MacKichan Software was founded in 1981.

MicroCAP was launched in 1982.

Stephen R. Whiteley who wrote WRCAD is 66.

I suppose there's only so long a one person company can go on for.

>I suppose there's only so long a one person company can go on for.

These were my thoughts exactly.

These people got a an entire career out of independently working on software they (presumably) enjoyed developing. And if they open source it, the product lives on. It's not sad, it's great! Some of us should be so lucky.

Is it due to the market, or the owners are retiring/giving up?

My father (67, retired) has a couple of friends his age with long time, small businesses in the IT industry. One has been making some sort of map software for a very small niche in the marine industry, another has been making software for bee keepers or something similar. A third in image scanning software. They have been doing well since the late 80s, and still could be. They chose to go out of business and enjoy retired life instead.

I suspect that, although there is a market for the products, noone is interested in taking on the software they worked on.

> I suspect that, although there is a market for the products, noone is interested in taking on the software they worked on.

It may be extremely difficult to do that, for at least a few reasons.

In some cases, the tech is going to be very niche/old, and it will be difficult for people to get up to speed on it.

The business is likely built on a lot of personal contacts, and not all will want to switch to some 'newcomer'.

Many of these smaller business reliant on niche software will go out of business themselves, or be acquired by larger companies that will replace the niche software and process with something else.

The current customers may not actually want anything other than regular updates while paying minimal support/maintenance contracts. Someone established can live off that, but someone new will have to spend a lot of time learning, and the income may not be sufficient to justify all the learning.

I worked on a project in 2018 where some of the (small) company was still running on a combination of foxpro/db2, with a bunch of custom code by an indie/solo vendor who had 'retired' probably 5 years earlier. He'd 'sold' the company to another individual who ... kept it going, but couldn't easily deal with new needs (new reports, etc). Another vendor did an upgrade on the hosting server, and nothing worked after that. The upgrade was a base NT upgrade, and there wasn't any easy way to 'go back' quickly. Things ran off an RDP session to a laptop in Canada running some weird trial emulation tool under windows 7 (this was how it was translated to me from various parties).

Well, if I may, there is something that doesn't sound (to me) "rational".

I have seen quite a few of these cases where a larger company buys the old one (essentially to get a list of their current customers) and then terminates the product replacing it with some crappy new stuff that usually completely fails to work, but in this case the soon-to-retire programmer at least gets some (little) money (and knowledge is lost forever).

But if the one man company is going to shut down because the programmer is going to retire, the acquisition cost for a young, willing programmer is 0.

This hypothetical young programmer could - I believe - invest some time to understand not so much the actual codebase, but rather the workflow of the program and re-write it along that same workflow in a new language/platform/whatever.

I am pretty sure that those niche users would be ready to pay a fair amount of money to have something modern/updated that actually works and works like the old one.

What I have seen often is that the new program, for no real reason, has been written by someone that most probably is much more brilliant at programming but that knows nothing about how the program is actually used, has no idea about how to deal with some "edge" cases (that already surely happened in the tens of years of life of the old software), etc., in some ways it is like all the experience accumulated over the years is suddenly lost and the new program repeats the same (or worse) mistakes/issues that already happened (and that were already solved).

Maybe the problem is that there is not an easy way to tell to the world "I am going to retire, any taker?"

> This hypothetical young programmer could - I believe - invest some time to understand not so much the actual codebase, but rather the workflow of the program and re-write it along that same workflow in a new language/platform/whatever.

> I am pretty sure that those niche users would be ready to pay a fair amount of money to have something modern/updated that actually works and works like the old one.

I don't know. My experience is, for many smaller niche things, they're entrenched in orgs and used The One Way, and any deviation - change a button label, add a menu, etc - will result in a lot of complaints from existing users. They'll have to 'retrain', etc.

No doubt some people will appreciate and welcome 'new/modern' stuff, but many won't. And figuring that out ahead of time is... time. and effort. And along with that, there's usually heaps of institutional/domain knowledge that just can't be replaced without... time in the trenches.

It's not that it's not possible, it's just not typically 'worth it' for most people. ROI is too low compared to other options.

