Is Cincom slowly killing Visual Smalltalk Enterprice?

Dear All

If you have forgotten about Visual Smalltalk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Smalltalk_Enterprise), it is this really cool Smalltalk dialect that enables users to build native Windows applications. Visual Smalltalk is one of the original Smalltalk dialects, and was made by Digitalk. In 1995 active development stopped when the merger between ParcPlace and Digitalk happened. VSE has since been in the hands of ParcPlace-Digitalk, then ObjectShare, and  since 1999 Cincom.

The state of affair of Visual Smalltalk Enterprise (VSE) is not optimal. The VSE community has make several attempts in the past to clear this up. These attempts has all been made quietly and discrete. When I left ESUG last year I was confident that there was a future for open-sourcing VSE. Unfortunately I have since learned that Cincom are not willing to change anything, and are regarding VSE as a cash cow.

The current status is:
Cincom stopped all work on the VSE platform more than a decade ago
Cincom continues to collect support fees for VSE
Cincom has raised the price for VSE licenses
Cincom only fixes bug on a case-by-case matter. Bugs fixed for one customer is not made available to other customers.
Cincom charges huge money for fixing bugs. They charge by the hour, and since they don't have the knowledge one can expect 50-100 hours for trivial fixes
Cincom does not hold the IP for VSE - Seagull Software does
Cincom has exclusive rights for selling and supporting VSE
Seagull Software has no problem selling/donating the IP
Cincom has refused to sell/donate their rights

Due to the above, VSE users are jumping through hoops to actually use the product on newer operating systems. To make the matters worse, every time anyone makes a bug fix, we all fear that Cincom will drop its lawyer muscle on us.

I believe that the time has come to stop being discrete and speak up in public. For VSE to have a future we need to act now.

I would love for Cincom to comment on these issues. Does Cincom really see the  free support and maintenance made by the community as a threat to their business? Are Cincom interested in actually supporting VSE, and not just collecting money from their trapped customers? Does Cincom really believe that VSE customers will migrate to other products supplied by them, taking only their word for not abandoning them again in the future?

Unfortunately I am not able to attend ESUG this year, but I hope that others will raise these questions.

I am pretty sure nobody in the Smalltalk community will benefit from the death of VSE.



--
Henrik Høyer, sPeople ApS
Chief Software Architect
(+45) 4029 2092

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