke with an employee, but they might be in the process of selling it.

If the coders are employees, then they can start their own effort and move forward with it (even just to support the existing user base).

GPL protects users from all kinds of shocking vendor news. For example:
Linux.com :: Why proprietary software is dangerous for business …
by Roblimo Miller
http://www.linux.com/articles/56449
““the real point here is that an entire medium-sized company’s executive staff has learned a hard lesson about the dangers of proprietary software, and members of that staff who previously resisted open source are now ready to consider it — and for business continuity reasons rather than as a money-saving measure, no less.”

from:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20080402003610230&title=FOSS%20is%20more%20valuable%20to%20business%20%28programmer%27s%20have%20right%20to%20make%20money%20forever%20with%20FOSS%20code%29&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=685297#c685347

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linuxcare