As Optimus Analysis is ceasing it’s activities, RTIMDB will once again become part of our core offering as we continue to make life easier in industrial and power systems software and firmware.

Rubicon consists of:

1. a DER decoder you can embed into your own applications
2. a DER encoder you can embed into your own applications
3. an experimental X.680 ASN.1 parser and code generator that generates C++14-compliant code for all of the types and values defined in the ASN.1 schema file.

We’re launching this as a preview because the parser and code generator is still experimental. The DER encoder and decoder are “ready for prime time”.

This is an invitation-only preview. If you want to participate, send an E-mail to support@vlinder.ca. Tell us a bit about your project and what you want to use Rubicon for. Participants will get a free license to use Rubicon for the project in question, conditional only on good-faith participation in the preview.

Designing and developing the website kinda tends to distract from our more important work of designing high-quality software and consulting on difficult problems, so it’s taken a while for the site to get this far and it may take a while still to get any further.

We do intend to work on this site a bit in the coming months, though, but with what’s up now you at least have a way to reach out to us.

Watch this space.

-Ronald

At the conclusion of this analysis, and after careful deliberation, we’ve decided to end Arachnida as a product offering.

The component parts that make up most of Arachnida remain under active development and Arachnida will continue to be supported for customers with currently active licenses, as long as those licenses continue to be renewed, but as of today, were will no longer accept purchase orders for new licenses for Arachnida. The last GA version of Arachnida will remain version 2.3.

For current users of Arachnida, we do not recommend changing your implementations because of this: we will continue to maintain the component parts of the framework and will repair any security-related issues for five years after the last licenses expired (which means your maintenance remains secure for as long as you renew your licenses). We will also continue honoring our current commitments and consider change requests and bug fixes as usual.

Acari was originally designed for the Arachnida HTTP(S) Server Framework and the specific challenge of parsing large amounts of text without ever copying anything, and playing nice with binary data. Acari is a class library containing the things you would normally need to build a parser. It is not a parser generator.

Many of the basic functions found in Acari are also found in general-purpose libraries such as Boost and the STL. Acari differs on one important point, however: it is specifically designed for industrial devices.

Acari has been separated from Arachnida, and is now available as a separate library, recommended for use as a toolkit for special-purpose text parsers and specific optimization projects. See the software page for a link to the datasheet or contact us for an evaluation license, or if you have questions.

To our knowledge, Depends was mainly used for internal tools that did not require commercial licensing, and very little support was ever necessary. Parts of it were incorporated in projects (such as interpreters, parsers, and other applications that needed an annotated directed acyclic graph) but modifications for these projects were never ported back to Depends itself, leaving it essentially un-changed for several years now (the latest update was in 2013, the latest known use was late 2014).

Hence, Depends will no longer be maintained by Vlinder Software, and commercial support will no longer be available for this library.

The latest version of Depends’s public version is available on GitHub

Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you!

Here’s why we don’t send out these bulk messages:

Section 6 of the new “Act to promote the efficiency and adaptability of the Canadian economy by regulating certain activities that discourage reliance on electronic means of carrying out commercial activities (…)” specifies a number of exceptions, notably:

(6) Paragraph (1)(a) does not apply to a commercial electronic message that solely (a) provides a quote or estimate for the supply of a product, goods, a service, land or an interest or right in land, if the quote or estimate was requested by the person to whom the message is sent; (b) facilitates, completes or confirms a commercial transaction that the person to whom the message is sent previously agreed to enter into with the person who sent the message or the person — if different — on whose behalf it is sent; (c) provides warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information about a product, goods or a service that the person to whom the message is sent uses, has used or has purchased; (d) provides notification of factual information about (i) the ongoing use or ongoing purchase by the person to whom the message is sent of a product, goods or a service offered under a subscription, membership, account, loan or similar relationship by the person who sent the message or the person — if different — on whose behalf it is sent, or (ii) the ongoing subscription, membership, account, loan or similar relationship of the person to whom the message is sent; (e) provides information directly related to an employment relationship or related benefit plan in which the person to whom the message is sent is currently involved, is currently participating or is currently enrolled; (f) delivers a product, goods or a service, including product updates or upgrades, that the person to whom the message is sent is entitled to receive under the terms of a transaction that they have previously entered into with the person who sent the message or the person — if different — on whose behalf it is sent; or (g) communicates for a purpose specified in the regulations.

This is in-line with our existing policies, namely:

• We don't do "cold calls", by E-mail or otherwise: we'll only contact you if you contact us first.
• We will contact you for updates and upgrades that:
  1. you are entitled to under your maintenance plan, or
  2. we have reasonable cause to believe will affect the security or safety of your products, systems, or installations of your products
• Once a year, we will send you a reminder about your existing maintenance plans and the latest version of the software covered by those plans. These messages are factual (i.e. no products or services are offered) and can be opted-out of at any time.

We believe that our current policy conforms strictly to both the spirit and the letter of the law, so we don’t think it is necessary to bother you with another E-mail asking you to update your information.

• There was no explicit reference to our quote terms and conditions. Such a reference was added.
• There was no explicit reference to the applicable license terms and conditions. Such a reference was added.
• There was no explicit limitation of our liability (such limitations were only part of other terms and conditions documents). Mention of the limitation was added.
• There was no explicit mention that receipt of payment is deemed acceptance of the terms and conditions. This is now explicit.
• The terms and conditions did not allow for delivery commencing later than the standard two working days after receipt of payment, even if requested. Such requests would be exceptions to the terms and conditions which needed to be explicitly allowed by an authorized Vlinder Software representative. They can now be met without needing an exception to the terms and conditions.
• A small grammatical error and a small spelling error were corrected.

These new terms and conditions will be applicable to all invoices issued as of today.

The previous version of the terms and conditions can be downloaded here: http://vlinder.ca/invoice-tac-1.0.pdf. The differences between the previous and the new terms and conditions are highlighted here: http://vlinder.ca/invoice-tac-redline.pdf. The now-current version of the terms and conditions, without highlight of the changes are here: http://vlinder.ca/invoice-tac.pdf.

Renewals for existing support contracts will remain available and the Long-Term Support edition will continue to be maintained. Funky was originally released in 2007 and is implemented using a now-obsolete parser framework. It is that choice of technology six years ago that has led us to stop selling new licenses for Funky today.

Vlinder Software has, in the past years, produced several other Domain-Specific Languages and we’ve developed tools and methods better suited for DSLs targeting embedded devices. We will be using those tools and methods to create a replacement DSL using the same grammar and API, if there is continued demand for languages in the Funky family. (There are several dialects of Funky, all based on the same technology and all included in this announcement.)

Q&A

I have a five-year Long-Term Support package for Funky. Will I continue to get updates and support?
Yes, we will continue to support existing licensees and will continue to provide updates to the software as needed.

I’m about to port an application that uses Funky to a different platform and I have a multi-platform license and support package. Will you support me?
Yes, if you have a support package and need our support, we will support you.

Will you release new features for Funky or one of its dialects?
No, we will not be developing any new features for this software.

Will you release new updates for Funky or one of its dialects?
Maybe: if we find bugs – especially security bugs – we will fix them as long as active support packages for the software exist. We will only stop maintenance development when no more active support packages exist for the software, which is not the case at this time.

Then what does this announcement mean?
It means that you should not consider Funky for development of new applications because you will not be able to buy new licenses. You could always go with the Community Edition for such developments, but that would place your software under a GPLv2 license.

In stead, you can ask us about our custom-designed Domain-Specific Languages.