Hi All,
Since last February, we (first me personally, later TeamMacro as the VWG rescue mission) there have been discussions and negotiations with Reddo (the current owners of VWG), where the goal was to purchase VWG source code and keep VWG alive as a development environment and we even made plans to "freshen" it up by using more recent web development standards. Funds were collected by TeamMacro through the VWG rescue mission to purchase the product from Reddo, but in the end, we came quite a bit short and Reddo did NOT accept our final offer for what we had been able to collect. The last deadline, September 8th, has now passed with no response from Reddo, except for their previous rejection of our informal offer.
This basically means that the VWG rescue mission has now failed and we are unable to purchase the VWG source code from Reddo.
This also means that I have now reverted to Plan B, as for VWG is concerned. I have stated earlier, and I stand by that statement, that personally I am not giving up on VWG just yet. I have shown you through earlier POCs that there is a LOT that can be done to keep VWG alive and well as a development platform for quite some time, even if we do not have access to the VWG source code. There are ways to survive browser changes that effectively make your current VWG applications unusable and there are also ways to extend VWG through third party controls and components, which could partially or fully replace native VWG controls.
All of this takes time and resources so I have to adjust my services accordingly. I have not layed down how exactly how I will provide or price my services, but will do so in the next few weeks. What is clear is that my current services will change considerably, as I will start concentrating more on taking forward the earlier POC ideas, as well as preparing some framework to help us through inevitable browser changes in the future.
Personally, I am responsible for and the author of a few dozens VWG applications that are currently in active production. This means that my customers have considerable interest in making sure that these VWG applications will stay in production for years to come. These applications may possibly be migrated to other development platform some day in the future, but such a migration takes time and the process will be pretty resource intensive. After going through the current VWG situation, as well as available options in terms of application survival into the future, the customers agree that there is no reason to rush any migration plans and they will continue with these applications under VWG for the next few years, as a minimum.
As part of these changes in my services, I will no longer offer any kind of public support, unless you are a consumer/subscriber of my services, which also means that my current hosting of the forums and other VWG related data will be closed down. In other words, the public forums will be shut down.
Subscribers to my current services will be contacted in order to discuss interest in future participation in my services. The current services will continue until I am ready to make the switch to the new services, which is expected to be in the next few weeks. After that, the forums will no longer be available in their current form. There will of course be some kind of discussion platform available to subscribers of my services but this will be introduced to subscribers when the time comes.
If you are interested in participating in my new services, or if you need service for VWG in general, you are welcome to contact me at palli@vwgsupport.com and we can discuss if/what I can provide you with the service needed.
Last but not least, please understand that further discussion on VWG and/or my service offerings will NOT be conducted on these forums. If you want to discuss either VWG or my services, please use my email address above until further notice.
Regards,
Palli