Can I use Revolution for this?

[Scott Raney]

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002 Geoff Canyon <gcanyon at inspiredlogic.com> wrote:

> This exact thing happened to the SuperCard crew several years ago. A
> licensee produced a competitive product using SuperCard,
> and...Allegiant, I think -- had to sue to stop them. Eventually a
> deal was reached.

Unfortunately that "deal" was completely one-sided because Allegiant
had them over the proverbial barrel.  And while what I said about them
going out of business because of this is mostly true, the reality is
quite a bit more complicated because it involves a failed Java
project, which as it turns out is one of my favorite topics ;-)

The company in question was Pierian Spring and the product was Digital
Chisel.  Partly because of this legal wrangling with Allegiant and
partially because Allegiant was thrashing in their attempt to port
SuperCard to Windows, Pierian attempted to rewrite Digital Chisel in
Java.  They did actually manage to release a Windows version of that
product, but never could get the Mac version of Java to work well
enough to release a product on.  Combined with Allegiant's failure to
come to the rescue with a Windows version of SuperCard (a failure that
sent *that* company out of business), Pierian quietly went out
business in 1999.  Too bad, too, because if they'd been able to hold
out a bit longer the could have switched to MetaCard (which only came
out for the Mac in late 1998) and been able to release their software
under *our* licensing terms without paying the kind of royaties (and
dealing with the hassle) their agreement with Allegiant required.

We're still looking for someone to take on that K12 market in earnest.
The implosion of HyperStudio makes this about the perfect time to
enter that market...
  Regards,
    Scott

> -- 
> regards,
> 
> Geoff Canyon
> gcanyon at inspiredlogic.com

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...