As you know, it has been ages since I last updated otak.  There are many reasons of this, but the chief is the fact that I’m no longer an active coder in my day job, and the reasons for installing and running VB6 became much more difficult to justify.  There are many things that I want to do with otak still (one user memorably asked if the ‘PIM’ in otak PIM stood for ‘Printing Is Missing’), but realistically I can’t see myself pumping in anymore time into this project.

I’m thinking of open sourcing this project, but unsure if it would make a difference.  Would it be hubris to expect people would even be interested? 🙂

But there are many reasons to do so – someone with the interest could upgrade the code to .NET (sorely needed, now that I get questions on Win7, and there’s no guarantee that Win8 would even run VB6.  Although I need to recheck that, since there’s no reason VB proggies wouldn’t run provided the VB runtimes are installed).

Or I could hit a lottery and I finally get some time off to do it myself, without working about my day job. 🙂

Well, I’m still pondering this.

I just realized a couple of days ago that in about 8 months’ time, I will have reached a milestone.  My earliest entry in my copy of otak is dated 22 Sept 2001, and if you were to have asked me if I would use a piece of software for 10 years, I would have laughed.

But here we are. otak is an essential piece of my life; it is still the first piece of software I install on any new machine, is the first directory I set my automated backup software to protect, is one of the first software I run every morning.

Believe it or not people are still sending me email on questions and feature requests.  I’m grateful to all my users, and am glad to hear all sorts of stories of how otak has helped in their daily lives.

I’ve just upgraded otakpim.com with a new look, after a move to a new webhost. I suppose it’s timely since we’re reaching a milestone, and I would want to commemorate this with something tangible.  Well, aside from a new release, that is. 🙂

Wow. Unexpected. I recently got an email from Softpedia, a prominent freeware directory service, telling me that otak has been tested and certified by their labs to be “100% Clean.” It means that otak “does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.”

Well, I could have told you that myself. 🙂

Anyway, it’s great that it’s recognized as such by an independent party, and such a distinguished party at that. So I’m grateful to the Softpedia team for this award.

Check the statement by Softpedia here, and if you want, you can download otak from the Softpedia site too.