The long and the short of it is that Kaleida Labs, the place where I hang my hat when I'm working, has been closed by its owners, Apple and IBM. There was little (for the executive staff) or no (for the rest of us) warning that this would take place so it has come as a bit of a shock.
To be sure, there were other times over the course of our three year project that I thought we would be shut down and I wouldn't have been very surprised. Several pieces of core technology for ScriptX, the multimedia programming language we've been building, were in sad shape a year ago when we made our first release. We made it pretty clear it would take a year to get these in order and the owners signed on to the project at that time.
Now here we sit with a much improved, ready for prime time ScriptX. We have some adoring customers chomping at the bit to ship products using ScriptX. After three years of hard work its all coming together. And they shut us down.
I could speculate on reasons why but I may well be sued if I do (as they mostly involve the rather precarious financial and technological positions our parent companies find themselves in - particularly the fruity one). I can give you one interesting quote from our CEO as printed in the Wall Street Journal. He was asked for his opinion on joint ventures between large corporations (such as Kaleida and our sibling, Taligent).
"Companies should have a counseling session with me if they're thinking of doing one. I couldn't charge enough hours to say you're stupid if you try one."
In all fairness, Mike claims to have been misquoted. However, truth, in any form, is always a beautiful thing.
Apple has extended job offers to two-thirds of the company to carry on our work but its still unclear whether or not the team will go there. Several other companies have also leapt up to say they would like to have us, as well.
We shall see.