Tuesday, November 06, 2007

SourceGear News

Miscellaneous tidbits of recent news from SourceGear:

• DiffMerge 3.1 was released on October 10^th.  This release includes several improvements suggested in comments from readers here on my blog, including shell integration.
  
  
• Vault 4.0.5 and Fortress 1.0.5 were released on October 25^th.  These were bugfix releases containing lots of little (and a few not-so-little) improvements.
  
  
• Our comic ads have continued to move forward, with episodes 1 through 9 of the arc now available.  We just finalized and sent off episode 10, so it should be posted soon.
  
  
• SourceGear is exhibiting at DevConnections in Las Vegas this week.  This event is a bittersweet moment for me.  I believe it is the first time Vault is being promoted at a tradeshow without me being there.  I wanted to go, but it just didn't work out with my schedule.  Anyway, several other SourceGear staff members are there, so if you're in Vegas for the show, stop by our booth and say hello.
  
  
• For the last few months I have been working on a major upgrade for our online store.  Initially I approached this project with a sense of dread.  I love to write code, but the glue between a web browser and a SQL database is probably my least favorite type of programming.  Still, once I got into it, I gained a lot of enthusiasm for the effort.  It's almost done now and will be deployed soon.  I think this new store is going to enable us to do a much better job serving our customers.
  
  
• Finally, it is high time that I give mention here on my blog to the departure of Dan Schreiber from SourceGear.  Dan was the very first person I hired in 1997.  Corey Steffen was the second, just a few weeks later.  The three of us developed a fantastic working relationship, with a level of trust and communication that is truly rare in business.  In 2004, we formally restructured the company with Corey, Dan and I as three equal partners. 
  
  In the spring of 2006, Dan left SourceGear (with full support from Corey and myself) to take a sabbatical, uncertain about whether he would return.  He spent the next year or so considering a career change, and eventually decided that it was time for him to leave the software field and focus on other things.  So Corey and I accepted his resignation and purchased his share of the company. 
  
  On October 13^th we held a company party to give him the proper sendoff he deserved for his years of excellent work at SourceGear.  He remains one of my dearest friends.  All his former coworkers here wish him well.