Time Frame

[Undead-Fox]

So I'm curious if there's a general idea of how long this project will
last?
Does anyone believe it to be finalized and be called 'THE' 'ULTIMATE'
Map Editor for StarCraft?

And on another note, how long is this project going to be continued
for? Will it survive past the release of StarCraft II?
Will there be periodic updates for it to keep it up to date with the
latest patches for StarCraft (at least for as long as they continue
patching it).

Personally, I'm hoping that StarForge DOES continue until the end of
days for StarCraft, because honestly? From what I've seen I'd
still much rather play StarCraft and BroodWar rather than StarCraft
II.

Either way, best of luck to the creators, and I congratulate all those
here helping out the project. It's really great to see something this
important still going on for this game.

Just thought I'd say somethin'. ^_^

[Heinermann]

I'm sure Heimdal and Clokr are just writing it for fun and don't care
about the time.

[Clokr_]

Like hein said we're coding it for fun so we'll continue updating it
until we get tired :P
Also it has been a good learning experience.

[Jon Cable]

This really is a hobby project (at least for me, and I think the same
is true for Clokr and zergstain). If just one person benefits from
it, I'll be happy. The unfortunate thing is that having a real job
can pull me away from this for weeks/months/years at a time. I've got
some pretty awesome ideas for the long-term goals of SF:U, but I think
we're going to need to find a few more interested programmers to keep
it going. Once it's stable and cleaned up enough I'd love to host it
on google code or something. In the past making an open source map
editor was concerning because of the possibility of tweaking it to
open protected maps. But this late in SC's lifetime I think the
benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

[CAFG]

I never knew the concern for map protection stunted editor development
this much.

[Undead-Fox]

That brings up an interesting thought... being this late in SCs'
lifetime, what side is
SF:U going to take? A good while ago a lot of people were more open to
the idea of
map decrypting because most of the time, it IS used just as people say
they want it for:
To look at the trigger structure of professional maps. StarEdit.Net
was once VERY much
against unprotection, but have since become more open to the idea. Yes
there are still ways
to protect maps I have heard, but the ever known OSMap is still quite
a success in what it does.

So my question is, where does SF:U stand? Will it have a function to
open protected maps?
Or will it have a function to protect them? Or is it going to have
neither feature?

Now I realize the protection has come a bit further and there are a
few new programs out there
(I can't recall the names of them currently). So what if SF:U only had
a built-in OSMap?
From what I hear, OSMap can only go so far into unprotection. And
that being said, what if SF:U
also had a built-in ("Insert new map protector here" [sorry, I really
can't bring up the name in my head x.x])?

OSMap is out there, and protectors are out there. So I would think in
order to call this Ultimate, it has
to be able to do everything that is available for StarCraft.

[Heinermann]

I don't think the SF:U developers are interested in "choosing sides".
Rather than worry about all this, I think it's best to leave
compression/protection matters to other programs.