Ecto is no more (for me)

Adriaan and I have decided to part ways. We started this great partnership nearly 4 years ago under very different circumstances than what we find ourselves in today. Since joining ThoughtWorks last August, my level of commitment as a developer has risen a lot. The weekly travels, working with open source project, involvement in recruitment within TW, etc. mean that I have not been able to devote the time to ecto that it deserves.

While it is sad to see the relationship end, I gained a great friendship and his daughter photos always brighten up my day!

Name
The project will continue under the “Ecto for Windows” name until a new one is found. The hope is to have a new name by the end of next week. If any one out there has suggestions, feel free to let me know! Once it is decided, a new version of the application will be released with updated name, links, etc.

Sales & Support
As of right now, Ecto for Windows is no longer on sale. I have not decided on the course for the project yet. One of the benefit the partnership with Adriaan had brought was the sale infrastructure that he had in place. With that gone, I am re-evaluating whether keeping ecto as a commercial product is a viable option.

Even though I have less time for the project, this by no mean I am less committed to support ecto as it stands now. Ecto 2.x will be fully supported by me, just like it has been for the last 4 years. The new support forum is located here: http://mineblogging.com/support/ The existing messages from old forum will be migrated to the new forum some time next week.

Future development
The development of the next version of ecto (e.g. version 3) remains to be decided. I have re-written almost all of the backend code but significant amount of work remains. One option would to open source the project for version 3 so hopefully more people can contribute to the development effort, instead of just little old me. (Open sourcing version 2.x is not possible currently as it contains a commercial component unless a replacement is found) Another option would be to find another developer to take over the project. But finding this some one may be difficult.