When a product dies, it dies. Sometimes you can extend its life by posting it to a service like SourceForge. But I've seen where that just delays the inevitable.
In rare cases, a product can rise from the dead.
But it doesn't do so on its own. Near the end of its life, TurboPower had decided to open source the bulk of its products. Geoff Harris, one of the advisory board members, had created a piece of software that used FlashFiler. Over time, he had built relationships with other members such as Thorsten Engler, Eivind Bakkestuen, and Hannes Danzl. You've heard of Thorsten and Eivind in previous posts. Hannes was another one of the geniuses we were fortunate to encounter. He had written an ODBC driver for FlashFiler.
Geoff had hired Hannes, Thorsten, and later Eivind. He's quite an outgoing character and an Aussie to boot, so you know he is friendly to the extreme.
When they found out what was happening to TurboPower, Geoff started negotiations with TurboPower to obtain the exclusive rights to FlashFiler.
Here's the interesting part. Negotiations didn't work out so they decided to rewrite FlashFiler and it was to be called NexusDB. It was to be fully compatible with the existing file formats, allowing customers to move from FlashFiler to NexusDB with minimal effort.
As you can see from the link, they did it. And it was no small feat. Not only did they make it compatible, they took it's architecture and features further than we could have at TurboPower.
I don't have any business relationship with them. I am just really proud.
Fortunately, we're able to stay in touch through email and IM. It's a fun day when Thorsten pings me and starts telling me about the nifty things he's building into NexusDB. Lately he's been telling me about their Address Windowing Extension (AWE) support. I keep telling him he should blog about this stuff, but he'll have none of it. Actually, the whole lot should blog. If they did, you'd read some incredible stuff.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: ISV, Customers, Software