I cannot speak for the Storyspace situation, since I did not use that software, but I can speak to the plight of *Califia*.  Because *Califia* was created in Toolbook – a software that has morphed into nothing like the original program and is not backward compatible - *Califia* will no longer play on Windows 7, 64-bit machines.  And even on Windows XP, because the screen resolution was built into the program, the display area is quite small.  A perfect “infinite regress” as the screen size of the accessed work becomes smaller and smaller!

With Toolbook, the issue of software update and backward compatability illustrates the hazards and constraints of proprietary software.  At the beginning, Toolbook offered affordances that no other authoring system - except Director, which is undergoing the same fate, did.  Now those affordances are mainly constraints.