Terrible News. Dolphin is Dying.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Future of Dolphin
Date: 10 Aug 2007 12:55:54 GMT
From: Andy Bower <[hidden email]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin

It is with great regret and more than a touch of sadness that I have to
announce that Blair and I have made the decision to stop selling and
developing Dolphin Smalltalk.  We will continue to distribute the free
version of Dolphin X6 indefinitely but, as from today, we will not be
selling the Professional version. Some limited support will remain in
place for existing users of X6 but there will not be a future major
release of Dolphin for .net (or Mac or Linux).

We have come to this point for a number of reasons, the most potent of
which is the fact that it is just not commercially viable (and to be
truthful it has never really been so) to continue development of the
product.  There are simply not enough people who are able to recognise
that Smalltalk offers something much better than the tools and
languages "du jour". The shift of Microsoft away from the Win32 API to
the .net platform (and the associated presentation foundation) has not
helped and would mean a dedicated development effort of sufficient
intensity that we just can't commit to it given the potential returns.

We started Object Arts almost exactly 10 years ago with a view to
continuing the development of Dolphin which had been started and then
abruptly terminated at our previous company, Intuitive Systems Ltd.
Both of us were of a mind that this was something that needed to be
done; not only because Smalltalk was quite the best development
environment we had come across but because we felt that the work
already completed on Dolphin was some of the best we had achieved in
our careers to that point. It seemed important that Dolphin Smalltalk
should be carried forward and that other developers be given the chance
to "see the light".  These sentiments remain with us today but the cold
reality is that we have to look for other sources of income for our
families and the future.

As an example as to why this has become a necessary decision, I'd like
to open up the sales figures for Dolphin Professional this last year.
So far in 2007 we have received 29 orders and in the last 12 months, at
total of 50 orders. We probably have an active user database of around
500 users but simple maths shows that this is plainly insufficient to
support any business plan let alone one that needs to dedicate
substantial additional effort for future development.

So what of the future?  Blair has taken up a job with Microsoft
Research in the UK and I am occupied full-time developing stock trading
systems under the Alchemetrics banner (still using Dolphin Smalltalk).
The latter should mean that Dolphin will not die quickly because we
have a wealth of software that relies on it to continuing operating
smoothly. The nature of Smalltalk with the fact that most of the source
is "open" means that existing users should be able to continue using
the Dolphin products and not have to port away to other platforms (and
hopefully never to C# or Java).  We will try to issue the 6.1
maintenance release that we have been using internally (wrapping all
outstanding bug fixes) before the end of this year.

There will no doubt be a number of you who would suggest that we Open
Source Dolphin.  Of course, you are free harbour such opinions and to
discuss the idea on the newsgroup but please do not expect us to be
persuaded.  It simply will not happen! Both Blair and I dislike the
Open Source movement intensely and we would rather see Dolphin
gradually disappear into the sands of time than instantly lose all
commercial value in one fell swoop. But this is a discussion for
another thread.  The best, and probably only, way in which the future
of Dolphin could be assured would be a sale of the assets to another
company.  Whilst we are not actively seeking buyers, serious
negotiations can be started by writing to me at my e-mail address.

At this point, I cannot sign off without commenting on the enthusiasm
and talent in the Dolphin community that has sustained us all these
years.  There are people on this newsgroup who have been with us since
the early days back in 1997.  There are a number of you who have
supported Dolphin far beyond the call of duty and I sincerely thank you
for this.  I don't want to name names for fear that I forget someone
but you know who you are and I thank you again.  Doubtless, many of you
will be disappointed by this decision but I hope that you understand
now why this has to be.

Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support

PS: we came to this decision several weeks ago.  For those of you who
have recently purchased Dolphin Professional and are now unhappy with
the decision, we will honour requests for a refund for any purchases
made within the last 60 days. AB.

--
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in      Calvin &
the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.       Hobbes.
--
Eliot     ,,,^..^,,,    Smalltalk - scene not herd

just a small correction to the NC versions: their Community Edition was free (Perhaps it is even now).. 

But it is bad news indeed.

 

Best regards,

Janos

---

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Yakov Zaytsev
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 10:05 PM
To: Eliot Miranda
Cc: [hidden email]; vwnc
Subject: Re: Terrible News. Dolphin is Dying.

