I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.
I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends' development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine. More power to him.
But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive you; just charge everyone." Let's ignore entirely whether that's a contract violation and just focus on whether it's fair.
Zoom back several years to the era Marco's talking about. TextMate 1.0 ships. It's a nice editor--really nice, actually--but it has a lot of rough edges to it. But, Allen promises, buy now anyway; upgrades through version 2.0 are completely free. So a lot of people, including me, slapped down money to buy version 1.0 on this promise. (And in my case, also to support an upstart dev who was daring to take down the 800-pound gorilla of Mac text editors, Bare Bones' BBEdit.)
But that promise never materialized. TextMate got a lot of improvements initially, but there's now a relatively large collection of third-party plugins you need just to achieve parity with the now-native versions of Vim and Emacs that can be had for free.
And in exchange for not shipping anything for literally years, you want to reward him by paying him more?
The simplest distillation of what Marco is saying may be:
Allan Odgaard built a great product but made a calamitous mistake in pricing it relative to the effort he ended up putting into it.
Marco has been auditioning text editors for several months now, and has come to the conclusion that he is happiest with Textmate.
Marco would strongly prefer to help Odgaard fix his pricing mistake over the option of having to switch to a different editor because Odgaard burns out on Textmate completely.
Does Allan have a pricing mistake for Marco to fix? I haven't heard anywhere that it is a real impediment to TM2. Even in the list message from Allan, he mentions that maybe it was a mistake, but money wasn't his primary motivation.
If Allan is smart he'll look at the Sophiestication blow up regarding CoverSutra 2.5 being a paid upgrade. I think that would be about the worst thing that could happen to his motivation to work on TextMate. Marco should buy another license if he wants, and I, and many other developers will most likely follow suite of our own free will.
I just can't trust Marco's analysis when it feels like he doesn't seem to give any consideration to the fallout. In the last Build and Analyze he also didn't know Allan's employment situation, and many other things that don't seem to vibe with what I know of the situation as someone who has used TextMate since it was first released. Granted I know he was being a bit flippant at this point, but he brought up how there are holidays before Christmas that could further delay things, but since Thanksgiving is firmly a US holiday and Allan is a Dane living in Denmark, it's fairly safe to say that Nov. 24 and that entire week are just going to be another week for Allan.
He could simply be honest that he's expending a lot more effort on v2 to make it as awesome as he wants it to be. Charge the full price, but offer a refund or full price rebate if you show that you bought v1.
It's very likely that the original promise ("upgrade to version 2.0 will be completely free") was a huge factor in 2.0 shipping delay: Allan would need to invest a lot of effort to ship the new version to get only marginal return, as TextMate penetration of the relevant market was already high at the time the promise was made.
Charging for 2.0 would seem like a breach of contract for people who only bought TextMate 1.x because they were expecting 2.0 soon. But for people who thought that $60 is a fair price for 1.x (I myself belong to this group, and so seem Marco), it's just a promise of a generous gift that was taken away.
I for one would gladly pay for all hard work that went into rewriting TextMate.
I can't believe there are so many cheapskates in here.
It's $60! WHO CARES! It's a tool you presumably use every single hour of your programming life. I refuse to accept that you feel personally violated over an idiot promise the author made six years ago.
Are people really saying that if the dude came out and said, "Hey guys, it's done but… if I keep my original promise, I literally won't be able to afford the bandwidth needed to distribute it" you'd feel personally slighted?
I'm not a fan of paying for dev tools, as I think open source is the way to go (yadda yadda yadda) but you're a professional for crying out loud. You get to write this off on your taxes.
You're making the same faulty assumption that Marco does: that everyone who bought TextMate is a fellow software developer living in a wealthy nation. Many of the "cheapskates in here" are happy to pay twice, but recognize that it's a privilege to be able to do so.
Bro, c'mon now. I hate using this argument, but if you can afford a macbook you can definitely pony up $60 for your main development tool. Dude's running a business, not a charity.
Shit, I use vim. If you're so screwed for cash there are a couple of first class alternatives.
EDIT: I use a macbook too. I think it's a great dev platform. It only represents about 5% of my yearly income, though. I doubt I'd be using it if it were costing me 20% of my yearly income.
The macbook I use cost about the same as my current monthly salary and is probably equivalent to 4-6 months of discretionary spending. It's not technically mine, either. It belongs to the company I work for.
Call me a "cheapskate" if you will, but there's no way I'd pay $60 USD for a text editor with the promise of a free upgrade, and then pay $60 again when the seller decided to renege on that promise.
You make a lot of money. Good for you. Feel free to donate however much you believe appropriate to whatever businesses you'd like but please keep your value judgments about the rest of us to yourself.
