Five years ago this week… Faultline poured clear water over the acquisition of Belgian video middleware developer Zappware by a venture capital firm. The deal was rife with red flags, talking up how Zappware could break free from its pay TV chains and become liberated in broader enterprise or telco domains via a microservices-based approach. In hindsight, the acquisition captured a moment when middleware vendors were staring down commoditization, cloud migration, and the slow erosion of traditional pay TV. Today, Zappware is chugging along, albeit with a relatively low profile—not the grand reinvention we were promised in 2021. NAB Show 2026: NAB says 58,000 people registered to attend the 2026 tradeshow, up from 55,000 in 2025. As always, organizers…