I look at yearly plans every year during my holiday trip to my brother's
house, so that formal written planning, with due dates, will be done soon.

2009 is going to see us hiring a couple more people and making available
some projects we've been working on to better help webmasters be safe
and secure. It might also include a surprising move, like the current
Strongbox version going open source or something. But don't tell anyone.

The Alphared issue forced us to move one 2009 launch to 2008, though,
that being Clonebox. It was already workable, but lacking a user interface
and all. When webmasters hosted at Alphared asked us for help we pushed
Clonebox fast to get it to a point where it was useful to them. Now the plan
is to have a pretty user interface done by the end of the year so that
in 2009 we can get the word out and get people protected.

Also 2009 will be the year for Strongbox 4.0, which has been in development
for a long time. It has some really neat stuff like simple biometrics to tell
who's logging in, system fingerprinting, etc. We're getting much more
sophisticated in who to block and who to allow now, so the challenge for
early 2009 is to make it even simpler and easier for webmasters to use
and understand, despite the sophistication hiding under the hood.
(For example we want webmasters to be better protected by using
quadratic progressions, without needing to have any idea what a
quadratic progression is).

When Strongbox 4.0 does come out, we have a bit of a problem because
it's advanced so far beyond existing systems including Strongbox 2.3, the
current version. So what shall we do with the Strongbox 2.3 code which
has served so many sites so well for so long? Just trashing it doesn't
seem right. Perhaps we'll make it open source, so people can use it and
if they wish improve it for free. If the people using it free need support
beyond the forums we could do that for a nominal charge. There are also
other ways we could make it free and not even charge for support, such
as a secret idea I have. We'll get those plans firmed up over the next couple
of months, probably with some input from you guys.