Java development tools company Roaster Technologies – which spun out from Natural Intelligence Inc last January – has gone belly up. The tiny Cambridge, Massachusetts company’s board has decided that the financing it needs to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive market does not seem likely to materialize within a reasonable time frame. Roaster says sales of its one $100 Macintosh product simply cannot generate enough interest to score the investment required to keep it going. Thus, the board has decided to put the technological assets of the company up for sale. All day-to-day business operations will cease immediately. John Dhabolt, chief executive at Roaster, will remain for now to keep a vigil over the corpse and tend to the required business closure activities. He will also be interviewing companies who have expressed interest in buying the remaining assets of the company. What’s up for sale includes the beta-version Roaster 4 Java development tool, The Macintosh Java Virtual Machine source code, the PowerPC JIT technology and the Macintosh-based Roaster 3.0 and 3.1 products, which are currently shipping. Dhabolt says he and his two principal engineers could well end up in the buyer’s house as part of the sale. The company first licensed its Roaster virtual machine and JIT technology to Apple in May 1996 (CI No 2,916).
