Where is Sean?

[Bill2]

Hi there,

Does anyone have news from Sean?
No new release, no information on his personal blog since his wedding, and no message since march 2009 on the board, even if his profil says "Last connexion : Wed Nov 18, 2009"

Well. Where are you Sean?

[seanw]

Hi there,

Does anyone have news from Sean?
No new release, no information on his personal blog since his wedding, and no message since march 2009 on the board, even if his profil says "Last connexion : Wed Nov 18, 2009"

Well. Where are you Sean?

Okay, well, lots of people asked, so here we go.

SM was making decent income for quite a while, and for a couple of years, I was able to make it my full-time job. I worked hard on it, enjoyed it, and was happy to have customers who enjoyed it.

And then a year and a half ago, the economy went bad, and sales dried up. Individuals, home enthusiasts, people like you kept buying it, but companies stopped buying it, and that was really the end of the road for it. I raised prices to try to keep the business afloat, and that helped for a couple of months, but in the end, I was forced to start looking for a new job, and in April 2009, after more than six months of searching, I found one.

It's a good job, and it pays well, but it's very demanding, and it takes nearly all of my time. What little time is left over I spend with my wife.

I love SM still. I use it at work, surprisingly regularly, and our IT guys at work love it too. A lot of you do as well, and I'm gratified to still receive e-mails about how much you love it. But until I can find time to work on it, it's going to sit in limbo.

When a new version arrives (someday), I don't know for sure what its next incarnation will look like. I've very seriously considered porting the good parts over to C# and .NET, for example; and I've looked at D and GTK, at Boost, at even Lisp and JavaScript and Silverlight. And I don't know which route I ought to take; I don't think the current C++ code is as maintainable as it could be or should be, and a port might be right answer, but I can't conclude what. The existing C++ code-base had its start nearly ten years ago, and times have changed. Either way, there are some really amazing algorithms and some good ideas in SM that definitely shouldn't be lost. A new version --- a more modern version --- is needed, to be sure, but in my current job, I have no time to build it.

I try to still check in here every month or so, mostly to clean out the spam and ban the Chinese IP addresses that generate it (they're all Chinese IPs, every last one of them). So I will eventually see your messages here. It may take a while, but I'll see them.

So that's it. I wish I had a better answer. But that's the honest truth.

[Forge]

Bad news and good. Sorry to hear that SM is on hiatus. Glad to hear you're employed. Life with no income is no fun, I know that.

Thanks for keeping us up to date.

[Bill2]

Thanks for this honest answer. Even if we don't like the fact that SM is "abandonned" for a while.

Enjoy life, it's more important.

[jfield]

Glad to hear from you, and glad everything is ok. I understand being busy, believe me.

A couple of things though - maybe you could desginate some forum moderators who could clean up posts? I'm sure a couple people would be willing to help out.

Also, have you considered open-sourcing SpaceMonger? Doesn't preclude you from selling it still but would allow the algorithms to live on and the code to evolve.

Thanks!
-Jeff

[CobraA1]

First of all, I'm thinking you should just release the current "beta" version as it is, and just concentrate on bug fixes if there's not really enough time for new features.

Okay, you won't get all of the features you want, but you may get more money?

Second of all, don't worry about new languages right now - C++ is still popular on most platforms, and the non-C++ platforms are a bit of a mess. In addition, only C++ is really gonna give you the full Windows API for accessing the drive as required by SpaceMonger.

Porting to a new language would just set the next release of SpaceMonger further back into the future. I don't think it's the way to go.

Another possibility is to start a new product - a company with only one product rarely fares well in times like this. But then again - it would take more time, and as I understand it, you have no employees other than yourself?

Gotta find a balance. If the job is too demanding, maybe time to cut back or find a less demanding job. If you're constantly "putting out fires" so to speak at your job, maybe find ways to prevent "fires" in the first place.

Sometimes employers don't care too much about stress when they should. It tends to be a problem in a lot of places I've worked .

[ppass]

Thank you sean for this feedback. It is always good to hear the truth. It shows respect for your customers.


I know that working at Google gives you 20% of your work free to work freely on your projects, I wish more companies had this flexibility. You could have worked on Space Monger if you worked for this kind of company.


It is amazing that you had to search for 6 months to get your job. You obviously have great talent, you have the right vision and right execution, at least this is what I can tell from Space Monger. I can comment on that openly because I just found a new job myself after being unemployed for 16 months. Luckily, I live in Europe where unemployment benefits extend over a long period of time -24 months in my country-.


I know too little about programming languages to be able to comment on that. But obviously opening the code and making Space Monger open-source sounds like a good way to keep the project alive. I am sure that many enthusiasts about Space Monger will be able to contribute to the project. Of course this means that you should be able to spend some time on it as project coordinator, but obviously less than you used to.


Finally, I want to thank you again for such an excellent piece of software. I use it happily on a daily basis. I use version 2.1.2-pre3, which I found is really stable, so I am happy with it (no obvious bug). Anyway, be happy with your job, your family and your life. You have the right spirit, keep it like that!