Hi Ken,

It's good to hear from you. I'm more curious than worried.

Apophysis is a labor of love. If the momentum continues the way that it is, it will not fade out for a long time. At least I don't think so. When one of the developers gets tired of it, some other bright person (out of the 600 in 2 days) will pick it up. It ends up being a never ending free development team competing against Garth and Frederick, for example. All it needs is continued distant guidance from people like Draves, Mark and Erik.

I'm not complaining or saying that it is good or bad. I'm just very intrigued by the momentum of it all and I am speculating about how it will turn out.

In the past, the idea that you get what you pay for was true. I don't think it is true with this team rolling forward like it is.

I can't help but think of Fractint in this context. I was in on the tail end of that, but from what I can see Fractint was killed by 2 things: Windows and UF. I think that there was a windows version but it didn't works very well. In other words, the love stopped. I can see why because Fractint was sort of a PITA to use. Apo is easy to use and the coding technology has improved since the Fractint days.

I guess that the universe will stay in balance as long as Frederick and Garth choose to stay in the game. I know that I'll keep paying for UF. If they step out, I wonder if anyone else would be willing to step in to offer a good commercially available application that can compete with apo.

Keith