Saffron UML acquired by a theoretical mass?

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Saffron UML acquired by a theoretical mass?

Friday, October 24, 2008

It's been ages since we've seen any updates on Saffron UML. The Level of Industry site has been nothing but a placeholder page (perhaps hiding a few old tidbits behind it somewhere, covered with dust bunnies).

There were rumors ages ago that perhaps the tool was acquired. Then we got a few tweets from Sam about pretty random things & something about debugging. We used to be able to look at screenshots of FlexBuilder and a bunch of classes supposedly going into the application.

Has a theoretical mass consumed this project without so much as a whimper? Has it been abandoned without a declaration? Was it anything much more than some mocked screenshots and some code in a project in an IDE? Or did it just eat up the life of the developer, so much so that it had be locked away in the cellar?

I was really looking forward to being able to use this tool. It's future is completely obscure, if it was even intended for a true release. I haven't even heard about a beta of any kind. The site being down for so long now makes me really curious.

Does anyone have any substantive news in regards to Saffron? Should we just pretend like it never was mentioned, or should we hold out hope?

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Comments:

There are currently 12 Comments:

Jon MacDonald said... October 24, 2008 2:45 PM “I had heard it was acquired by a larger company, but who knows... a rumor is just a rumor. Although, I should say that I saw it demo'd live at a couple of conferences, so it DID exist in some workable form. At every conference Sam mentioned an upcoming beta, but it never happened.”

“I don't know but I've seen it running at FITC Toronto in april 08, and I felt Sam was about to release it in the upcoming weeks... Since then, no news, but it was really close to be released, I've seen something in a really promising beta phase... I hope there will be a future because this soft was stunning!”

“I am glad that you guys saw it being demoed. I haven't had that pleasure yet. I suppose I could check YouTube to see if anyone posted some footage of it.

I suppose we can all be pleasantly surprised.”

“Well there is something at
http://www.levelofindustry.com/index.php
but I don't he wants people to see this.”

“I thought M$ bought it a while ago, that was the last rumor I saw.”

“I too have really been looking forward to Saffron. I wish I could get ahold of Sam, but I haven't yet been able to find a way, to find out what's up with it. I did speak with a mutual acquaintance here in Chicago, who mentioned when he last talked to Sam it seemed like he had gotten a bit sidetracked with Orchid (if I remember right that was a new UI framework Sam was developing). I'm just speculating here., but I think Sam was using Orchid heavily in Saffron, so if he is modifying/refactoring/extending orchid, it could be wreaking havoc on the Saffron code, and maybe he wants to have Orchid done before he finishes off Saffron. From everything I gather, Sam is an uber-perfectionist like that.”

Weyert de Boer said...

“I am planning to work on my own UML editor written in AIR using PureMVC. Now that I am done with school this can be my next pet project.

I should be able to reuse code of my graduation project so that's nice.”

“I know a post I made months ago gets more hits than anything else I have written. That was in January (about the time of his last update) and it is still pulling hits.”

“I have seen in demoed and working at FITC Hollywood, but also saw a post that Sam hooked up with Microsoft to convert it all over to Silverlight. Sam is working on that project with MS to complete the transfer.”

“I saw the FITC Toronto demo in April, and I remember him really getting carried away with describing Orchid (which was WAY over everyone's heads, something about using neural net models to wire up components instead of an event system), to the point where he totally forgot to show us anything to do with Saffron, and all we saw was a few screens in the last five minutes of the presentation. The product was close to public beta, he said, and he was working on refactoring the code for the new version of Orchid he was developing before he released it. I remember him saying that he was close to hosting a private beta, and took the emails and names of people who were interested. I was so captivated by the idea of Orchid at the time that I spoke to Samuel after the session to propose that we write a book together about it once it was finished. Sam was excited about the idea, and said he would send me and a few others on his A list (who answered a skill-testing question? - I don't remember now) a limited edition aluminum boxed set of the software when it was released. I emailed him a few times after the con and never heard back from him.

Now, you don't make those kinds of promises unless you're a great con artist or you're the real deal. I spoke with him, and I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt. And given the effort he seems to have put into it, I highly doubt he would just abandon the project for another MS technology. Not unless MS paid him A LOT of money, and even more money to shut up about it. To be honest I half expected Adobe to buy him up as soon as he released the thing. But he never got that far. To me it sound like he just burned out, or quit due to some unforeseen personal problems. Or he got hit by a bus, who knows. It would be good to know, one way or another.

Samuel, where are you?”

“I saw him demo it at FITC Toronto in April. He came to the Spring <br /> Conference (http://sbconference.com) in June and discussed Orchid, you can watch the video if you want. Seemed close to a beta release then too.”

“I watched the video and it looks promising. Of course I saw it parse Papervision3D. No one in their right mind would can something like that into a presentation... so I am thinking it's probably a real project. Supposedly in beta... and if so, those beta testers are keeping very quiet about it.”

eric e. dolecki

Friday, October 24, 2008

Saffron UML acquired by a theoretical mass?

Friday, October 24, 2008