Like Gmail's original "unlimited" storage promise.
When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
161–170 of 267 posts
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Forever" is such a word which you should nit utter lightly, especially in the context of a service commitment. I see that mistakes are made, and they need to be fixed when they become obvious (usually other people have to fix them than the people who made them). But there's no expectation that making and fixing such a mistake should be free , without impact on reputation and customers' goodwill.
Forever is such a word that it should never be expected to hold except in some limited scientific and mathematical contexts.
Why is it my responsibility as a consumer to know that "forever is a word that should never be expected to hold", rather than the business's responsibility to know that "forever is a word that should never be [promised if it cannot] be expected to hold"?
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been using a free plan for over two years. Zulip is awesome and, in my opinion, way better that slack. I use both on a daily basis.
I agree. If I ever have to leave my current job (which could be soonish, startup and runway you know...) one of the things I'll miss most is the clean messaging experience provided by zulip. Everyone who likes the HN UX should be comfortable with zulip, even if it's quite a bit richer in details. We run our zulip on a smallish EC2 instance. It's probably less than a Euro/month/employee.
We pay zulip for their hosted version, which works out cheaper than slack and in any event I would like to support the development.
I have had pushback from non-technical staff (and pushback from tech workers for a week, but now they seem to be very happy aside from UX bugs esp with the mobile app).
If you're ever looking for work, we are hiring across the board, fully remote in Sweden or Germany. (due to tax!)
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#164Like Gmail's original "unlimited" storage promise.
I thought it was originally 1GB?
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#165If I were a legislator, I would introduce a bill to ban footnotes in advertising. Everything that the company feels it needs to print, must be included in the main ad copy. Enough with this coy duplicity.
there are laws about this (in the UK), and very often you can get settlements.
Misleading advertising is a punishable offence and “terms and conditions” is usually not a strong enough defence if the terms are dense enough or buried enough.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should use Zulip not because it's free, but rather because it's excellent and kicks the pants off of Slack and its clones, who are more of an impediment to productivity than an aid. (Well, the desktop experience is excellent, but the phone app is lacking.)
How is the phone app lacking? I am in the lucky situation to use zulip on the desktop at work. I often work long days, but my phone I keep 100% free of work stuff. So I have never seen the phone app, but I have heard unspecific complaints about the phone app before.
there’s a lot of odd behaviour, replying to a topic seems to not work so well or to be inconsistent.
sometimes you cant easily select a topic to reply to; responding to a topic in the stream view requires that you open the topic by pressing the slim topic header (not the message itself, like the desktop client)
You cant start a poll.
deleting a message results in the message being edited to the string: “(deleted)” which is not what the desktop does.
editing text seems fine unless its a word near the left of the text box, in which case the keyboard toggles between visible and hidden (moving the entire UI).
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#167If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.
You can pry my MalwareBytes lifetime license from my cold dead hands
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must have missed this part if you read the article: > But Mattermost is breaking the “free forever” promise made to its customers, and without any acknowledgement or apology. The “free forever” note was quietly removed from Mattermost’s website in the month leading up to the announcement, and is never mentioned in the email Mattermost sent to affected customers. Surely, one can expect better than that from a comp…
One could argue that if you aren't paying, you aren't a customer but a user.
Earn trust [1]:
> We make to maximize the trust of others in our judgments. We are open, self-critical, and factual.
They don't seem to restrict it to customers.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) it's not people, it's a company. They're 2 different things. People have consciences and families. Companies are beholden to shareholders. People can find a different job if their company fails. I don't think we need to be forgiving to companies. They're not forgiving to people. They act on policy. 2) While I admit that I'm guilty of it too, overpromising is pretty destructive. It causes you to have to work harder…
GP post regarding 1 is just a manifestation of the illness in the US of considering companies to be people. You should not have empathy for a company.
A little while back I went looking online to find the origins of “a corporation is a person”.
I’m no lawyer… so feel free to correct me if anyone is… but it looked like the origins of a “corporation is a person” came from simple administrative needs. That it would be unrealistic to make someone indivdually sue each shareholder separately instead od bundling them into one suit and treating the corporation as “one person”.
Sure seems like we’ve lost the plot then. In addition to the situations pointed to above, a corporation doesn’t sign up for the military draft, get taxed on their gross income, pay social security, do jury duty, vote in election, etc, etc, etc.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#170If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.
you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…
I have to agree here. Also it’s not like the users complaining were actually paying for the service.
I wonder if some of the outrage is conflating; - free forever for 0 cost - $X for lifetime access
If I paid money for lifetime access and then some time later that was removed I would be angry