> I don't know. My experience is, for many smaller niche things, they're entrenched in orgs and used The One Way, and any deviation - change a button label, add a menu, etc - will result in a lot of complaints from existing users. They'll have to 'retrain', etc.

People hate this just as much in almost any software (or, most any UI, physical or virtual, for that matter), they just often don't have a way to push back.

You wouldn't know it based on current trends, but consistency and predictability are king in user interfaces, as far as actual usability goes. So much so that high levels of severe bugginess can be preferable than less-severe and common bugginess, if the former is consistent and predictable ("if I press this button then that one, the application will crash or glitch, every single time, no matter what state the program is in—so, I won't do that") and the latter isn't ("about once a day this button takes me to the wrong screen, and the behavior seems random"). If your users are your top priority, changes will occur gradually, and only with excellent motivation. Grand re-designs are among the most user-hostile things you can do (despite their popularity).

[EDIT] to be clear, they don't have a way to push back in the modern age of rolling updates and old versions being infeasible to obtain at all, possibly broken even if you can, and, most likely, full of known vulnerabilities that will never be patched. In the old days of desktop software that you actually purchased, and that operated just fine entirely offline, the way to push back was not to upgrade, and it was common.

The other pushback, in the context of the 'indie/solo' niche software stuff, is to actually call or email the original person and complain.

Yes, that young, entrepreneurial programmer can be found, but won’t have the domain knowledge. Look at the examples above. You can’t sell Marine mapping software without knowing something about marine navigation. You can’t sell beekeeping software without understanding beekeeping. Plus you need the general business operation skills. Finding a programmer who knows beekeeping and wants to take on a low growth business is not as easy as finding a programmer on Upwork.

Yep. There may be 'takers', but will the existing customers want to work with them? So many solo/indie niche packages are built on the relationships, and replacing those - and the trust around them - is hard.

A client told me about someone they knew who did ballroom dancing software - it kept track of competitions, standings, etc. And... it seemed like decent money, looking at the pricing, and the size of the market. But the market didn't seem big enough for multiple players, and everyone trusted/knew/used the one main player. If/when he goes (or perhaps already has), I'm sure people will find another way to manage their stuff, but before then... who's going to come in to a market like that? How do you 'beat' the incumbent? Lower price? Who would switch? How do you convince people to switch to something unknown, potentially losing years of data, having new training costs, to ... save a couple hundred bucks maybe?

I'm sure there's hundreds of these sorts of services out there that are surviving, but don't have a huge market for competition, because the barriers to entry are too high relative to the return.

Yes, but I was talking more about "passing on" the knowledge/experience (as opposed to losing it and start anew).

Regarding your "The One Way", sometimes that one way is actually the one that works better, as it was developed and fine tuned over the years by a dedicated programmer that had constant feedback by users.

Probably that ballroom dancing software had a way to input (or present/output) data in a form that makes sense to the users.

When suddenly comes the new (otherwise brilliant) programmer that - knowing nothing on the specific field - invents his/her own way to input data or render it that the users find awkward or slower or less intuitive or whatever, with the new program that cannot import old data (or imports partially), that cannot use the same B&W printer because the output is highlighted with colours and not with bolding/underlining, etc..

No surprise that the users of the old software (if it is still working) won't jump on the new bandwagon.

But that is why there were apprentiships, and I have seen docos about Japanese solo or small workplace craftsmen who take on 70yo apprentices.

But it would need planning, and a certain class of able worker who is happy to not continually be dreaming about "changing the world".

But sometimes better is just keep persisting with what works, not everything is better disrupted.

If it is due to retirement, the other employees might not be able to take over the product if it has been a 1 person show. I know of similar software where if the main developer were to leave, I have zero confidence they could do much besides maintenance. It isn't just the code, but having the mathematical understanding of the problem.

Also, without looking at this in general, I wonder if it's hard to compete with Mathematica which is ~$1000 for a professional license (very reasonable in the industry compared to most others) or free on raspberry pi with free or near free for most students. Also, there is open source software as well that could eat into their niche.

Mathematica is at least ~$1.5k/year, ~$3k if you want only the desktop application, no WolframAlpha-like features. Licenses on the desktop are not per user, but per machine (8 core limitation). If you want to move the installation to another machine, you have to send them a signed document and contact Wolfram (the company, not the person). I could go on all day about the friction and restrictions.

