Today GemTalk Systems announced the acquisition of the GemStone/S platform from VMware. Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, this is a good thing:
The entire Smalltalk team is moving intact from VMware to GemTalk Systems and I want to emphasize that both GemTalk Systems and VMware are being very generous and fair during the transition.
We are re-locating to another suite in the same office complex, up the stairs from our old location.
We are keeping all of the GemStone/S intellectual property including MagLev and all of the GemStone/S customers.
We are not keeping our old name (GemStone Systems) and we are not keeping the gemstone.com domain. I guess one can’t expect everything. I have also been assured that the URLs for GemSource and SS3 will continue to function for at least a year (if not longer).
From a technical perspective GemStone/S has thrived at VMware, the engineering team has been pretty much left alone and we were given all of the necessary resources to “get the job done”. From a technical and personal perspective, I have been very happy with my tenure at VMware.
On the business side, I would say that GemStone/S foundered a bit. The GemStone/S product never got fully integrated into the VMware universe (unlike GemFire), but then the GemStone/S product was not the primary focus of the original VMware acquisition.
Now, with the GemFire team becoming part of Pivotal, you can imagine that the Smalltalk team is very happy to find a home with GemTalk Systems .
GemTalk Systems is a privately held company led by Dan Ware. Prior to the VMware acquisition in 2010, Dan had been an executive with GemStone Systems for 17 years. For most of those years Dan was in charge of the Sales organization, so Dan knows the GemStone/S customer base, very well.
Dan and the investors love GemStone/S and want to see it continue to thrive.
This quote bears repeating:
and from our transition FAQ:
Frankly, I don’t think that I could have imagined a better home for GemStone/S.
14 comments
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May 2, 2013 at 10:29 am
Igor Stasenko
Strong wind into your sails!
May 2, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Dale Henrichs
Thanks, man!
May 2, 2013 at 12:47 pm
RandalSchwartz
Could have just called the new company ServioLogic, and then everything old would be new again!
May 2, 2013 at 2:39 pm
kajaman
Any chance you guys release the product as open source software? I still think the revival of Smalltalk is very possible, however, it will not happen within a closed environment.
Think how many Rubyists (like me) you could attract to the platform, for example. But that will not happen as it is different culture, if it’s not open source, people will ignore it. Very much how they ignore MagLev: it is interesting, but people loose the interest once they need to install some closed source thing.
You can stick to your current customer base, hell, it might even grow a bit and get you some profits in the following years. But it will not go mainstream anymore, unless you push the project to Github, add License.txt with MIT license in it and focus on providing great documentation/support/consulting/training for the platform and building profitable business model – like RedHat or Neo4j guys do.
The choice is yours, I really think it would be great to see Smalltalk/MagLev taking over the world (again), but I guess it’s pretty much up to you making some brave decisions.
May 2, 2013 at 2:55 pm
Dale Henrichs
Any chance? Certainly there is a chance. With the creation of GemTalk, we have much more control over our destiny than ever before. Today we are not entertaining a move to open source, but tomorrow? I’m pretty certain that we will be considering that option. In the mean time we have enough on our plate to keep us busy …
May 2, 2013 at 6:57 pm
Chris Cunnington
I look forward to the T-shirt!
May 3, 2013 at 5:31 am
Carl Gundel
Godspeed GemTalk!
Going open source is risky. I’m sure it can be done, but hard to do right. Years ago a colleague challenged me to open source my software. I told him that my wife wouldn’t appreciate it. ;-)
May 3, 2013 at 8:57 am
JohnnyT (@johnny_t)
Booyah! Wow – I’m psyched for you guys. I can’t wait to chat more at STIC and Camp Smalltalk this year.
May 3, 2013 at 9:17 am
Dale Henrichs
@Chris … so am I:)
May 3, 2013 at 9:28 am
Dale Henrichs
@carl, no kidding, but at a minimum we should take a serious look and make the determination … right now though, our first priority is to smoothly transition from VMware to GemTalk and make sure that our existing customer base (both paid and free) are taken care of. Frankly at the moment there is no second priority:)
Once we’ve stabilized operations, we will be looking forward at how we can best leverage our technology for the benefits of our existing customers and to generate new business.
Dan has been involved in the business end of GemStone/S for almost 2 decades so we won’t be doing anything rash…
GemStone has been around for 3 decades and being able to survive that long means that we’ve adapted to the changing business environment and I expect that we will continue to do so.
The decision-making for that is in the not-to-distant future and when we do make the decisions I’m sure that we will put all of the options on the table…
May 3, 2013 at 9:28 am
Dale Henrichs
@johnny Glad to hear that you’ll be coming to STIC … I’m looking forward to it!
May 3, 2013 at 9:05 pm
Thierry Thelliez
Whoa! I did not know that STIC would be that exciting. See you there!
May 3, 2013 at 10:45 pm
Dale Henrichs
:) … See YOU there.
May 8, 2013 at 12:17 am
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