2 года назад на Хабре появился радужный пост о том, как скоро будет запущен первый полностью защищенный мессенджер от создателей пиратской бухты. Прошло время, вышел Telegram, Whatsapp обзавёлся шифрованием, а Hemlis так и не появился в онлайн-магазинах для мобильных платформ. Разработчики по началу исправно кормили завтраками в твиттере, переодически выкладывали отчёты в своём блоге, и тратили пожертвования на сумму $100 000, собранные в первые 36 часов.
Сегодня же основатель мессенджера Петер Сунде заявил о прекращении разработки:
The road is long and winding and what lies ahead is often not as it looked.
Lately we have been awfully quiet. The reasons are many, sad and non important right now. They have though made this project drag along and that made us understand a thing we feared for quite a while but neglected to accept. New messengers fails miserably. While we have been working with Hemlis has several new and old messenger been released and updated. None has yet though even managed to make even a small scratch in the surface of the big. They have just grown bigger.
Each new attempt have made us understand that our goal of creating a mass market messenger just based on the fact that it is private, secure and beautiful, is not nearly enough. As the only reason we are doing this is to give you viable huge scale alternative to the existing systems is there really only one thing to do at this stage. Accept our current roadmap and goals as defunct. We understand that banging our heads into this wall does not serve a purpose. Releasing something that too few people will use, creates a product that can’t live without external capital. A road we are not willing to go.
So it is with a sad, tired and frustrated heart we feel we have to announce the current Hemlis roadmap and product dead. Hemlis can not live in the form we planned. We are ever so grateful for the love from our supporters, fans, beta testers and funders. It seems we can’t offer what we wanted from the shadows of the gigants.
Если вкратце, то ребятам очень жаль, что они не оправдали наших ожиданий, и они очень боятся, что не смогут конкурировать с гигантами рынка. So sad.