>It's not technically mine, either. It belongs to the company I work for.
Well, then you're probably not paying for your own licenses either. Ask your company dept to put in for a license.
>The macbook I use cost about the same as my current monthly salary. You make a lot of money. Good for you.
Well, then that means that it represents 8% of your yearly income instead of my 5%.
I live in Canada; I suspect my cost of living is higher than yours. Blah, blah, etc. What'shisface lives in an expensive country and he doesn't have an effective way to segment the market so you can get a discount.
The point just is that what'shisface made a mistake and considering the role the tool has in your workflow that it's reasonable for him to renegue on his 6 year old promise just so he can keep putting food on his table and continue to produce more updates.
Did you honestly only buy TextMate based on that promise of a free upgrade? Was that a legally acknowledged part of the contract of the sale?
I can’t help feeling that, if you weren’t satisfied with TM1 to some reasonable amount, you wouldn’t have been prepared to pay the original $60 for it. So you must have be relatively satisfied. Or have you been using TM1 under sufferance all these years or not using it at all but effectively just made an early purchase of TM2. Neither of those seem particularly likely to me.
We're talking about people who already ponied up $60. From that alone, you can't infer (a) that another $60 is a pittance to them, (b) that they own a MacBook or any computer at all, (c) that they are professional developers, or (d) that they are capable of using vim. If you think that any of those is a given, you're spending too much time on HN.
And how the concept of "charity" is relevant to paying customers of a product, I do not understand.
The concept of charity is entirely relevant here. This is a business, we're not here to give money away when we don't have to. Geez, keep your opinions to yourself, if you feel you should pay for it, then go pay for it, and donate even more if you feel it's worth it. I don't care if it's $1, $20 or $100. It's the PRINCIPLE. He's in a BUSINESS. This ain't no feel-good charity here.
Hate these elitist comments (hope you get hellbanned, I sincerely do).
Most of the people I know got their macbooks by giving up a large chunk of their salary (some people earn less than its price). But they bought it anyway since its a solid development platform (and they wanted to venture into the iOS platform). Some gave up a large chunk of their scholarship. Some got it from their company and some bought it second hand from someone going abroad and wanted to shed some wait so sold it at a very small price. Almost no one was very comfortable paying the price of the first license since 60$ was a lot of money (even more so back then) but they thought it will pay out in the long term. They already feel cheated that they had to wait more than a few years for the next update. But it was a good tool none the less.
>Dude's running a business, not a charity.
Yes, exactly. So at the least you gather that. When MS or Apple says something related to license they do it. Apple recently told new customers don't wait till the next OSX upgrade to buy your new macbook, buy it now and we would give you an upgrade free of cost. And they did exactly that. How is this promise different. If he made a mistake in calculating initial cost, its his mistake and he has to own up to it. Why punish the customers? Not everybody who develops on a macbook lives in a first world country. You have a sick elitist mentality.
Edit:
PS:
>Bro, c'mon now
I have been on and off for a while,I missed when Jersey Shore hit HN.
Listen. I bought my macbook when I was a student and it was considerably more than my current income level.
I understand all of this.
You still don't need to use Textmate. I've never used textmate; I'm a professional developer.
>How is this promise different. If he made a mistake in calculating initial cost, its his mistake and he has to own up to it.
He's a one man operation. The risks are different, and he's likelier to go bankrupt. What-I'm-saying-here is… that I would have an exceedingly easy time forgiving him.
All of this is assuming he will own up to it. He posts a blog post grovelling to his customers and apologizing to everyone in sight, blah blah.
>I have been on and off for a while,I missed when Jersey Shore hit HN.
Stop being a jackass.
FYI, you're being "elitist" because you're implying that someone who watches Jersey Shore is beneath HN.
>(hope you get hellbanned, I sincerely do)
Isn't that a little bit shitty of you to say? You know, I kind of hate this about HN. Secret bans, unexplained rules, etc etc. Everyone worships to the entrepreneur ideal but I'm not convinced most people have had to think about operating as a business.
I am not being elitist here (I so saw this type of comment coming my way). When did asking when a trend hit a community became derogatory to that trend?
Yes and you are likely to have some ramifications for breaking said contract. Most of the comments here are along the lines of not agreeing with marco's sentiment of we won't fault you. They will fault him and his breaking of the contract will not be all cheers.
If I were a textmate user I would be looking at alternatives that actually deliver updates in a timely manner and don't break promises.
OMG! Seriously? What kind of stupid logic is that? If you use this line with your business, prepare for the shit storm that will come to your way. I'll report you to the BBB, file a law suit against you and pre up a class action law suit to rape you into bankruptcy and make sure no one will ever do business with you again.
