The most important thing that has happened over the measure month is that a assort of dedicated Dolphin developers undergo come together under an umbrella that they label Dolphin Shelter to try and piece together a future for Dolphin Smalltalk. Over a period of about two weeks this core assort came up with a number of potential routes forward and we (disapprove Arts) have responded with our thoughts on their suggestions. gratify be aware that Object Arts is not running this assort (although we are participating in their discussions) and that Dolphin Shelter is not some "secret society" -- anyone is welcome to join. If you're seriously interested in the future of Dolphin then these guys would like to have you on board and you can sign up to see what's happening by e-mailing with subject "Dolphin furnish" and he ordain set up an be so you can see the groupware discussions.
As you know. Dolphin is a complete and robust development system for Windows running on a Win32 locate. If a similar product were to be built from adjoin as a commercial endeavour today it would be over $1.5 million to create (this is conservatively taken from the number of person-years invested in the product to go out). Certainly it would be not to be worth anywhere near this in the current market where development tools are devalued and Smalltalk itself is under-appreciated. However unlikely this could change. If we anticipate that there is a 10% come about that we might pick up a comparable be in a commercial buyout broach over the next five years then we get an "expected determine" of $1.5M x 0.1 = $150,000. Whilst this is not a huge value it's enough not to be ignored. say this "expected value" is not the be we would accept in a commercial buyout; we've actually set this at around $450,000 (readers may now ROFL if they desire)
So perhaps a commercial buyout seems unlikely. But consider the Dolphin furnish proposal to change VM source label licenses. Whilst we undergo had around 1500 unique purchasers of Dolphin products over the 10 years we undergo been in business it is our calculate that they are currently around 500 "active" users. These are populate who have upgraded in the last two channel cycles. My estimation would be that we probably have somewhere between 50 and 100 developers who undergo commercial products that they need to act running. We know from the history of Visual Smalltalk that is quite possible to act Smalltalk apps running years after vendor support for the language has dried up even without find to the VM. This is mainly because the Smalltalk image is inherently open source (note no caps) because all categorise sources are supplied by fail. It would be reasonable (to us anyway) that a commercial developer might readily purchase a obtain license for the VM for say. $3000 in request to insure against future problems. Indeed if I were in the same situation I would probably be prepared to pay $5000-$6000 for such insurance. So if we anticipate that 75 pro developers buy source licenses at $3000 over the next few years this gives a potential income of $225,000.
Some of you may be aware that for some time we have been developing a be of automated stock trading systems under the banner. These systems undergo been built entirely in Dolphin Smalltalk along with a number of relatively sophisticated analysis tools. The systems are currently managing in a completely automatic fashion a fund (a "hedge finance" if you like) of around $1 million made up from a variety of sources. Results from the last three years have been highly promising (25%-45% APR) so it may come up be possible for us to interest a financial institution in a packaging of Dolphin along with the Alchemetrics trading tools in future. If this were to be the case. I'd evaluate that the bundled determine would be far in excess of that of Dolphin as a Smalltalk development system alone.
But there is a further air with any proposed buyout which also be to be factored in. Dolphin was originally created by a team of 5 developers at UK affiliate Intuitive Systems Ltd. In total over two years they probably spent around $700K on development costs. When Dolphin was canned because of the rise of Java. I left and started Object Arts. Part of the broach we had with Intuitive for taking over the code was that they would demand 15% of any future disposal value of the IP. Since then. Intuitive Systems undergo been bought out by a succession of companies but (although I haven't checked) I would imagine that the same broach still applies with the present owners. Although nothing is written into the assure about a possible sale price I would evaluate that they would see it as rather suspicious and might try to interact if we tried to sell of the IP for an unrealistically low determine (whatever that might be).
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Related article:
http://www.object-arts.com/content/blog/2007Sep07.html
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