EndOfLifeLetter

This letter was sent to Coin3D Professional Edition License holders and the mailing lists coin-announce and coin-discuss (@coin3d.org) on November 1st 2011:

Dear Coin3D user,

Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies AS (“KOGT”) regretfully informs that Coin3D will be discontinued as a commercial product. The revenue has been decreasing and is not sufficient to maintain the product you expect and deserve.

Our decision is to start the End Of Life (“EOL”) process for Coin3D. Effective immediately we are no longer renewing Coin3D PEL subscriptions.

We recognize that Coin3D is an important tool for you and your business, and we wish to minimize the negative impact of the EOL. Professional Edition License ("PEL") holders are permitted by the PEL to continue using the last publicly available version of Coin for as long as they desire, and GPL users are of course free to continue using and contributing to Coin3D under the GPL. However, we fear that the GPL and PEL dual licensing scheme will be detrimental to the overall Coin3D user community since the two licenses hinder free collaboration and sharing. In order to support a strong Coin3D community and facilitate free collaboration and sharing, we intend to:

1. Move the Coin3D source code and home page to an independent hosting service such as e.g. BitBucket
2. Re-license Coin3D under the BSD 3 clause license
3. Act as maintainer and gate keeper of the source code for 3 months after the re-licensing
4. Invite some of the most active users to take over the maintainer and gate keeper roles
5. Provide support to PEL holders until their subscriptions expire

We will make a new announcement with the details of the EOL process as soon as the practical issues have been sorted out.

We thank you all for the cooperation we have had over the years since Coin3D was first released in 1998, and apologize for the inconvenience the EOL process may cause you.