Hi Chipp, yep that's a pretty good overview!

re:
> The problem is-- users can grow out of the limited functionality a single programmer is able to facilitate--
> <....>

I guess from my point of view I wouldn't really classify this as a "problem" exactly. If MoI helps someone get started in CAD but later on down the road as they need more specific things they need to transition to other software, how is that a problem? That person has now successfully broken through the wall and is now able to get more of their work done with computer aided tools than they were before.

If MoI helped them get to where they need, that seems like a pretty useful thing to me, even if they eventually don't need MoI anymore.

Also there are plenty of people in that situation that like how MoI works for their basic modeling and drawing and so they will continue to use MoI and many even still spend the majority of their time in MoI.

MoI is so inexpensive that it's very feasible to use it along with other software in this way.

Of course I do expect to continue to add stuff into MoI to expand its capabilities and reduce the need to use additional software as time goes on.


> The CON side of the equation, is feature requests take years to evaluate and implement,
> and the product continues to fall farther behind from a capabilities standpoint. A public
> roadmap showing rough timescales and feature milestones *might* go a long way.

A public roadmap is pretty unfeasible for me just from how I work. When ideas come up that enhance basic functions I tend to give those top priority and push other things further off. A good example of this is the multi-core enabled file reading in v4.

I like to have some general target ideas that I guess you could call a roadmap of sorts but if I were to publish it then it would get treated like a guarantee rather than suggestions for future directions.

There has definitely been a slowdown in new feature areas for a while now - that's because the v4 release was a major rewrite to get to 64-bit and also a Mac native build. That turned into about a 4 year effort to make those things happen but it's a much better foundation. Once v4 is wrapped up I should be able to return to a more normal feature development pace.

- Michael