Dan Wood, the creator of Watson writes in his personal blog that he is “saddened” that Sun Microsystems (who acquired Watson) will not be releasing a version of Watson to tie in with the agreed end of support date for the existing version of Watson. He is also disappointed that as a result the functionality of Watson will degrade over time and that he cannot continue to support it beyond 5 October 2004 because of the agreement.

Tough. If Watson was so important to Dan Wood and his commitment to the community was so important to him surely he wouldn’t have let Sun Microsystems have Watson? In any case, surely he got remunerated for it? It’s called business, and whilst Watson may have been an important part of Dan’s professional career, I suspect it’s just a piece of fluff in Sun’s navel. Watson is owned by Sun now and they can do what they like with it. Or choose not to.