Hey guys...
Yes indeed. Merapi is not dead at all.
Adam didn't leave the Merapi Project, however with workload for client projects and doing the engineering of Merapi pretty much solo, he didn't have a tremendous amount of time to dedicate to the project. Together, we've been cranking on maturing Merapi over the last year, and a few months ago, Adam found a way where he could dedicate his time to building out the Merapi open source project, and also work to develop a platform for Merapi-like things (Connecting web technologies and desktop/hardware). Adam took a position at Roundarch (Where I also work). In his position, part of his responsibilities are to focus time and effort on getting the open source project in a place where it could be released, and working with the rest of our clients who have some "outside the box" types of needs for projects.
What does this mean? It means that after almost a year of working on Merapi in his spare time, that Adam can now focus on things. We recently helped the folks at Tesla Motors with the prototype Model S car (which will change a lot in the next 2 years). In order to do this, and to also enable a couple of other projects, we had to do a ton of custom development and move Merapi to other platforms outside of just AIR and Java. This is great news for the overall community. Why? Because Adam and I have convinced Roundarch to sponsor the open source project, and to allow us to forge ahead with some of our own proprietary "version" of Merapi that includes additional functionality, etc. I, personally, have been working with Adam on Merapi for a year and a half and have had countless conversations, meetings and reviews with Adobe, Microsoft and other major players in the Web and desktop software business.
I was doing this prior to joining Roundarch, and now that both Adam Flater and I are employed by the company, it made a lot of sense to use some of our time to focus on the project as opposed to trying to build out something that we feel is this important in our nights and weekends. A lot of folks have commented that the project stalled, was dead, etc. That was never the case. The issue was time: We didn’t have enough to dedicate to doing things right.
Roundarch is sponsoring the project, meaning they are paying to have our team members work on things that can be leveraged by the community. Merapi is a very cool thing, and as Jeff Maling, president of Roundarch told me "It is important to get the open source stuff out there so that the industry as a whole can use it to move forward".
There has been some confusion in the community about what Roundarch's involvement in Merapi means. We published a press release about "Roundarch's Merapi" being used to power the connectivity between the vehicle hardware and touch-screen of the Tesla Model S. A handful of people took this to mean that Roundarch "owned" Merapi and that nobody else would be allowed to use it. That is absurd and simply not the case. What it means is that the work that Roundarch is sponsoring has finally given us the time to put our heads down and finish up our open source release code, which will be put on Google code in the coming weeks. (by June at the latest). The final tasks for us are to do a code review and to figure out how to license it, both things that are in process right now.
So, there you have it. The open source Merapi project is due for release very soon. As some of you may know, we've had things in a closed-source private alpha stage for about a year. We did this so that we could get things perfect before opening it up to the community. Right now, several folks (not from Roundarch) are also going to be involved in the "steering/oversight" committee for the open source project. It is our intention to give back to the community in the same way that Roundarch sponsors conferences, the community, local user groups, etc, etc.
To clarify things, we have also developed "The Merapi Platform". This platform pushes far beyond the open source Merapi Project. At Roundarch, we work on many interesting and challenging technology and design problems. We have a need for a technology that our clients can use that provides the simple object bridging that Merapi has (for AIR/FLEX and Java), along with other capabilities that we've realized make a ton of sense. I am the Co-Director of Roundarch "Labs", where we are developing this stuff, and we plan to contribute back to the open source Merapi Project as appropriate. We also plan to continue to develop out the full platform, which will include tools, libraries, and other things that will make building these next-generation applications faster and easier, and will provide some value for our own clients. This also includes the ability to integrate other platforms/technologies such as .NET (VB/C#, etC), Python, AJAX, Flash, MS Silverlight, etc, etc.
The long story made short: The Merapi Project is alive and well. Adam Flater and the rest of the Roundarch Labs team are working diligently on things and the open source Merapi Project will be available on Google Code sooner than later. We've invested a very heft bit of time, effort and money in this, and based on the needs of our clients, have decided to move beyond just sponsoring the open source project by creating a full commercial platform that can be used to push way beyond what the open source code will provide.
All things evolve, and at Roundarch, we are dedicated to making sure that the Merapi open source effort gets the support that it needs to be successful. Until we finalize our own roadmap and answer our own questions about how we will license, sell, use, or do services around the fully integrated platform... stay tuned. I don't have those answers yet, and trust me.... I wish I did! We are working out all of the details and as soon as we have them, we will release that information to the community.
I'd like to thank Roundarch for their generosity, understanding of why the support of open source is so important, and for giving us the ability to help push the concept of bridging the Web and desktop. We think it is the future, and that's why we are working so hard at making this happen. If you’d like information on The Merapi Platform, or what our plans are with the open source Merapi Project, email Adam (aflater@roundarch.com) or myself (dmeeker@roundarch.com). We’d be more than happy to discuss them with you.