You agree to a contact and now you want to back out of it. Yes, people break contacts all the time but be prepare for a shit storm that will rip you apart.
There are a lot of BS contracts out there, you know. People often don’t even read what they sign. That’s why whenever there’s a contact violation you need an entire legal procedure to work out a) whether it happened b) whether the contract was legal in the first place c) whether the judge actually cares and will just overrule it because they want to create a better society—not enough of this BTW.
Then there’s the fact that this promise Allan made probably wasn’t even properly contractually codified.
>I'll report you to the BBB, file a law suit against you and pre up a class action law suit to rape you into bankruptcy and make sure no one will ever do business with you again.
No, you won't, because unless you're a lawyer even thinking about it for too long will be more expensive than the license in the first place.
This happens a LOT.
Your client doesn't pay within 90 days. Do you automatically sue them? No. Do you refuse to work with them in the future? It depends; if you automatically rejected every client who breaks the contract by not paying exactly on time you probably would run out of clients very quickly.
You need to be in the hole for something like $50,000 before it's worth the money involved in suing someone. So most of the time people cut deals and work something out.
Let's suppose you're underwater on your mortgage.
It's hell on your credit rating, but if it's not your DREAM HOUSE you'd be stupid to stick with the loan.
Let's suppose you bid on a construction project, but a machine somewhere broke and you can't afford to replace it. Finishing the bid will make you go bankrupt; it's more rational to break the contract.
You break a license? Yeah, I'm probably not going to go to court with you.
"break your contract"? Arbitrary contract? Unless we're talking trivial sized businesses here, there is a non-trivial chance that I will take you to court over that.
Oh yeah, and it is my impression that going to the BBB is free, so you can be sure I'll be doing that regardless.
Bro, c'mon now. I hate using this argument, but if you promise your users a free upgrade and you break that promise. WHO THE FUCK WILL EVER TRUST YOU AGAIN? That's a lame excuse! Don't promise something that you can't keep. That just reflect badly on the company/developer. This is not about the money. It's about the integrity of a company.
Shit happens, man. I can't predict the future, can you? Sometimes you fuck up. If you own up to your mistakes, and they were reasonable mistakes, why shouldn't you be forgiven?
Part of actually owning up to your mistakes is accepting the consequences gracefully.
He shouldn't have made the promise in the first place, but now that he has the only responsible thing to do is to fulfill that. He can say it was a bad idea, and ask for donations if he wants, but he shouldn't go back on his word. His fuckup, he's the one that has to deal with the consequences.
How can you not understand that $60 is huge money to some people? It doesn't matter the price, it's expensive to someone. He made a promise about what that $60 buys you (namely, TM1 and TM2), so he better deliver.
Next to the 'buy' button in 2005 there was text along the lines of "upgrades are free all the way to 2.0". Changing that now, added to the fact that we were all expecting much needed updates in 2008, is just a dick move. It (further) damages any confidence the community had in TextMate.
The fact that I would gladly pay $200 for my dream editor (even though I've already paid for TM1 and ST2, I'm lucky that this would be a practical purchase for me) is just not relevant. As you say, he is running a business. A business that made a promise about what buying the product would get you. End of story.
If I buy a car that has a big sign: "FREE WINTER TIRES", and 6 years later I'm still not seeing those friggen tires, does the fact that I can afford to just buy them make the dealership any less shady?
You're assuming it even ships at all. We've seen this story before with Alan.
IF Textmate ships (don't hold you breath), and IF it has compelling enough new (and fixed) features that are above and beyond the various (free) plugins and other text editors on Mac (including BBedit, Coda and Sublime 2) then I'll gladly pay.
You vastly overestimate what someone has to spend to be using a Mac.
Around 2 years ago, I bought a used, slightly beat-up, but perfectly functional MacBook for about US$400. I bought it as a backup, but it'd make a perfectly serviceable primary machine, too.
There are currently some closer to $350 on ebay under "buy it now", and you might be able to get lucky and pick one up even cheaper with normal bidding. There are also Intel iMacs up for under $350.
For me it has zero to do with me wanting or not wanting to pay for TM2. I was simply put off by Marco's presumption to speak on behalf of everyone, "We will not hold you to it... Please let us give you more money."
Had the post been just his own offer of support and words of encouragement it would have been quite nice, but instead it ended up being a bit irritating to me.
He'd know it's not worth finishing before he made it to 2.0. People effectively knew they are paying for both versions, so what's the problem really? $60 is not free - some would spend it, some wouldn't.
