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MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

mackichan.com

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Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#11

Post by 7thaccount »

airbreather wrote: post #4
madengr wrote: post #2

This trend is accelerating; small, one person companies founded near the beginning of personal computing are shutting down. Others that come to mind are MicroCAP for SPICE simulation, WRCAD for IC layout.

Is it due to the market, or the owners are retiring/giving up?

If it is due to retirement, the other employees might not be able to take over the product if it has been a 1 person show. I know of similar software where if the main developer were to leave, I have zero confidence they could do much besides maintenance. It isn't just the code, but having the mathematical understanding of the problem.

Also, without looking at this in general, I wonder if it's hard to compete with Mathematica which is ~$1000 for a professional license (very reasonable in the industry compared to most others) or free on raspberry pi with free or near free for most students. Also, there is open source software as well that could eat into their niche.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#12

Post by tibbetts »

asah wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First we need to understand if there is a trend and if it is accelerating. If so, it feels like “retirement” is a good first guess at why.

why not sell the business? too much hassle to operate? someone surely would want it...

One person businesses often require a unique collection of skills to operate and don’t make enough money to hire a team of professional operators. This is also true of traditional small businesses like restaurants and car mechanics. The phenomenon is discussed extensively in the “E-myth” series of books. The TLDR is if you ever want to get someone else to run your business, you have to be careful to systematize and document how it works.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#13

Post by ludamad »

asah wrote: post #10
Waterluvian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First we need to understand if there is a trend and if it is accelerating. If so, it feels like “retirement” is a good first guess at why.

why not sell the business? too much hassle to operate? someone surely would want it...

"We expect to make Scientific Word an open source product eventually. Since both Scientific WorkPlace and Scientific Notebook contain the proprietary computer algebra system MuPAD, they cannot be made open source. When the open source project for Scientific Word is established, an announcement will be made here."

It looks like they just hope for it to be continued as open source - except for the part The Mathworks Inc. owns anyway

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#14

Post by scrdhrt »

airbreather wrote: post #4
madengr wrote: post #2

This trend is accelerating; small, one person companies founded near the beginning of personal computing are shutting down. Others that come to mind are MicroCAP for SPICE simulation, WRCAD for IC layout.

Is it due to the market, or the owners are retiring/giving up?

My father (67, retired) has a couple of friends his age with long time, small businesses in the IT industry. One has been making some sort of map software for a very small niche in the marine industry, another has been making software for bee keepers or something similar. A third in image scanning software. They have been doing well since the late 80s, and still could be. They chose to go out of business and enjoy retired life instead.

I suspect that, although there is a market for the products, noone is interested in taking on the software they worked on.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#15

Post by simonh »

madengr wrote: post #2

This trend is accelerating; small, one person companies founded near the beginning of personal computing are shutting down. Others that come to mind are MicroCAP for SPICE simulation, WRCAD for IC layout.

MacKichan Software was founded in 1981.

MicroCAP was launched in 1982.

Stephen R. Whiteley who wrote WRCAD is 66.

I suppose there's only so long a one person company can go on for.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#16

Post by dimatura »

Now that's a name I hadn't heard in a long time. It wasn't my cup of tea -- I prefer just writing latex directly, but it's a pity, as I'd rather see more people get into writing tex/latex, even if via GUI.

I understand why it's not that mainstream outside certain academic fields, though, because it can be pretty annoying frustrating at times. But almost anything is better than word at writing long technical documents, specially in a collaborative way. (Went through that once for a grant proposal; very painful).

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#17

Post by catmanjan »

tibbetts wrote: post #12
asah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not sell the business? too much hassle to operate? someone surely would want it...

One person businesses often require a unique collection of skills to operate and don’t make enough money to hire a team of professional operators. This is also true of traditional small businesses like restaurants and car mechanics. The phenomenon is discussed extensively in the “E-myth” series of books. The TLDR is if you ever want to get someone else to run your business, you have to be careful to systematize and d…

Pretty sure restaurants and car mechanics aren't unique skills and when they retire in my area someone usually buys them out and continues operating under the same name...

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#18

Post by itsoktocry »

simonh wrote: post #15
madengr wrote: post #2

This trend is accelerating; small, one person companies founded near the beginning of personal computing are shutting down. Others that come to mind are MicroCAP for SPICE simulation, WRCAD for IC layout.

MacKichan Software was founded in 1981. MicroCAP was launched in 1982. Stephen R. Whiteley who wrote WRCAD is 66. I suppose there's only so long a one person company can go on for.

>I suppose there's only so long a one person company can go on for.

These were my thoughts exactly.

These people got a an entire career out of independently working on software they (presumably) enjoyed developing. And if they open source it, the product lives on. It's not sad, it's great! Some of us should be so lucky.

Re: MacKichan Software, maker of Scientific Word, has gone out of business

#20

Post by TeMPOraL »

catmanjan wrote: post #17
tibbetts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person businesses often require a unique collection of skills to operate and don’t make enough money to hire a team of professional operators. This is also true of traditional small businesses like restaurants and car mechanics. The phenomenon is discussed extensively in the “E-myth” series of books. The TLDR is if you ever want to get someone else to run your business, you have to be careful to systematize and d…

Pretty sure restaurants and car mechanics aren't unique skills and when they retire in my area someone usually buys them out and continues operating under the same name...

From what I recall from reading one of the "E-myth" books a while ago, whether the newly-owned shop will operate similarly to the old one, and also how difficult was it for the original owners to sell it, will depend on the documentation GP mentioned.

Going from my memory, "E-myth" book(s) insist on thoroughly documenting operating procedures and turning them into playbook. Rigid in terms of personnel training, but open to change if someone figures out an improvement. The goal is to be able to scale up operations into multiple venues (franchise models) while maintaining highly consistent appearance and level of quality.

As much as having such documentation will make it easier for a franchisee to get the business running (the books call it "turn-key business", IIRC), it will also make it easier for a potential buyer to take over and immediately hit the ground running.

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