The fate of Relay Workflow...making decisions

There comes a point when you have to make a decision. 

For more than a couple of years I have been working on a workflow engine.  Finding all the ins and outs of process automation and making it all fit together.  It started out as a passion project. I never really entertained adding anyone else to the work because I didn’t know where it was going to go or even if it would ultimately be offered on a commercial basis.  In short, I kept it close, kept moving, and building.  At one time I offered it to my employer thinking to raise the money my wife and I thought to use to move out of Arizona, East.  That didn’t pan out.  So I kept building and trying to will it into being to work for me in some way.   

As of today I have come to a point where the demands of daily life and other concerns are out-weighing any ability to work on a project that really does not contribute to paying the bills. 

I had thought that it would make an interesting opportunity to hang out my own site and sell as a subscription service with on-prem options, mainly to see if I could build a business.  I had also thought about just selling it off to an established company allowing someone else to commercialize it and carry it forward.  I had also thought about just putting it on github and let it grow wild in the open-source realm.  Now I have to come to a decision. 

In my mind I know how much work it took to get from there to here.  I can calculate the hours spent in my own time, being cognizant of the difference between this project and what I am paid to do.  Stopping when an employer had rights to my work and only starting again when I had either a right or permission to do so.  It hasn’t been easy, I certainly learned most of my Oracle and APEX skills in the process.  Blog posts, whitepaper, books (both digital and dead tree format), and the occasional call to a friend with an answer I needed have all helped to accomplish this.

I hate to say that I have been arguing with myself on this topic but the post you are reading now is proof of that fact.  I have at this time decided to offer this work, a node-based pl/sql workflow engine, with an APEX designer application and the entire copyright to any company that finds they have sufficient interest in the topic to make me an offer.  In the short term I am packing up my code for just this purpose.  If any professional reading this posting feels that their organization might have an interest or knows of one, please reach out to tk-relay@outlook.com.

For more information on Relay go here: https://www.tribal-knowledge.co/apex/f?p=102:2::::::

Jason Aughenbaugh