They have an excellent and unique product and I would love to pour them money (between me and my employer we pay about EUR 1000 /year to Intellij, and this is only one provider). But for some reason I do not feel comfortable between the immense power imbalance between them and myself. It makes me uneasy to invest in the ecosystem.

I wonder how many clients they have their CAP users in the academic world.

Fully agreed on the friction. It is quite annoying if you have a license, but it's not widespread at your company. The core restrictions are rediculous as well for such an expensive product.

I use it for things I need, but similar to you, I try to stick to other tools (Python for me) just to avoid the frustrations.

They can move a license fairly easily, but there ended up being some other annoying issues for me recently that made me want to wash my hands entirely.

> small, one person companies founded near the beginning of personal computing are shutting down.

It could also be that they didn't appropriately expand, or expanded too much.

First we need to understand if there is a trend and if it is accelerating.

If so, it feels like “retirement” is a good first guess at why.

why not sell the business? too much hassle to operate? someone surely would want it...

"We expect to make Scientific Word an open source product eventually. Since both Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook contain the proprietary computer algebra system MuPAD, they cannot be made open source. When the open source project for Scientific Word is established, an announcement will be made here."

It looks like they just hope for it to be continued as open source - except for the part The Mathworks Inc. owns anyway

One person businesses often require a unique collection of skills to operate and don’t make enough money to hire a team of professional operators. This is also true of traditional small businesses like restaurants and car mechanics. The phenomenon is discussed extensively in the “E-myth” series of books. The TLDR is if you ever want to get someone else to run your business, you have to be careful to systematize and document how it works.

I relate to this. 1 person company means getting the job done. As soon as you have 2 people you really need 3. One to do the labor, the other to schedule and bill(receptionist). If it's a physical company you need more space. Some software charges by person too.

If something gets cancelled, the 1 person company takes a few hours off. Your 3 person company still needs to get their weekly paychecks.

Whenever I hear calls for raises to minimum wage to absurd(?) levels (20$/hr), I think that this company will never be able to grow past 1 person. You can pay for a receptionist if you are a big corp with many employees, but it's really hard when you are going from 1 person to 3. We'd even let the receptionist do full WFH and just answer phones so they can watch their kids.

"I guess we don't deserve to be in business".

And the big corporation who gives 60% of our service conquers the industry.

There are companies that provide receptionists as a service.

People in Germany and Norway somehow start companies. Maybe they make do without receptionists?

People buy restaurants and car shops mainly because of licensing such as alcohol and zoning laws. It's rare for a specialty shop to be sold unless the owner has an apprentice.

It’s more common if the specialty shop has expanded to a chain. Because the same skills and tactics it takes to make a chain business also make a salable / maintainable business.

Pretty sure restaurants and car mechanics aren't unique skills and when they retire in my area someone usually buys them out and continues operating under the same name...

From what I recall from reading one of the "E-myth" books a while ago, whether the newly-owned shop will operate similarly to the old one, and also how difficult was it for the original owners to sell it, will depend on the documentation GP mentioned.

Going from my memory, "E-myth" book(s) insist on thoroughly documenting operating procedures and turning them into playbook. Rigid in terms of personnel training, but open to change if someone figures out an improvement. The goal is to be able to scale up operations into multiple venues (franchise models) while maintaining highly consistent appearance and level of quality.

As much as having such documentation will make it easier for a franchisee to get the business running (the books call it "turn-key business", IIRC), it will also make it easier for a potential buyer to take over and immediately hit the ground running.

The properties already converted for specific use, so it is cheaper to reuse as much as possible.

But those will be different businesses. The restaurant will not make the same dishes or retain the same customers. The mechanic will operate on different types of vehicles.

> Is it due to the market, or the owners are retiring/giving up?

Bit of both.

Certainly people who tripped into a niche back in the 1980s/1990s are getting old.

However, modern customer support has gotten stupidly expensive and annoying as hell. I blame the fact that modern users are significantly less sophisticated and significantly more demanding.

The latter. Profitable enough to make a living from, but not profitable enough (in these days) to be purchased and sustained.

Especially in an era of very high programmer salaries.