Hello JD
18.10.2006 if you want to know exactly! That is when we first communicated and you started using the uTasker project and TCP/IP stack for your first developments ;-)
Of course things have come a long way since then whereby the NE64 (at the time a really interesting little part - here's the story of how it kicked-off the uTasker project
http://www.utasker.com/history.html ) is only found in museums now.
I concentrate on Kinetis at the moment but it is still possible to use the same code developed to operate on the NE64 on these since the API/HALs are still compatible (with a few minor exceptions) but with the benefits of the performance and features of the new parts. The Ethernet/Internet capabilities have been complimented with USB classes, integrated FAT, graphics library, dynamic low power management and optimised (interrupt and DMA) driven peripheral services and such - and a large part of this is also offered free as managed open source project to the maker's community.
For professionals there is still one-on-one support and advanced features (such as Modbus, DSP, encryption) with a turn key low footprint SSL/TLS secured MQTT solution for IoT applications to be released any day now....!
Also times have changed a lot: Today there are more and more code generation tools used which is really dumbing-down developers so that they understand less and less about what they are doing so that they effectively take longer to complete real tasks to a good level of quality. And the "free everything" given by the chip makers is imposing a mentality of only free is good - but then I see projects that are delayed due to the months of Sundays invested in actually getting things patched and operating. And in some cases consultants (sometimes myself...) getting hired to fix the bugs in the examples and get the project back on track "because we have already invested so much that we can't change now".
However I am proud that some 50% of commercial evaluations result in the the project being chosen for their product developments because they appreciate that they are getting >10 man years of intensive development, one-on-one project support where needed and for a price of a few hundred dollars. After 12 years of supporting many hundreds of product developments in >30 countries I know of none that had any issues. Many users stay in contact for years and continue using newer versions on newer devices. Unlike the mergers and take-overs or take-overs happening in the semiconductor manufacture landscape and the effect it has on the continuity of their tools and packages, the uTasker one remains stable.
I realise that the project is not very well known and that since it doesn't have "free" in its name it is often rejected by management before it can be looked into but it doesn't actually bother me that much. It keeps me so busy (I work typically on about 6 product developments in parallel, as well as developing new features and supporting the community - possible only due to the uTasker's simulation capabilities) and in some ways it is also nice to be a part of a more exclusive club where things can be done differently and more efficiently that the mainstream...;-)
Regards
Mark