Today its 2 years since the first public release of Jucy. Some might still remember the first version .. with the round red-black-blue icon. And the slow change to a more reasonable name (UC->jUCy (argh eycancer) ->Jucy).
Most important.. jucy has vastly improved since then. From being a barely usable client which could possibly keep up with some of the Linux clients at that time, by now it has evolved to being one of the most feature rich clients around. Also it changed from less than 50 downloads a month to more than 1000 downloads, which is for me quite amazing.
Another important change of this year was the move to an Open Source licence (BSD licence) so anyone interested could use the code (before the code was open for viewing but not for using...) . Though I really though about changeing this to some newly invented licence... first thing comeing to my mind would be some "Coffee-licence" where you should send the developer a pound of coffee if you appreciated the program. At least that would be more beneficial for me than some Catware licence (which requires you to pat a cat for a certain time if you like the software)!
When we are at this ... the financial sitch of the project is as good as ever. Servers are cheap... and in the last 2 years there was a total of 20€ donated which is nearly enough to accomodate for 2 Months of server costs. Which is quite unimportant.. after all this is done for fun and even though I am still a student this project won't die from lack of money. Also the coding is addictive enough and without any GF there is no lack of time in sight! So the near monthly release schedule could be kept up in future.
Where will Jucy go in future?
Some changes need to be done. First for the next Version Jucy will move to Java 6. Which has mostly only impact on Mac users. As Java 6 is there only regularly available with Snow Leopard and newer OS. Indirectly this means PowerPC-arch users have no chance at all of running Jucy anymore. Before that was possible if you had some newer OS though Tiger and older already had problems with later Jucy releases.
Moving to Java 6 will give away possibility for only a few features... Namely Scripting API should make it possible to enable Scripting in future, which migt make it possible to create soem Operator plugin with scripting support. Currently you could already do that though you would need to write Java and not Lua, also I don't see anyone really interested in writing some Operator-plugin. Currently its still only one Person writing on Jucy. Though there are already a few people helping out in the project. Besides ARJ who I recently saved this server... there is Fox who creates new Splashs and main icons for me from time to time. Also there are the translators which recently added russian support for Jucy (sadly translation are currently halted as they are to complex to do .. though ARJ is developing some toolsupport for the project so in future translations could be done simple). And I am still having hope in Fox one day doing a translation for Jucy to "Ancient Greece" or some other fun language worthy of a program released on April First ;-) (Anyone interested to do Latin?).
Also on the plan is for the future to actually test versions before releasing them. So it might be possible in future versions to select if you want to have all the latest releases or may be only the ones which have been tested for a few days (I doubt more is possible with near monthly releases).
Nah that wraps it up.
Happy third Year of Jucy
and don't get fooled today!
Quicksilver
