This comes just two days after his previous announcment in which said that ProBoards perspectives look very bad, and he was very close to the point of letting someone else take over his development. Many Proboard sysops urged him not to give up, and offer their support in any capacity.

Today Philippe went on to say that "although ProBoard/32 will not be ready in January, it will certainly not take another year." Many Proboard sysops are breathing a Sigh of releif as yesterday it seemed the end was near.

ProBoard Sysops have eagerly been waiting the public beta release of ProBoard/32 3.0, a Win95/NT generation of the once popular BBS package since the summer of 1996 when it was originally scheduled for release.

Unfortunately there were numerous delays, and release dates were postponed first for weeks, then for several months as the author vanished into seclusion. Philippe reappeared in mid October and announced that the reason for lack of development was due to him taking time off to get married and settle into his new house. He assured us that ProBoard would finally be released in "the next few months".

Late in November one of the Belgan ProBoard Sites announced that the deadline for the first release of ProBoard/32 was December 97, and the ProBoard world eagerly awaited as the final days drew near.

In mid December Philippe announced that most of his registration sites had not paid him recently, and said if the situation did not improve there would be no new version.

Chuck King (the US registration site) quickly responded. Philippe had failed to notify him of his new address when he went into seclusion. US funds were mailed, and we were told the release was back on track.

As the end of December deadline approached, ProBoard sysops eagerly awaited to see the 32-bit version. Unfortunately December came and left with no sign of Proboard/32.

On January first, members of the ProBoard Mailing list began to speculate on why it did not appear, and when it would.

On January second, Philippe responded explaining that there was no December release date after all, and it was all a misunderstanding. He mentioned that he is currently working on some other project, and should be able to spend time developing Proboard again in "a few weeks" once his current project is done.