[ANN] The future of Active4D

[Aparajita]

After 43 years of software development and 25 years of supporting my two plugins, Active4D and ObjectTools, I am now retiring from the commercial development world. Unfortunately, both of those plugins have become unsustainable financially with essentially no new sales and a handful of upgrades per year.

Previously, I had some OEM contracts that were effectively paying for me to support the plugins, but those have now disappeared, and I can no longer offer support without being paid for my time.

To be honest, I would encourage all users of these plugins to transition away from them sooner rather than later. ObjectTools is obviously redundant because 4D has had native object support for years now. Active4D is falling further and further behind the 4D language (ORDA, classes, etc.) and can more or less be ported to 4D’s native tag system.

If your database is in project mode, AI can be used to perform much of the porting from these plugins. Of course, depending on the complexity of your application, given the capabilities of AI it may be more efficient to rewrite your applications using a completely different platform.

A Choice

I am leaving the community of my users with three choices:

1. I open source the plugins, and it’s all up to you from then on

2. I open source the plugins and offer paid support at an hourly rate

3. I keep the plugins closed source and offer paid support at an hourly rate

👉 I will most likely offer paid support only through the end of 2026 or 2027. I really don’t want to spend time writing C++ any more.

A few thoughts on the pros and cons of open sourcing.

Pros

• I’ve built an enormous library of code in C++ for working with 4D plugins. Far more advanced than the 4D plugin SDK. It might be useful to others.

• You are no longer dependent on me, or any one person, to fix or enhance the plugins.

Cons

• Because the source is open, determined hackers can more easily find and exploit security holes.