ID:1857387
 
Greetings BYONDers!

The astute among you may have noticed a small change in the footer on this website: "BYOND" is now "BYOND Software". This is an admission of defeat for me, because my goal all along was to turn BYOND into a global behemoth like Apple or Amazon. We would have had subdivisions like "BYOND Donuts" and "BYOND Toilet Repair" and so forth. Alas, the Software division took up all of our time so it was not to be.

In seriousness, what has happened here is simply a change in ownership. As of earlier this month, I have officially transferred over the entirety of this business to long-time user, developer, and friend Lummox JR (whose name is actually Lee). We've been working to transfer the knowledge base and IT infrastructure (that is what predicated the server move), and I will be available for as long as he needs to help out.

This has been a long time coming; I first floated the idea with Lee a few years ago. As I recall, the conversation went something like this:

Me: So would you be interested in taking over BYOND?
Lee: Well, I'm not much of a businessman.
Me: No worries, it's not much of a business!

Ahahahaha. We revisited this act a few times but not much came of it, because, I suppose, of Newton's first law: Lee was content with the small, but regular income from the project and I had invested so much time and energy into this that I was hesitant to let it go.

With the latest webclient developments-- our most ambitious project yet-- I realized that this project has a lot of life yet. But for it to succeed, it needs to have a passionate person at the helm, not one treating it more or less like an investment (even if it is the kind of investment that takes a lot of work and makes no money :) ) And Lee is the perfect person for this job, because not only is he a brilliant developer, he is legitimately excited about BYOND and its future. When I first decided to turn BYOND into a business, I made the decision only to hire from within the community, because I knew that they cared about the product. And this "Lummox JR" guy cared enough to harass us nonstop with obscure feature requests and abuses of the engine. Look where it has gotten him now!

For you, beloved user of BYOND, this is great news. Lee is a developer's developer: he pays less heed to the business than he does to the features he (and others) want. If you are an ambitious developer willing to put in the work, he will work with you personally to make your game a success. Already we've gone over some exciting things for the future software releases, and, this webclient is going to make a big "summer splash" with the upcoming games that are utilizing it. Once people see the potential for BYOND to become a generic platform for multiplayer games on desktop, mobile, and the web, all of the work over the years should finally come to fruition.

But understand that this is more than just a "job" for Lee now. The Fund-o-Meter has been a bit sad in the last few months, and although the regular pleas may be annoying, I hope you realize that it is necessary to keep the project going. If BYOND has brought any joy to your life, or you just want to support a worthwhile project, I ask you to contribute, even if it's only a few dollars. Understand that this project, under Dan's ownership, under my ownership, and now under Lee's ownership, has never been about greed-- this is why everything has always been, and will always be, basically free. It has survived almost 20 years now out of a labor of love and on the contributions of the community.

To those of you who have been a part of BYOND for so long, I thank you. Although this project was not financially successful for me, personally, I take great pride in knowing that so many have toyed with our humble developments throughout the years, and I hope that this continues long into the future. And should BYOND (er BYOND Software) make it bigtime one day, I hope Lee hires me to run the Donut division!
I sure hope that he's as soft as you involving byond regulations...

Let's not talk about that further.

Also, a wise choice. Good job.
THE WISE ONE HAS SPOKEN!
what about muh open sores
List of things that i want to be legit:
1: Byond The video game.
we're very lucky to have someone like Lummox
Good luck out there, old man.
There's a BYOND Doughnut Division? Can someone please redirect me? o-o
Good luck to you Tom, in your future endeavors. And good luck Lummox, with running Byond. I can only hope things get better, because I'd like to imagine the future is bright and filled with promise.
O'Captain, My Captain.
GOODBYE, TOM T-T
will it go open source now?
Oh man, I barely knew ye, but this is saddening. I hope you do great wherever you end up, and may BYOND Software forever thrive.
Thanks for getting me interested in game development. Even though the things I build are often unfinished and falling apart, it has been fun playing with the blocks you've provided. Whatever path Lummox JR chooses to take, I know it will be the right one.
Open source is not in any immediate plans. However, one of my goals is to disentangle hub code from the main code, which would conceivably make the non-hub code feasible to open up down the road. There are major parts of the code that could benefit from another set of eyes, although everything I said in the past about the complexity of the code was an understatement. Really, it's amazing.

My biggest near-term goal is to complete the DSification of the webclient and achieve some improvements that will make it more widely usable on third-party sites (like better communication with the host site). 508 will be another series of beta releases working toward that goal. There are some major new features in 508 as well, so I'm hoping to really get a lot done in this area.

Another feature I haven't mentioned is that 508's icon editor is going through some improvements. IchiroKeisuke has provided icons that will be used in the editor in place of the old text-only buttons. These are placeholders, and eventually I'd like to see if some talented artists in the community could come up with something even better. (I like the Tango icon standard a lot.) There are some pending feature requests for that that I'd like to get in, too. And I haven't forgotten about the map editor.
Psh, Tom isn't going anywhere. Nobody is capable of quitting BYOND, remember?

Anyways, congratulations Lummox. Looking forward to seeing how things turn out.
I for one look forward to our new supervillain overlord. :) Congratulations to Lummox JR, and good luck to you Tom on your future endeavors!
later tom. thanks for everything.
PS. The last company I left ended up going public a year after and everyone became millionaires. So I think this bodes will for Lummox JR & BYOND :)

Although it won't happen until more people start kicking in a few bucks!
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