UFT Development Terminated by genealogy.com:

The Announcement:
 

Dear Ultimate Family Tree customer:

After long and careful deliberation, we've come to the conclusion that it is no longer feasible for us to continue development of Ultimate Family Tree. Coming to the decision to stop the development of a program is never an easy thing to do. It is made more difficult when that program has a long history and devoted customers. However, in keeping with our mission to provide all family history enthusiasts with tools to search their family history, we are putting a greater emphasis on products and services that are accessible online. Concentrating our efforts on developing online genealogy tools allows all computer users access to an incredibly wide range of genealogy products and services.

As a current Ultimate Family Tree customer, we would like to offer you a FREE two-month subscription to www.GenealogyLibrary.com. This online resource will help you continue your search for ancestors by giving you access to over 2,500 online books, databases, and primary resources. GenealogyLibrary.com also contains more than 232,000 images from the 1850 U.S. Census. To access GenealogyLibrary.com, visit  http://www.ultimatefamilytree.com/freeglc.html and enter the product code from your current Ultimate Family Tree installation CD.

If Ultimate Family Tree meets your current research and publishing needs, you can still use it to build your family tree. We will continue to distribute, sell and provide free technical support for Ultimate Family Tree version 3.0 through the next year. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to providing you with online tools that will help you in your research.

Sincerely,
Rob Armstrong
CEO, Genealogy.com

At a meeting of the Executive Committee it was resolved that:

The position of RUG relative to the termination of development of UFT by the owner of the rights to UFT shall be that:

1) The RUG shall, through its newsletter, web site, and meetings, continue to assist its membership in understanding and using UFT, and

2) The RUG shall include in its activities (meetings, web site, and newsletter) information relative to the quality and difficulty of data transfer to other competing genealogy programs of similar capability, and

3) The balance between the aforementioned two activities (UFT support and data transition issues) shall be arranged as much as possible to reflect the interests of the membership at large, sensed periodically both from surveys of meeting attendees and from general surveys of members taken via the internet, and

4) This resolution should be communicated to members by inclusion in the forthcoming issue of the Newsletter, and

5) If a possibility arises to contribute in any substantive way to the improvement of UFT through fixing bugs in the current version, the RUG shall endeavor to take an active part in negotiations; and

6) The RUG shall strive to evaluate and select a new product to allow members to transition to a program of equal or greater capability.
 


The first survey was taken by email immediately, and there was a clear majority of members who voted in favor of including a substantial part of the newsletter and meetings to conversion issues.

At the planned meeting of all UFT users at the NGS conference in Providence May 31st, sponsored by the Arlington RUG, there were presentations by Mr. Armstrong of genealogy.com and Mr. Velke of Wholly Genes, Inc., developer of The Master Genealogist.  Mr. Armstrong explained the rationale for his decision to terminate UFT development, and Mr. Velke described the process of transferring data from UFT to TMG.  A transcript of Mr. Armstrong's presentation can be found here and one of the Q/A period following here.