Yahoo Group Message of 8/11/2005 7:56 PM:

Archie wrote me this afternoon. He said (1) EccoOpen.org is down due to a server upgrade; and (2) the source code should be released to the "core developers" next week. Here's hoping. - Jeff

Today, May of 2006, check the server at "http://www.eccoopen.org/phpBB2/" ; sadly the server is still down and you might return to "EccoPro still alive at Compusol"
Still hoping!

In a recent message "petroglyph_01" wrote:

Has anyone suggested creating a free, open-source ECCO-like outliner project with definable columns, on Sourceforge?

We could spend all our life waiting for ECCO to be released open-source - we should just make our own version.

I bet we could find a lot of people willing to work on such a project.

>> http://sourceforge.net/

r634718 replied:

If someone wanted to do this, I'm sure it would have been done long ago. It's clearly the ideal solution and has been discussed several times over the years. But, for whatever reasons, development (on a REAL potential Ecco replacement) have never gotten past the talk stage.

It's always struck me as amazing that there are a zillion open source projects out there that are so esoteric that they have only a tiny following, yet Ecco -- which I admit is also somewhat esoteric but which has perhaps among the most loyal long term fan base of any program out there -- has never been able to muster the manpower to do this.

The few programs that have overstated their importance by starting out promising to be "Ecco Killers," --some open source-- have not amounted to anything except promises and dashed hopes. The landscape is strewn with their dead carcases.

It's one of the unexplained sniglets of the universe:-)