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ANNOUNCE: Executor 2 and beyond Policy



There has been a bit of discussion regarding what ARDI will be doing
once Executor 2 is released.  For people who haven't followed all our
responses, here's an explanation of our plans for Executor 2 and
beyond.

Upgrades:

	All Executor 1.x licensees will receive an Executor 2 CD-ROM
	sent to them free of charge.  This includes Executor/NEXTSTEP
	users.  The rumor that we would drop NEXTSTEP support before
	Executor 2 came out is FALSE.

	In addition, all Executor 1.99<x> licensees (i.e. people who
	licensed Executor within the last year or two, but excluding
	people who licensed Executor 1.0, 1.1 or 1.2) will also get
	whatever free upgrades that we offer to Executor 2 licensees
	during the first two months that Executor 2 is released.  We
	don't yet know what our upgrade policy will be for Executor 2,
	but whatever it is, 1.99<x> licensees will automatically get
	it.
	
Development:

	All the material in this ("Development:") section is subject
	to change.  ARDI is currently a small company but we do not
	plan to remain small.  Some of what is described here will
	require more engineers than ARDI currently employees.  We're
	assuming that we'll sell more copies of Executor 2 when it's a
	finished product than we've been selling to date, although
	that is not a given.  If we can't support ourselves through
	Executor 2 sales we'll seek funding elsewhere, but that could
	cause some delays.

	After Executor 2 ships, ARDI will spend approximately one
	month restructuring our existing code.  Executor is much
	cleaner than most commercial software I've worked on (I was a
	freelance software contractor in the early days of Executor as
	well as before then), but to be maximally efficient when we
	hire new engineers we need to clean up and restructure our
	code.  This is no big deal, but it will allow us ARDI
	engineers to catch our breath and even do some brainstorming
	before going back to the implementation/bug-fix grind.

	Beyond the restructuring we'll be working in many different
	areas in parallel (in alphabetical order):

	Compatibility with apps -- Many programs still die for mysterious
	reasons.  We'll continue to look into and solve mystery crashes.

	Compatibility with extensions -- Our goal will be to support
	INITs and CDEVs, *especially* ATM and QuickTime.  Some of the
	work done in this area will be the beginnings of support for
	System 7.5 drop-in capability.
	
	Intermachine communication -- Support for serial ports and
	networking will be added.  We plan to leverage off of existing
	OS support to do this, instead of writing our own low-level
	drivers.

	Multitasking -- We plan to add both support for multi-tasking
	within a single address space, at least enough to allow Word 6
	and Excel 5 to run and also piggy-back on top of existing OS
	support for multi-tasking under separate address spaces
	(i.e. set things up so that when one app dies others will
	continue to run).

	Ports to other OSes -- Tentatively it looks like we will port
	Executor to Win32 (for Windows '95 and Windows NT) and OS/2.

	PowerPC emulation -- Mat has already done significant work on
	a successor to Syn68k which will allow us to emulate the PPC
	as well as the 68k and do so faster than Syn68k does.  The
	successor is internally known as VCPU and it should also allow
	us to port to non-x86 architectures more easily so that if
	we're ever financially motivated we could (re)port Executor to
	the Alpha or take advantage of the "native instruction set"
	the P7 is rumored to sport.

	Working with ISVs -- A few Macintosh Independent Software
	Vendors have expressed interest in using a bundled
	"wrapperized" Executor to allow them to sell their Mac apps in
	the Windows world.  We will pursue this to the degree that the
	ISVs are willing to pay for the wrapperization work.  With
	luck we can get extra funding for core Executor work from
	royalties coming from bundled versions of Executor.

Supported OSes:

	All the material in this ("Supported OSes:") section is subject
	to change for the same reasons why the material in the
	previous paragraph is subject to change.

	NEXTSTEP has not been a viable operating system for
	Independent Software Vendors for a long time now.  AppSoft,
	ITS, Millenium, Pages, RightBrain, Xanthus and many other ISVs
	have all bowed out of the NEXTSTEP market.  We will release
	Executor 2 for NEXTSTEP but that very well may be our last
	major release for NEXTSTEP.  Everything I know about the
	NEXTSTEP marketplace suggests that it's time for us to leave,
	but that decision won't be officially made until after
	Executor 2 has been released so that the remaining powers in
	the NEXTSTEP community can see what we've done so far and see
	where we're going and point out market possibilities that we
	may have missed.

	After Linux 2.0 is released we may consider dropping a.out
	support in Executor.  Clearly a.out is on its way out although
	we don't know whether we'll need to continue supporting it for
	a year or five years.  I believe support for Linux ELF is
	being worked into NetBSD, FreeBSD and BSDI, but if I'm
	mistaken and they remain only able to run Linux a.out files
	then we won't drop a.out support.  Unlike the NEXTSTEP
	situation where we're likely to drop support for NEXTSTEP
	soon, we're *not* planning on doing that with a.out (Linux 2.0
	is still a ways away, I believe).  I am mentioning a.out
	support here because it is something that will probably be
	dropped at some point.

	DOS support will continue after Executor 2 is released and
	Executor/DOS will probably directly benefit from our
	"Compatibility with apps", "PowerPC emulation" and some of our
	"Compatibility with extensions", "Intermachine communication"
	and "Multitasking" work.  However, some of the work in these
	areas is less likely to appear in Executor/DOS due to DOS's
	limitations.  QuickTime support, Networking support, and
	support for Multi-tasking in separate address spaces are
	unlikely to be incorporated to Executor/DOS; DOS is just too
	primitive to easily support those features.

	In all liklihood our major development efforts will be put in
	Executor/Win32 (that's where the money appears to be) and
	Executor/Linux (that's the OS we like).  On the other hand, if
	Executor/OS-2 winds up being commercially successful we
	definitely won't rob its revenue stream; we'll pump some
	fraction of the profits into OS/2 specific enhancements and no
	fraction of the OS/2 profits into Win32 or Linux specific
	enhancements.  Most of the profits from all versions will go
	into core work because Executor is > 90% core.

Reiterating one more time, to make a point, all the information above
except for our Upgrade policy is subject to change.  Anyone who has
tracked ARDI for a considerable amount of time will have noticed that
we *haven't* been able to meet the timetables that we've set for
ourselves in the past.  Almost all of this has been due to a lack of
money -- it was *very* hard to get where we were with the budget we
had.

When the bottom fell out of the NEXTSTEP market, it hit us hard.  When
we thought we had lined up external financing and decided to rely on
that rather than Executor 1.x sales to fund Executor 2, only to find
out that the company that was to fund us wasn't serious, that too hit
us hard.

Hopefully after Executor 2 ships we will have a larger budget to work
with, either due to Executor 2 sales or due to the ability to acquire
financing based on Executor 2's promise.  Although we haven't been
able to do things in the timeframe that we've tried in the past, we
*have* done most of the things we claimed we would (color, sound, our
own Finder, dramatic speed improvements, increased compatibility), so
there really is a good reason to believe we can do the above, at least
if the market says we should have money.

We're very honest at ARDI.  I am serious when I say that all the major
decisions will officially be made after Executor 2 ships.  For that
reason I suggest that anyone wanting to provide us with suggestions
for our post Executor 2 activity should wait until *AFTER* Executor 2
is shipping.  We'll be much less harried and much more open to
suggestion after Executor 2 is shipping.

Thank you for your interest.

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com

[This was cross-posted to c.s.n.a. since there has been a little
traffic there concerning our declining support for E/NS.  For people
not familiar with Executor, http://www.ardi.com provides more
information]