I can't blame you for selling your company, congratulations. I must say however I am disappointed to see FTPeel and Rock Star, both of which I bought a license for, disappear off the face of the earth.

I believed Don Yacktman to be capable and willing to continue to develop FSS products. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I don't feel responsible for that disappointment.

Paul said on July 16, 2007:

In fact I don't remember seeing ANY update since I bought it in 2004, though it had its fair share of bugs (and so still has).

Nor am I aware of any. Don actually had/has updates to MailDrop, PulpFiction, an early alpha for Rock Star 2.0, and a few other updates in code. He never even saw fit to do even the minimal work necessary to release them.

More on Don Yacktman's failure/laziness/whatever can be found here if it interests you.

Paul said on July 16, 2007:

Why not simply release a product into the open source space when it no longer interests you?

That strikes me as an awfully simple way of looking at things with a few substantial problems.

First of all, open source projects rarely benefit the users. We believe Don cared about the products he bought and would take care of them. Very few open source projects have caring maintainers or regularly release products that real people use. Adium and Firefox are exceptions, but there aren't many others.

Second of all, why should I give something away when I (and others) worked hard for years to create it and when I can make further profit? Had I known Don would fail to do anything at all, I still wouldn't have given it away to the open source community: I'd have probably slashed prices and sold everything as unsupported. FSS was a business, after all, and I was buying a home for my family.

Finally, I'd release the code now, but I don't own it. Don does.

Rock Star is mentioned on the (chaotic and ugly) illuminex site, but the link is dead. FTPeel, well...gone. In fact I don't remember seeing ANY update since I bought it in 2004, though it had its fair share of bugs (and so still has).
You know, people (like me) buy products from small independent developers (like you) also to support small independent developers (like you) and their clever innovations. But we also actually use the stuff in everyday business life and feel a bit ripped off this way, because we hope you commit to your products. Why not simply release a product into the open source space when it no longer interests you? I now rely on a product which nobody owns, supports or develops. That sucks.

I never thought the illumineX design was terrible, but I never was a fan of the colored "glass" vertical bars that seperate content areas. Regardless, the illumineX site is long overdue for a redesign and we started working on ideas months ago, but nothing's ready yet.

I don't know if the final version will take anything from the FSS design or not, however. But if you check out intrinsic*security, which is yet another facet of illumineX, you'll notice that we aren't above borrowing ideas from the FSS design, either.

Never related the design switch and the selling of FSS (mostly because I read your blog on RSS), but if we really have to say goodbye to the big orange, make sure you really keep it away from us. You could also give IllumineX a hand on their corporate design, since it's not very good, and FSS' was great.

Best of luck with your upcoming projects.

I'll be interested to see how FSS progresses.