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Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

blog.hiri.com

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Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#331

Post by glangdale »

gear54rus wrote: post #323
glangdale wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it? I love FOSS, but people like you (yes, "fundamentalists") can't deal with the idea that some forms of software are probably better as paid transactions between well-informed parties. The laughable state of open source office suites and any serious competitor to most of Adobe's products suggests that this model has its limits.

oh, the consenting adults argument, my ass. As if there aren't enough things consenting adults are banned from choosing like drugs or gambling. Some proprietary crap can be compared to both.

I don't think you have to be a foaming-at-the-mouth legalize everything libertarian to possibly accept the scandalous idea of someone, say, buying a closed-source office suite for money, but thanks for your input!

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#332

Post by nambit »

antt wrote: post #296
kevkav wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intention of the article was in no an attack on the "FOSS mentality". FOSS is a reality and is a great thing! The point that was being made, was that promoting paid linux applications is a challenge. And that that challenge becomes more difficult because we need to operate in an environment where many of the biggest publications do not want to know anything about non-FOSS apps.

Then why kick a hornets nests? As others have noted Linux for home and Linux for work are two completely different things. At work I use RHEL 7, packages 5 years out of date, don't have access to build tools to incorporate patches myself and a million and one other things I would never tolerate at home. Throwing some more money after a program that lets me not touch outlook sounds like a great idea. At home I do none…

What? Do you see no use for proprietary software at a home linux setup? What about video games? Do you expect all video games on linux to be open source?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#333

Post by fourthark »

pjmlp wrote: post #329
hug wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but https://twitter.com/thelarkinn/status/1006746626617008128?s=...

That guy was forced to comment on Reddit that he was joking about it. What about linking to that instead?

https://amp.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8qqhlz/office_...

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#334

Post by dotancohen »

dpower wrote: post #168
magduf wrote: post #72

The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need…

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

> We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work.

How was that focus manifested? What is your focus now?

I ask because I would love to pay for an email client that has the single feature I most need. But the Hiri website only lets me know that the software:

* Helps me conquer my inbox. How? I have no idea.

* Removes unnecessary clutter from my inbox. I actually don't want anything removed from my inbox.

* Accesses Office 365 and Exchange calendars, and a bunch of other Active Directory integration features. I already have that with Lightning.

I'm currently using Thunderbird with an extension that provides the feature that I need, and I've donated to both the Mozilla foundation and the developer of said extension. What unique features does Hiri provide that Thunderbird does not? What can I do with Hiri that I cannot do with Thunderbird and Lightning?

Lastly, why is it $120? I'll pay $10 without a second thought. I'll pay $20-$40 if it really scratches an itch. But I won't even consider $50 for an email client at all. $120 is absolutely ridiculous. I won't consider the one-year plan, nor is it even clear what is a one-year plan that includes indefinite access to updates and new features. What happens after one year?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#335

Post by sabas_ge »

hk__2 wrote: post #231
pkphilip wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An email client without IMAP support is not going to get much traction. No one wants to have multiple email clients open at the same time.

> An email client without IMAP support is not going to get much traction. No one wants to have multiple email clients open at the same time. I don’t understand the link between your second sentence and the first one. How not having IMAP support forces you to have multiple email clients open at the same time?

At work I switched from Outlook 2013 to Thunderbird, we only have linux mail servers although we run Windows on clients, but I needed to access an Exchange email. I solved it by installing Davmail locally, which translates exchange commands in IMAP commands. Otherwise I would have been forced to use Outlook only for that exchange mailbox.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#336

Post by alkonaut »

nambit wrote: post #325
alkonaut wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any business that is part Linux and part windows, exchange infrastructure, will need an exchange client for all their Linux client machines? Assuming web based won’t cut it for those users, then it would seem Hiri is a good fit for that business? I can’t see in what way you are competing or displacing Outlook if you are makinhg a product for Linux. The reason it’s a viable product would be 1) because there is no Linu…

Web does cut it apparently. Not for the users but enough for management to not expense a separate product for the entire company.

If that’s the case then the app in the article isn’t displacing Outlook but instead a tiny web based fraction of it - something that should be a lot easier.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#337

Post by mattl »

glangdale wrote: post #318
mattl wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software. The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it? I love FOSS, but people like you (yes, "fundamentalists") can't deal with the idea that some forms of software are probably better as paid transactions between well-informed parties. The laughable state of open source office suites and any serious competitor to most of Adobe's products suggests that this model has its limits.

You assume I’m for open source. That’s the problem.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#338

Post by pjmlp »

dotancohen wrote: post #334
dpower wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

> We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. How was that focus manifested? What is your focus now? I ask because I would love to pay for an email client that has the single feature I most need. But the Hiri website only lets me know that the software: * Helps me conquer my inbox. How? I have no idea. * Removes unnecessary clutter from my inbox. I actually don't want anything removed from my inbox. * A…

$120 ridiculous, oh the prices we use to pay in the 80's and 70's even for basic stuff like having access to a compiler.

Pick your monthly salary, then imagine how many units of work you would need to sell to achieve the same value at what given price.

Naturally $120 means one sale equals several at $20-$40, thus easier to achieve sustainability, given the ratio of marketing and sales team efforts to effective sales.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#339

Post by pjmlp »

dheera wrote: post #217
pmlnr wrote: post #5

Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript . EDIT: apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.

> 121KB javascript is not heavy Part of the problem is that HTML and CSS alone are horribly outdated in terms of being able to provide a modern-looking UI outside the box. Want a slider? Unfortunately the gods at W3C/Google/etc. don't believe in a tag. Want a toggle switch? No . Want a tabbed interface? No infrastructure. Want a login button that doesn't look like it came out of an 80's discotheque? You're probably g…

You want a slider? In pure standard HTML/CSS?

There are a few available as Web Components.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#340

Post by turbinerneiter »

calcifer wrote: post #271
turbinerneiter wrote: post #207

Did anyone in here actually try? I installed the snap, from there on it went downhill: * after start, I get "Nouveau is known to cause crashes" -> restart for fixed rendering * after I login, there are no mails showing up, but there is also no "Something went wrong with your login" * when I click on the calendar, there is a "Sorry. We are unable to load your calendar" * when I try to send mail: "Yikes, something went…

Any particular reason you are using Nouveau? Nvidia users on Linux overwhelmingly [1] prefer the official binary blob. [1] https://i.imgur.com/mL98GZA.png

It's an experimental Fedora Atomic Workstation install - GPU drivers are the least of the problems on this system ;)
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