A friend just emailed me the following. As one of the "patient" TMG users, I know not what to say. Do you think WG is ever going to be successful in developing TMG 5.0/32 Bit? The delay beyond his original projection is fast reaching not just arithmetic but algebraic proportions. His latest projection in January 2002 (already a couple of years behind) that he was within about a month of being ready to release it (or doing final beta testing, or prepare it in final form for shipment, or whatever, or whatever his loyal apologists argue), makes me wonder seriously if he has not run up against the same scenario that Genealogy.com did with UFT, with risk that WG will fail too. His user base, at least the ones that put messages on the TMG Board, remain mostly fiercely loyal and seem willing to wait indefinitely for the new version. He must be independently wealthy, or must have a very patient and wealthy sugar daddy, for him to be able to continue to pay salaries and fringe benefits for his staff, when there must not be much cash inflow to him. A message by him on the TMG Board a few weeks ago hinted very clearly that he has aspirations of converting into the big business mode of operation, implying to me that we cannot necessarily assume that loyalty as a genealogist will continue to guide his business enterprise under his personal control. Even Howard Nurse ultimately bailed out, presumably for strictly business reasons. We have already seen what can happen to a good genealogy program (UFT) when it is taken over by a large business company and strictly business becomes the guiding force.
On Wed, 03 Apr 2002 00:11:51 GMT, "Richard Cleaveland" <Dick@DELETETHISrgcle.com.com> declaimed the following in alt.genealogy: > ultimately bailed out, presumably for strictly business reasons. We have > already seen what can happen to a good genealogy program (UFT) when it is > taken over by a large business company and strictly business becomes the > guiding force. One problem with the UFT transfer is that, at the time it was discontinued, the same company owned FTM... I suspect the profit margin was a lot higher on FTM (even when UFT was available, most stores seemed to be loaded with two or three packages of FTM and two or three of Generations FT -- one was lucky to find UFT at all). With all the copies of FTM out there, and so many upgrades costing nearly as much as buying a new copy (based upon messages I've read in this group), combined with the relative difficulty of UFT (and TMG -- both seemed to be fighting for top spot in power/ complexity/ capability) the choice seems to have been made for "cheap/easily maintained -- with good profit margin" over "detailed/powerful/slightly more costly -- lower profit margin and needs /good/ programmers to understand". I don't think TMG falls into this category. There is no choice between products. For some reason WhollyGenes has the feeling of being a "one-man" company (though it may have a ways to go to match SoftLogik's PageStream program <G>). -- > ============================================================== < > wlfraed@ix.netcom.com | Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG < > wulfraed@dm.net | Bestiaria Support Staff < > ============================================================== < > Bestiaria Home Page: http://www.beastie.dm.net/ < > Home Page: http://www.dm.net/~wulfraed/ <