Dojo North Software keeps your data safe from disk failures

17 years was a good run. Dojo North Software has discontinued operations.

February 26, 2022

All good things come to an end. Dojo North Software was born in 2003 as Bronzemist Software Systems. I was a young bachelor then, and Bronzemist was a fun freelance side hustle. A couple years later I renamed the business to Dojo North Software, and in 2013 rebranded as an LLC. In 2020 I dissolved the business, ending a 17-year run, but kept the website active to support folks.

Dojo North Software was not a casualty of the COVID pandemic. Since 2003 I got hitched, became a father, and family is more important. This was never a full-time endeavour, and with my kids involved in more activities as they get older, why would I take time away from them when I am already gainfully employed? Plus the ever-changing landscape of SSDs and addition of NVMe drives means more, more, and ever more time and expense needed to continue development to support them. The time was right to pass the baton.

I have released the source code of WindowSMART 24/7 (formerly 2015) and Home Server SMART 24/7 (formerly 2015) on GitHub. I would be thrilled if someone would take that baton and continue onward.

I still have yet to get Home Server SMART Classic out on GitHub, but will be getting it there soon. I also plan to incorporate a license key generator here on the site. If you like the 2015 versions of WindowSMART or Home Server SMART and find they work well for you, and you want to license them so they don't stop working after 30 days, you'll be able to do so.

I'll keep the product pages up, as well as the downloads, in case you need them. But please be advised that I won't be offering consistent support for them. Please see below for some resources and community support.

It was a great run. I learned a lot, made a lot of friends, and had a lot of fun. I wish everyone the very best.

God bless,
Matt Sawyer, owner of Dojo North Software

Did you find WindowSMART, Home Server SMART, or Home Server SMART Classic to be useful? Maybe you could buy me a beer!

Resources

GitHub - WindowSMART

If you have any interest in software development or want to get your hands on the latest unreleased build of WindowSMART 24/7 or Home Server SMART 24/7, the code is out on GitHub! You will need Visual Studio 2019 or later. The Community edition of Visual Studio will do just fine. You'll also need the Wix toolset to build the installers.

Home Server SMART Classic

Home Server SMART is our classic SMART software, designed especially for Microsoft's first home server software, Windows Home Server, commonly referred to as WHS "v1." I don't have this on GitHub yet. This is a legacy 32-bit application and it was written in the 2008 version of Visual Studio. Getting this onto GitHub will be a bit trickier.

License Key Generator

This is coming soon so you can continue enjoying your downloaded version of WindowSMART or Home Server SMART.

Community Support Forums

I encourage you to please check out MediaSmartServer.net and RESET Forums (Home Server Show). Both of these communities are great resources and many of the folks active there are longtime users of Home Server SMART including Classic.