Pity that guys have so "uncommon" view of Open Source movement..

It's really hard to imagine how someone could survive on the current market with such "unusual" thing like Smalltalk without making Right Things like moving to Open Source, providing NC versions like VisualWorks maker do an so on.. not to mention misc technical advantages which for example exist in various successful Lisp implementation. I'm talking about DLLs on every platform etc etc..

Just my 50 cents..

On 8/10/07, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Future of Dolphin
Date: 10 Aug 2007 12:55:54 GMT
From: Andy Bower <[hidden email]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin

It is with great regret and more than a touch of sadness that I have to
announce that Blair and I have made the decision to stop selling and
developing Dolphin Smalltalk.  We will continue to distribute the free
version of Dolphin X6 indefinitely but, as from today, we will not be
selling the Professional version. Some limited support will remain in
place for existing users of X6 but there will not be a future major
release of Dolphin for .net (or Mac or Linux).

We have come to this point for a number of reasons, the most potent of
which is the fact that it is just not commercially viable (and to be
truthful it has never really been so) to continue development of the
product.  There are simply not enough people who are able to recognise
that Smalltalk offers something much better than the tools and
languages "du jour". The shift of Microsoft away from the Win32 API to
the .net platform (and the associated presentation foundation) has not
helped and would mean a dedicated development effort of sufficient
intensity that we just can't commit to it given the potential returns.

We started Object Arts almost exactly 10 years ago with a view to
continuing the development of Dolphin which had been started and then
abruptly terminated at our previous company, Intuitive Systems Ltd.
Both of us were of a mind that this was something that needed to be
done; not only because Smalltalk was quite the best development
environment we had come across but because we felt that the work
already completed on Dolphin was some of the best we had achieved in
our careers to that point. It seemed important that Dolphin Smalltalk
should be carried forward and that other developers be given the chance
to "see the light".  These sentiments remain with us today but the cold
reality is that we have to look for other sources of income for our
families and the future.

As an example as to why this has become a necessary decision, I'd like
to open up the sales figures for Dolphin Professional this last year.
So far in 2007 we have received 29 orders and in the last 12 months, at
total of 50 orders. We probably have an active user database of around
500 users but simple maths shows that this is plainly insufficient to
support any business plan let alone one that needs to dedicate
substantial additional effort for future development.

So what of the future?  Blair has taken up a job with Microsoft
Research in the UK and I am occupied full-time developing stock trading
systems under the Alchemetrics banner (still using Dolphin Smalltalk).
The latter should mean that Dolphin will not die quickly because we
have a wealth of software that relies on it to continuing operating
smoothly. The nature of Smalltalk with the fact that most of the source
is "open" means that existing users should be able to continue using
the Dolphin products and not have to port away to other platforms (and
hopefully never to C# or Java).  We will try to issue the 6.1
maintenance release that we have been using internally (wrapping all
outstanding bug fixes) before the end of this year.

There will no doubt be a number of you who would suggest that we Open
Source Dolphin.  Of course, you are free harbour such opinions and to
discuss the idea on the newsgroup but please do not expect us to be
persuaded.  It simply will not happen! Both Blair and I dislike the
Open Source movement intensely and we would rather see Dolphin
gradually disappear into the sands of time than instantly lose all
commercial value in one fell swoop. But this is a discussion for
another thread.  The best, and probably only, way in which the future
of Dolphin could be assured would be a sale of the assets to another
company.  Whilst we are not actively seeking buyers, serious
negotiations can be started by writing to me at my e-mail address.

At this point, I cannot sign off without commenting on the enthusiasm
and talent in the Dolphin community that has sustained us all these
years.  There are people on this newsgroup who have been with us since
the early days back in 1997.  There are a number of you who have
supported Dolphin far beyond the call of duty and I sincerely thank you
for this.  I don't want to name names for fear that I forget someone
but you know who you are and I thank you again.  Doubtless, many of you
will be disappointed by this decision but I hope that you understand
now why this has to be.

Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support

PS: we came to this decision several weeks ago.  For those of you who
have recently purchased Dolphin Professional and are now unhappy with
the decision, we will honour requests for a refund for any purchases
made within the last 60 days. AB.

--
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in      Calvin &
the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.       Hobbes.
--
Eliot     ,,,^..^,,,    Smalltalk - scene not herd