OK, some digging was done on the Companies House website yesterday. This is where companies in the UK have to be registered.
There are two Softpresses that are salient to our interest.
Softpress Systems Ltd. SOFTPRESS SYSTEMS LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK
This is the Softpress that made Freeway. It is currently being liquidated.
Softpress Ltd
This is, I expect (given that Richard Logan’s name is there), the new Softpress that is now active.
Some deep speculation follows:
Softpress Ltd was set up to take on assets and IP of Softpress Systems Ltd. So development and maintenance of Freeway could carry on without all this information being lost. No doubt there is a hard drive with all the source code somewhere in Oxford, and not in Manchester.
The problems with Freeway won’t go away, and these are now compounded by the fact that Softpress of old has ceased trading for some time. All the folk who worked there are likely moved on to other jobs, so any chance of development being just picked up from where it last stood is slim.
Freeway was also written on a very, very old framework - MacApp - and this I expect has been kept going more by sheer belligerence than anything else. This has been discussed here before. TL:DR - It‘s a big job to move from away MacApp. I doubt it will happen.
So Freeway 8? 7.5? I dunno. Maybe we’ll get a sound Sierra update, but whatever Apple calls its next OS (Capri, Escort, Cortina, Orion?)*, it may be that Freeway will start to fail in ways that we can not predict. Maybe we’ll get patches to 7, but unless a team of crack engineers can be assembled to build such a future-proof beast, Freeway 8 will be a pipedream, not a reality.
Anything we see from Softpress v2.0 will more than likely be a 1.0 product. What it will be is anyone’s guess - software, online services, maybe things we’ll never see because they are more esoteric and focussed on a certain business sector. Maybe there will be a successor to Freeway - a brand spanking new DTP-like web design app that will work for the 21st century, and will bring us multiple undo.
My thoughts: keep looking for Freeway replacements, but we maybe be able to breathe a little easier knowing that there are small signs of life.
Good luck, Softpress 2 - bring us good things.
*Sniggers.
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