So, first they ditch their native syntax for a more JavaScript-approach, now the native backend is being replaced by node and mongo? With all these fundamental changes, is this the right time for a 1.0 release?

There is a few reasons. Pick your favorite:

1) All the features we wanted are in.

2) We need to catch up on Chrome 19.

3) Team was thirsty and needed a good excuse to have beer party.

The link from the blog back to the project's main website doesn't work properly. Is appears that the logo in http://opalang.org/header_blog.xmlt should be linked with target="_top" since the navbar is an iframe.

Thanks for the report !

Was the native runtime multicore capable ? If so, going to Node is a huge step down.

Maybe it's time to rename the project once again with so much changes ....

Opa never changed name.

Sad to see a project with so much promise jump on the latest trendy bandwagon. I think I'll stick to Ocsigen. http://ocsigen.org/

You can still use the native runtime if you want. Turns out, a majority of users prefer the standard JavaScript stack -- and now we give that choice.

What's wrong with compiling to JavaScript? Is it just bad because it's popular?

Of course, I'm biased: the only tool I've used from ocsigen is js_of_ocaml :P.

If the bandwagon is a programming language that runs everywhere, on the client and on the server, what's so bad about that?

Oh great. It's still AGPL :-|

https://github.com/MLstate/opalang/blob/master/LICENSE

The license has changed, read http://blog.opalang.org/2012/05/opa-license-change-not-just-...

The source code is released on github with a delay of several days.

thanks for the update! :-)