Bare Bones, the veteran Mac software company and producer of Yojimbo and BBEdit, has announced some changes to its product roster.
File utility Super Get Info is to be discontinued. There will be no further development, and support for the final release (1.3.1) will cease at the end of this year.
And Mailsmith, the plain-text mail client first released in 1998, is to be made freeware and will no longer be a Bare Bones official product.
Mailsmith’s new home will be at Stickshift software, owned and run by Bare Bones boss Rich Siegel. Who is, we should point out, remaining in charge at Bare Bones; the software remains the same, it’s just the details of who owns it that changes. Rich will now have two hats to distribute software under. (We’ve emailed him some supplementary questions for a little more detail; this post will be updated when we get a reply.) (See after the jump for additional comment.)
What does this mean for Bare Bones’ premium products, BBEdit and Yojimbo? More frequent updates, perhaps? One or two new apps, maybe? We’ll have to wait and see. I’m rather hoping for both.
UPDATE
I asked Rich Siegel if today’s announcements signified any change of direction for Bare Bones. Here’s his reply:
“We merely are acknowledging that those particular products have reached specific points in their product lifecycle as we see it. Super Get Info is retiring; Mailsmith is going to a good home. The impending release of a major upgrade to the OS is a good milestone at which to evaluate such matters. We have done so in the past, we did it today, and I’m sure we’ll do it again in the future. :-)”
In short: move along, nothing more to see. Unless you want your free copy of Mailsmith, in which case go ahead and download it already.
