Pat,

I presume that if you are open sourcing Marathon that this is a reflection
of your current inability to keep up with the development demands that it is
imposing upon you. This means that you are looking to hand it off in the
most respectable way possible. I respect you for doing this. I am certain
this will be viewed as a very valuable contribution.

However, in order for Marathon to be transitioned into Open Source
successfully you may actually need to double your efforts. I hope you will
be very frank about how much you are willing to help to get the community
behind it and keep it alive. Otherwise, I am very concerned that the sheer
massiveness of the base of code will be too much for us to handle. If we
know you are there and can rely upon your efforts to continue as the project
lead our reliance will be good. If you are looking to hand it off cleanly
then I think we should know that too. Then we will know that we have got to
take care of it ourselves and we can just get on with it. I think either way
is fine as long as we know.

I would appreciate it if however you license it you make it possible for me
to produce a trustware fork of it. I am considering pulling it in as a CPS
project that I will make available under the same trustware terms that IBO
is under. I feel like that it is a much more viable development model than
any of the open source ones because it attaches a reasonable revenue stream
to it. My intentions would be to make pull in enough to fund two full-time
developers to work on it. I myself would only mentor and guide it.

One thing everyone needs to keep in mind is that Marathon cannot be fully
open sourced. It has been made with many third party products that may or
may not allow the use of an Open Source license. Trustware has no
incompatibilities and I think it is just as favorable to the customer base
as any open source product is. Free for those who need it free and
commercially fueled by those in a position to do so.

I'd appreciate people's comments and suggestions on bringing Marathon into
the Trustware arena.

Regards,
Jason Wharton
CPS - Mesa AZ
http://www.ibobjects.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick O'Keeffe" <pokeeffe@...>
To: <IBDI@yahoogroups.com>; <ibobjects@yahoogroups.com>;
<IB_DESIGNER@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 3:17 AM
Subject: [IBO] Open Source Marathon


> Hi All,
>
> Due to my shifting priorities it has become nigh on impossible to meet my
> commitments to Marathon and my customers as fully as I would like to. To
> this end we have decided to open source Marathon.
>
> This decision has been a long time in the making and was not easy to come
to
> as it is difficult to 'let go'.
>
> I am basically writing to canvas your opinion on the best way forward
before
> I just 'chuck the source out there'.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Patrick Okeeffe
> Gimbal SOftware Services
>