Shoutbox

I suppose I should also have pointed out that the definition of a privately held company isn't "a secret company" and that is why the information is surely out there if you were to look in the right places.  We are not talking about the mafia here.  All of you deal with similarly structured business every day; every small, most medium sized and some large companies fall in the same category.  At the "large" end of the spectrum, there are some telephone companies and airlines; that is less common but still not unseen.  The "owners" may not be individuals, but rather venture capital funds.

Given that no loud announcements are being made and taking a guess at the relative value of MsgPlus!, I would speculate that the mystery owners of Yuna Software will remain a mystery even if you manage to track down their names.  They will most likely turn out to be small venture capitalists that you may find a few other references to, throwing money at some things, probably not even computer and software related.  I doubt it will be anything exciting.

P.S. One thing is for certain though -- whenever somebody purchases or invests in a product, they are expecting to make money.  That leads to rather simple math: if Patchou thought it was a good deal, he got more than he would make in a few years, upfront, and whoever they are, they think they can make more off it in the same period.  I can't speculate on what the changes will be, but I expect how the thing is paid for will change in near future.  Perhaps it will be a different "sponsor", perhaps it won't be optional, perhaps there will be a sponsored freeware and registered shareware mode -- whichever it is, I expect a change isn't far away.