When open soure dies

As a true geeky software developer (non mort) I am always chasing shiny things; and passionately devouring new technology as quickly as I can. However, every now and then something really reaches out and grabs you; and sometimes it is not something that you truly expect.
For example, a sampling of my favorite open source projects:

• iBatis - A lightweight ORM for various languages
• Paint.NET - Think early PaintShopPro before it became bloated
• Notepad++ - A swiss army knife of a text editor

Unlike many open source zealots I didn't select these because I wanted to support a particular license or programming language. I selected them because they solved a problem I had in the lightest way possible. During my stint(s) at Trans-soft I encountered and adopted a new framework in a language that I detested but it solved my problems and I fell in love with it: HealthMonitor. HealthMonitor solved a need that man people ignore or build themselves, the monitoring of applications and services with altering based on rules and severity. Unfortunately the application simply 'worked' and once installed didn't really need tinkering with and thus becomes forgotten until something fails. Recently i went to pull a new version to experiment with for my new employer and was dismayed to see that the company has abandoned its opensource line in favor of a closed source solution for pay. As a developer that lives in both worlds I can understand their reasoning to make a buck; but I can also be dismayed to lose a product that 'worked'. After googling for awhile, I can not find a replacement for this truly great function. Has anybody else found one? I have considered porting the application to a language I write in (C#, F#, or Boo) but don't want to go through this effort if somebody else is actively pursuing the same goal.

Netflix's Click To Play

Way back in the day, when Netflix just came out they revolutionized the way you rented DVD's. Instead of paying 'per hit'; you paid your monthly fee and watched what you could when you could. Their success was evident as they dragged the monolith (at the time) Blockbuster with them into the exact same market. I was slow to jump on the Netflix bandwagon; however, due to pure pressure of my coworkers back at SalesLogix I climbed on board and was hooked.

Along the way I have switched back and forth between web-based DVD suppliers for my movie addiction and there is really no perceivable difference between Blockbuster and Netflix to myself. The other day, I was tinkering with my Media PC in my living room and just happened to use a new feature Netflix added that allows me to watch a DVD without the DVD called Watch Instantly. Clicking their Play button opens a modified Windows Media Player instance (so reported), although you must click Play about 3 times to get to the actual movie on different play buttons. While the quality of the movie isn't pure DVD quality or that of HD television, the usability and 'on demand' nature more than compensates for those minor issues.

I would hope Blockbuster is watching netflix again. Netflix wasn't the first to offer video on demand with a large archive; however, they were the first to do it right.