R.I.P. 844/X

844/X software development investigation summary

From: Paul Sears
Date: Jun 8, 2005 4:29 AM

Hello Fellow 844X supporters,

As most 844X’ers probably know, a small group of former Media 100 engineers recently looked into continuing 844X software development. We sent out a letter that described our intent: locate enthusiastic 844X owners willing to pay for software releases in advance, license the 844X IP from Optibase, finish the software development and testing of the next major release, and ship it.

In order to complete this effort we needed a critical number of 844X owners to commit to financing the effort through the “pre pay” plan. The ‘pre pay’ was in effect the financing of the project.

What we found from the survey was a small group of owners willing to pay in advance, but by far not enough to make it happen. The summary of the survey data follows.

We sent out over 255 emails and we also had posts in the COW and the Velocite Blog to describe our potential effort. Many of the email addresses were old or unavailable, but of the approximately 196 that apparently got through, we received about 52 replies as of 7-Jun-05 for about a 27% return rate.

Of that 27%, here is a summary of the answers to the first question “Would you pre-pay $2,800 for the first year and commit to the same amount for a second?”:

Yes 29 (56%)
No 13 (25%)
Unknown 10 (19%)

Unfortunately this is almost an order of magnitude fewer positive responses than we needed to finance the development effort. The overall reaction is too weak and the percent voting yes is too small.

Thus we regret to say that barring some miracle, it appears that this project will not happen. We are sorry to have gotten anyone’s hopes up too far.

I apologize to any and all who might have interpreted the letter of intent as any type of commitment. That was not the case. No software code was written nor testing performed.

All we were trying to do with the letter was to see if enough 844/X owners were willing to finance a small development effort whose goal was to complete the software release, test it, and ship it.

For those who are curious, some of the more frequent reasons cited by the “No’s” include

1. No HD support plan going forward,
2. They have given up on 844/X and moved on,
3. They feel they should get the release from Optibase as part of a support plan, and
4. It’s not where they want to put money now.

I want to thank those who helped by getting the word out, providing a place of support on the web, and in general trying to stir up excitement in the 844/X community. In particular, thank you John Buck and Jöran Maaswinkel for all of your help.

Also I’d like to thank all those who responded with a resounding “Yes”. And to those with some pretty sad stories to tell as a result of Optibase’s 844/X decision, we understand your pain and hope you can continue on and at least get some value from your investment.

I think I represent all 844/X engineers and support people in saying thank you for your past enthusiasm for this product. We wish you the best of luck creating great content with your systems as long as you can.

Of this effort, we can at least say we tried.

Thank you,

Paul Sears

Paul@softwaretool.com
www.softwaretool.com