What's the Status of Freecell Solver? Is it Dead?

Update

4-July-2009: development of Freecell Solver was now resumed. There have been a few stable releases with new features, and Freecell Solver is under active development again. As a result, this page is no longer relevant.

What is the Status of Freecell Solver?

Last Updated: 26-Nov-2005

Due to the fact that the last stable branch of Freecell Solver was released a few years ago (on 28-September-2002), one might get the impression that Freecell Solver is a "dead" project. However, the real status is a bit more complex than that.

First of all, Freecell Solver 2.8.x is more than good enough as it is. It is very fast, powerful, usable, configurable, portable and can easily be installed and packaged. See its Features List for more information. No other Solitaire solver is even remotely close to it in most regards. So you shouldn't think twice before using or deploying it.

The reason a new stable branch (2.10.x or whatever) was not released was because Freecell Solver's primary author - Shlomi Fish - has lost interest in the project, and is only fixing bugs in the 2.8.x branch, if such bugs are discovered. He has meanwhile moved to work on new and exciting projects, and no-one has volunteered to advance Freecell Solver.

Fish is willing to help any volunteers who wish to continue working on the library. It can also serve as a good students' project to get academic credit for, and Shlomi is willing to provide any reasonable mental aid for that.