The future of IBC

[rlktradewright]

I've been developing, maintaining and supporting IBC (and its predecessor IBController) continuously for 23 years, and I've really had enough of it. There are other ways I want to spend my time, and at the age of 73 I don't feel it's unreasonable to want to stop working on it and use the time for something more personally relevant.

What I really want to say is that I'll contiinue to support it until 1 September 2026, and after that I will let it die. Until then I'll make any necessary fixes and adjustments to keep it working, but no new developments other than a couple of things that are in the pipeline, which I may or may not complete.

There is less need for IBC than there used to be, particularly because of the auto-restart mechanism in Gateway and TWS. While IBC adds some convenience to the TWS/Gateway experience, there are plenty of users who manage without it, and i don't doubt that those of us who do use it can find suitable ways of working to manage without it.

I realise that this might come as a surprise, and I'm sorry if it causes too much upset, but there's no easy way to step out of something like this without causing some inconvenience.

It may be that there is someone somewhere who would be willing to carry it forward, presumably by forking it to a new project with a new name. I've no idea how that possibility should be progressed, or who might be a likely candidate to take on the responsibility, but this Discussion could be used for getting something started.

Please feel free to record reactions, comments, suggestions or observations here.

I'm also posting this notice to the IBC User Group.

[EnricoLatella]

Thanks for your valuable effort!
Much appreciated Sir!

[perriea]

Thank you for your time and effort over the past 23 years! 🥇

[gnzsnz]

Thank you so much for your passion and dedication. Enjoy your time!

[nayanbhana]

Thanks for your time and effort. What an innings!

[robertkovalauskis]

Hi rlktradewright,
Your continuous maintenance and development of IBC is much appreciated. Thank you!

[rlktradewright]

Thanks for all the kind comments. They're much appreciated.

I hope you all won't mind if I don't respond individually to all of them .

[FelixJongleur42]

Whoa, my biggest respect for sticking with this project for so long. Your retirement will be well deserved.
Maybe @gnzsnz would be a candidate to adopt your project - his/hers is: https://github.com/gnzsnz/ib-gateway-docker

[gnzsnz]

Thanks for the offer. But I have a lot on my plate at the moment, and I don't see it getting better.

I have opened an issue gnzsnz/ib-gateway-docker#366 to find a good replacement for IBC. There are a few good ideas there, so if anybody on this thread would like to contribute feel free to go there.

[code-hustler-ft3d]

I built a Python-based replacement focused on the headless Docker use case: ibg-controller. It's running in production now in dual mode with 60 tests and a CI pipeline.

Uses the same in-JVM agent approach for text input (Swing rejects external input, as you well know) with pyatspi2 for everything else. Honors 21 of 22 IBC env vars so the migration is close to a drop-in swap.

Your work on IBC was the reference for every dialog handler and edge case. Thank you for 23 years of maintaining this, it made the whole ecosystem possible.

[FelixJongleur42]

I skimmed through your README and that looks quite promising! I will have a look at it some time.
Currently, I am doing paper trading only with IB Gateway and dropping out of market data subscription is awkward, looking into restart.
Before I go into live trading, I might evaluate your implementation, especially for 2FA.