Bad news on the hardware front - the people making the Slink-e, Nirvis Systems have announced that they are discontinuing the product by the end of June 30, 2004.
The email with the announcement follows:
To All of Our Customers,
We are sorry to announce that we will be discontinuing the Slink-e product. We will be accepting orders until June 30th if you wish to purchase a unit before they are discontinued. We will continue to provide limited service and support for our existing customers.
We are very grateful for all of the support and enthusiasm that we have received from the community of Slink-e users over the last six years. You have given us so much appreciation and help and we are glad that we were able to keep this product out there for so long. As the old timers know the Slink-e was never even intended to be a product and Colby originally gave the plans away for free. It was your enthusiasm that made it possible for us to have a viable business. Thanks to all of you.
As many of you know Microsoft purchased the intellectual property to our products several years ago. Within that agreement we have had a very liberal back licensing agreement that has allowed us to continue with business as usual for the past three years. That agreement will soon expire.
This year has seen a sharp downturn in sales for the Slink-e I would guess mostly due to the fact that hard drive based music systems are now quite affordable and practical to set up. Since I got an iPod for Christmas I have even moved to using iTunes on my PC. Our business has always been supported primarily by CDJ applications with general home automation being only a very small portion of our market. Given the current economics and our personal interests in doing other things, Colby and I have decided not to pursue renewal of our license with Microsoft. The question of open sourcing and sublicensing comes up often enough that I will address it here. It is not possible for us to license or open source either the CDJ code or the Slink-e firmware as they are both owned wholly by Microsoft.
Again, thank you all for your support through the years and best of luck with your home automation projects. Please feel free to e-mail me directly if you have any questions or comments.
Sincerely,
David Aue
Nirvis, Inc.
