Past, Present, and Future PowerExplain

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February 20, 2003


Dear Friends,

In 1996, the first version of what would later become PowerExplain was made available for download on the internet.   The software was later rewritten in Delphi in 1998 and PowerExplain version one was born.   Since that time, numerous changes have been made along with bug fixes, and the software has evolved.   Although the surrounding technologies have become more complicated, and now there are many more sophisticated tools on the market for tuning queries, PowerExplain has always been popular as free tool that it tremendously easy to use.

We have also found that the free perpetual license idea has worked very well.   Although there have been a few glitches where some requests were not processed (mainly due to the advent of spam filters!), we have enjoyed seeing people from all around the world requesting a free license to use the product.   As of February 2003, over 4000 people have requested a license from about 25 different countries!

Of course, those of you who have been long time PowerExplain users have probably realized that the program updates have been occurring much less frequently.   Some of you who have taken the time to write me have asked for various improvements and, although my intentions are generally good in wanting to accommodate, I have genuinely been unable to complete them due to a number of competing priorities.

So what is the future of PowerExplain?   Because I cannot no longer keep up with improving the product, I am going to put the software into the Public Domain so that the code may be shared with others who may want to improve it and make it available to others.    The process of doing this will take a bit of work, but it will be to the benefit of everyone in the long run.

The first step to this task was to remove any licensing requirements from the software.   The latest version (2.0) no longer requires a license key and there are absolutely no restrictions.   This means anyone can download and use the software as they choose.

The next step will be to decide which free software license to use and I am currently researching this.

Finally, the source code will need to be packaged into a format that will allow others to make changes and provide these updates to back to the public domain.   I will also be creating a new website for PowerExplain that will become the permanent home of the software and where the source code will be available for download.

If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a line at support@verge-tech.com.   I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your interest in PowerExplain.

Sincerely,

Ennio Murroni
President, Verge Technologies Inc.