21 June 1999

An Open Letter to the Friends of the AbiSource Project

Dear Friends of Abi,

It has been quite a wild ride since we created the AbiSource project one year ago. :-)

As of the time I write this, AbiWord is at version 0.7.3 and is considered by many to be usable for basic tasks. We regularly receive praise for AbiWord's stability and its clean, simple user interface. Our focus on cross-platform architecture has been a key, as AbiWord is now being actively developed for Linux, Windows, BeOS and almost all flavors of UNIX. Finally, AbiWord has truly become a community-developed project. The AbiWord development team now includes individuals from all over the world. We are extremely pleased with the popularity of AbiWord, and we look forward to the continued success of this project.

As most people know, AbiWord's cross-platform focus is not the only attribute which distinguishes it from the majority of Open Source community projects. AbiWord is also one of the few Open Source projects which was founded by and is actively sponsored by a for-profit corporation.

The company which founded AbiWord has lived in relative obscurity, supporting the development of AbiWord behind the scenes while remaining involved in its other business ventures and projects.

As a company, we are now moving to make a connection between our various projects under the umbrella of a new single public identity, making ourselves known to you by the new name of SourceGear Corporation.

You already know that SourceGear has founded and sponsored the AbiSource project. Today we are announcing that SourceGear has acquired Cyclic Software, extending our involvement in the world of free software to include maintenance and support of CVS. See www.cyclic.com for additional information.

In addition to this, we regularly work on contract development projects for some of the largest organizations in the world. We also sell a line of Internet access tools for Microsoft Windows developers, including SourceOffSite and SourceSurf. Detailed information about those tools may be found at www.sourceoffsite.com.

[Fans of Linux and GTK+ will note that SourceOffSite is one of the few shipping commercial applications which uses the GTK+ widget set, and it is the only solution available for Linux users who feel "unfortunate" enough to have to use SourceSafe. ;-)]

You may rest assured that SourceGear intends to actively support the continued progress and success of the AbiWord project. This is an important end-user application for the Open Source community and we are eager to see it continue.

All of our previous and current activities form the foundation for our future endeavors. We appreciate the opportunity to tell you of this current round of organizational changes which will prepare for us exciting new announcements in the future.

Yours truly,

Eric W. Sink

President
SourceGear Corporation