Australian-based With Enterprise Pty Ltd has bought all of Pervasive Software’s Tango assets. For trademark issues, they’ll be re-branding the product WiTango, an exercise that the folks at Enterprise say they “have already commenced but which we expect will take some time.”
“We are currently preparing a detailed survey to be conducted across the WiTango community,” the company said in an online message. “The objective of the survey is to gather information about the needs of the community across a broad range of topics. The survey will be advertised on the mail list so please sign up — the more feedback we receive from the community the better we will be able to service your requirements.”
Effective June 29, the Tango 2000 technology became the property of WithEnterprise Pty Ltd. Pervasive Software will no longer fulfill requests for Tango product nor will they offer support for the Tango 2000 product line.
At Macworld January 2000, Pervasive Software announced the availability of the Tango 2000 Web development environment for the Mac operating environment. The release of the software enabled Mac developers to build and deploy e-business applications and dynamic Web sites while leveraging Tango 2000’s visually oriented development capabilities. At one time, Pervasive planned a Mac OS X version of the product.
The Tango 2000 for Mac OS development environment included such features as full XML integration and Tango Class Files (TCFs). By providing developers with full XML integration, XML could be treated as data types inside the Tango application for easier manipulation of structured data. TCFs also gave developers the freedom to write code only and then reuse the code as an object in future projects.
However, in July 2000, Pervasive announced a restructuring that put Tango’s fate in limbo. The company said it was reorganizing “to focus on its core database business.” As part of the move, development and marketing support for Tango was significantly reduced. The company didn’t plan new features and plans for a Mac OS X version were placed on the back burner.
It’s unclear what course that Enterprise will take with Tango. However, the company has started a WiTango Web site that seeks input from Tango users (and potential users) on such things as support, feature requests, distribution, pricing, vertical applications, partner programs, hosting and embedded systems. The Web site has an e-mail address for feedback.
“We believe that WiTango is somewhat unique in its approach to Web site development,” The folks at Enterprise say in a message on the product Web site. “We intend to further develop WiTango to ensure its continued relevance in the marketplace and to protect the intellectual property associated with the product. We understand that there are many users out there who simply did not wish to migrate to another platform (we are among you) and we look forward to an exciting future together.” (Thanks to MacCentral reader Jose Kuhn for the heads-up on this development.)