All -

Just wanted to let the group know that, due to capital market conditions of
which I'm sure everyone not living under a rock is aware, exobox is ceasing
operations completely this evening.

Exobox was using Squeak to implement an extremely easy to use,
Internet-savvy, user environment for deployment on Internet appliances.
Some of you may be familiar with devices such as the i-Opener or Compaq MSN
appliances, which have failed in the market for a number of reasons, one of
which is poor software.

For all intents and purposes, we succeeded in that effort - we were pretty
close (within six months) to completing the project, and had made some
rather extraordinary advances in usability and overall look-and-feel.   The
use of Squeak gave us an edge in development that probably cut many many
man-years off the development.  In fact, we often encountered skepticism
that what we were showing actually worked, rather than clever smoke and
mirrors.

The ultimate demise of exobox had little to do with the project or the
choice of technology - the crash of the dotcoms scared all sources of
capital out of the tech sector.  Those few remaining were chasing the next
bubble - wireless, optical networking, etc - and the slowdown in PC sales
made prices drop so far that the Internet appliance niche all but vanished.

Hopefully, exobox was a good citizen in the Squeak community.  We released
several interesting bits of code, and released any of the core changes we
made.  We provided assistance, both public and private, in the maintenance
of ports, though our primary focus was on the Linux port.

Speaking for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed working with some of the most
talented folks in the Squeak community, many of whom I was able to attract
to exobox.  The Squeak list appears to be the only mailing list on the
Internet immune to Godwin's Law.

As to the technology that exobox developed, all of it is transferring to
ideaLab!, which is effectively the parent of exobox.  I have asked Bill
Gross whether or not I can release the code to the community under the
Squeak License, but have not yet received a definitive answer - I know he
is a firm believer in what we were doing, and is perhaps holding out hope
that the market environment will change.  I, on the other hand, would
rather the code be released - it would advance the Squeak vision
tremendously.  I encourage SqC, particularly Alan, to reinforce my request.

I was hoping to post some screenshots of our environment for public
consumption, however, since minnow appears to be down, I guess that won't
happen.

As to the exobox people, many of the Squeakers we had have formed another
group, and hopefully some of exobox's ideas will continue to thrive there,
and I encourage them to continue to interact with the bulk of the
community.  I'm sure that portions of exobox's work will at least find
their way into the Stable Squeak effort.

I hope to continue to contribute to Squeak on an individual basis.  Working
with Squeak appeals tremendously to my geek side, so I think I will be
unable to resist working with it, no matter what else I find myself doing.

This email address will probably disappear today - I can be reached from
now on at dmaxwell at san.rr.com

-- Duane



===================================================
Duane Maxwell              dmaxwell (at) exobox.com
CEO/CTO                       http://www.exobox.com
exobox, Inc.        (858)348-3040  FAX(858)348-3099

Information contained herein is my personal opinion
       and not necessarily that of exobox.
===================================================