Peter Lewis and Stairways Software last week announced that Nolobe, a new company formed by Interarchy lead developer Matthew Drayton, has acquired Interarchy from Stairways in what amounts to an employee buyout. Previously known as Anarchie, Interarchy has been in continuous development by Peter and Stairways for over 10 years, with Matthew participating in development over the last 6 years.

For current Interarchy users, essentially nothing changes. Licenses for Interarchy 8 remain valid, and will be honored for the just-released free 8.5 upgrade, with a discount on a paid upgrade to Interarchy 9.0 to follow later this year. Stairways Software retains the Keyboard Maestro hotkey utility, along with several other older programs that aren't currently being sold, although we expect that Peter will have his attention elsewhere for some time, given that he and his wife Nikola expecting their third child any day now.

Interarchy 8.5, which appeared in concert with the announcement, offers enhanced scripting support with AppleScript recording and an application Scripts menu, an Open in Terminal command that opens a selected SFTP folder in a remote ssh session in Terminal, a Dock menu offering quick access to bookmarks and open tabs, and an enhanced Get Info window that can calculate folder sizes on remote FTP servers and adjust file permissions. See Interarchy 8.5's release notes for a full list of changes. It's a 7.8 MB download and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. The upgrade is free to registered users; new copies cost $60.