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The "it is working right now, you didn't lose anything" line keeps popping up. What if I'm not completely happy, it doesn't work as expected, there are bugs to be fixed, performance to improve? And what happens when there is a major change in the OS that requires significant updates to continue working? Is bringing the SaaS model to the desktop a solution? It's only going to make things worse for users, now you don't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't much care about the successes of the developers if they come at the cost of the tools I've invested time switching into" It's a bit silly to say that you don't care about their interests, if they come at the expense of your interests, but you think that them having what is arguably a milder version of that same attitude (i.e. that they value their own financial interests over your time invested in their prod…
How is that silly? It goes both ways. As a developer you might not care about the happiness of users if they are using your software without a license. In this case they valued their own interests in spite of the users' commitment. A dick move in my book.
"Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them."
I personally think that you need to give it a shot and try to monetize your product but if after some time you find out that this is a harder and thougher nut to crack than you thought - you better rally some bigger force behind you, pivot, sell or just give up.
The guy at sparrow decided to sell and this is a very legitimate exit strategy.
Offtopic: made me proud to see gist.io on a submission domain.
I think Matt Gemmell put it really well: http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisitio... "Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them." I personally thin…
Winners: a) Sparrow guys. b) Google. They just killed another e-mail client without their ads.
Losers: a) Current users. E-mail client is just another tool, when you descide, you decide for life. Now all Sparrow users must abandon it after some time, unvoluntarily.
b) Other indie developers. People will step-by-step be waging vary carefully of using and paying for indie software.
c) Sparrow guys after some year. Now they are doomed to work to the end of their lives for big corporation. No one will give them a dime if they ever want to work independently again. This might be not a big loss of course, if you like working for somebody else.
Offtopic: made me proud to see gist.io on a submission domain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is that silly? It goes both ways. As a developer you might not care about the happiness of users if they are using your software without a license. In this case they valued their own interests in spite of the users' commitment. A dick move in my book.
A dick move is thinking the developers should be indebted to you for life for giving them them a one time payment of money which is less than a couple of rounds of beers.
People aren't throwing their arms up because they lost ten dollars; they're doing so because a piece of software that was important in their daily work, and that they enjoyed using and cared about, and probably would have happily continued to pay for, isn't going to be around in a short while.
Too bad for them; perhaps they should have evaluated the consequences of tying up a piece of their workflow as critical as email to a ten-dollar proprietary app made by people without a track record of building sustainable software better.
The real dick move is to tease people with cool technologies, good design, so-called new marketing models like fenced-garden app stores where "the little guy can make a buck too", lure them in with a cheap and tasty bait, and then use it to make a fortune for a few people at the expense of tens of thousands. That's what a good portion of the software industry is doing, and in the long run, it isn't going to pay out. After a period of bitter lessons, people will stop buying your shiny apps that go away after a few months for critical tasks, stop giving you all their data for cool free services that may ruin their professional lives, and stick to solutions that respect their intelligence. The app store industry will be left selling games and fart apps.
The "it is working right now, you didn't lose anything" line keeps popping up. What if I'm not completely happy, it doesn't work as expected, there are bugs to be fixed, performance to improve? And what happens when there is a major change in the OS that requires significant updates to continue working? Is bringing the SaaS model to the desktop a solution? It's only going to make things worse for users, now you don't…
Name one in the consumer space. Most struggle, and the few that don't really make their money by selling upgrades and new releases.
There are very, very few non-game companies making good money in the consumer softwear space unless they have a SaaS model (think of virus softwear companies)
As a user of the software, I don't much care about the successes of the developers if they come at the cost of the tools I've invested time into switching to. Sure, this may be a great deal for the developers, and that's fine and good. But that doesn't change the fact that it still harms everyone they convinced to switch to their product. They could have done like Sofa and transferred ownership of the existing produc…
The thing is, you're not losing your email client. You paid for Sparrow, the email client, as it was at a given point. If you were happy with your purchase a week ago, you should still be happy with your purchase. You still have the same email client you paid for, you weren't paying for future features. This acquisition does not mean they're pulling your license to use the application, it does not mean they're disabl…
As opposed to how the app store paradigm of low-cost one-time purchases has lay people believe, software is radically different from most shelf-sold commodities they are used to buying in stores, in that it is destined to become less useful with time, to rot, if not cared for. Unmaintained software is prone to security vulnerabilities, gets harder to document and understand, and eventually becomes unusable on modern hardware. That "you're not losing your email client" is only true for today; having a working binary today doesn't guarantee you'll have a secure, working tool a few weeks/months down the line.
If the app store industry is intent on continuing to sell software as minimally critical to people's productivity as email software, they are going to have to come up with a persuasive, standardized, binding method of informing people of terms of support, and learn to stick to the terms they have set. App stores and their respective platforms are only a few years old; give it some time and people are going to collectively get much wiser than to tie their critical workflows and data to opportunistic pieces of technology built by bright young people whose top incentive is to make a fast buck and/or pose as "indies" to get employed by the status quo.
I think Matt Gemmell put it really well: http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisitio... "Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success. I’m really happy for them." I personally thin…
Yes, legitimate exit strategy, but it's a win-loose story. I don't think that win-loose stories are success stories. Winners: a) Sparrow guys. b) Google. They just killed another e-mail client without their ads. Losers: a) Current users. E-mail client is just another tool, when you descide, you decide for life. Now all Sparrow users must abandon it after some time, unvoluntarily. b) Other indie developers. People wil…
I don't think people will stop buying indie software on account of this either. The Internet likes to make big news out of these kinds of things, but forgets just as quickly.