Why do you think you know better what other people want or don't want to do?
I understand where people who write comments like this are coming from, but I think if you take a step back and think about what Marco is saying, then as a response to Marco this argument is irrational.
The fact is that Odgaard has many more lucrative options open to him than living up to an unfavorable pricing commitment from 6 years ago.
Meanwhile, your own interests are poorly served by telling him to shove it and watch you switch to Sublime Text. At least if Odgaard can be happy building TM2, you have a choice. But sticking to your sense of entitlement actually wins you nothing.
Building commercial products that serve programmers is a risky and painful proposition for the same reason that there isn't a lucrative business to be build selling ice to Inuits. Consider carefully that Odgaard is in no way captive to your judgment. If he himself was more rational, he'd drop TM2 today and start building iPhone apps for many times more money than anyone is ever going to pay him for a text editor.
It's difficult to tell whether you're trolling or if you seriously don't realize where exactly you're arguing from.
It's absolutely mundane to have more desirable options than honoring prior commitments. This is true in business, in friendship and even in love. If this weren't the case what would the rational be for people to make commitments and hold each other to them? Surely you can see that there are ideals beyond being "more rational" and breaking one's word at any point it becomes inconvenient?
I think you think I'm saying something I'm not. I'm not saying Odgaard can ignore his promise and sell TM2 without honoring his upgrade commitment; just that he has the option of not selling TM2 at all.
Consider how many hours of productivity where wasted watching TextMate block the UI thread all the time. I've probably wasted hours in the project-wide search alone. The lost time vastly exceeds $60.
Heh fair. To be honest, though, I don't see what all the fuss/anger about TextMate not being updated often enough is about - it works really well as it is, what updates does it need?
it has nothing to do with the price.
it could be $1.
It's about keeping your word. It's about morality.
Heck people can still donate, a lot more than that too.
And if keeping your word is going to kill, don't write stuff like "ohlala im so poor damn what im gonna do! damn if only people would agree to pay!" and hope that it works.
You man up and you apologize properly, saying it ain't going to be free and that wasn't planned, but it has to be.
Going through the foggy FUD before announcing that (if ever announced of course) would be pretty low on my scale.
>You man up and you apologize properly, saying it ain't going to be free and that wasn't planned, but it has to be.
Oh I agree. But this would be very easy to do tactfully, and so I consider it semi trivial. All you have to do is be humble, and apologize profusely and talk about the soul-consuming labour of love the project has been over the past few years and I think most people would forgive him.
Yes but as GP points out that promise is a part of the reason why there will ever be a 2.0 in the first place. People over paid for V1 because they were buying a v1-v2 package. People who would have passed on V1 were willing to buy it because of the promise of polished V2 for no cost. Without the promise he wouldn't have done nearly so well and perhaps would have folded before V2 became a reality.
If anything V2 should have been reduced in scope and shipped sooner because of the promise, not drawn out so that you kill revenue giving free upgrades.
> But for people who thought that $60 is a fair price for 1.x (I myself belong to this group, and so seem Marco), it's just a promise of a generous gift that was taken away.
But kind of a bummer for people who considered the $60 as $30 for 1.x, $30 for 2.x.
It's quite simple. On the one hand, hold him to his promise (because after all a man's word is his bond) and get no TM2. On the other hand, allow him to renig on his promise (sacrificing your ideals of what is right, just and fair, and another $60) and get TM2.
To some people- not all people- having TM2 is more valuable than sticking to their idealogical guns.
As I said: I can understand Marco wanting to pay. I didn't like my meal, Marco did, and he should feel free to give a great tip.
I'm focused on the people who are saying that Macromates should charge users for the upgrade they said would be free. This would be equivalent to someone saying that, because they enjoyed their meal at the restaurant, the restaurant should charge a mandatory 25% tip to all current patrons of the restaurant. That's a very different situation.
I think you're right that everyone shouldn't be charged because Marco and others think the product is worth it. Some bought it on the promise of a free upgrade.
An upgrade to version 2 wasn't part of the "value" I attributed to TM when I bought it years ago, so were it not free, I'd seriously consider buying anyway (even though I do little coding nowadays, and am impressed with SublimeText2).
So, count me as mixed on the whole thing. I wouldn't balk at a nominal upgrade fee, and don't begrudge those who want to pay more, but sympathize with those who bought on the promise of an upgrade years ago.
I never would have bought TM1 w/o the promise of TM2.
Even with that, I kind of regret buying it.
For how I used it, it was a decent text editor that allowed me to experience the spinning beach ball of death at least 10 times a day.
I thought the free upgrades forever deal for Minecraft was great. I only rarely get to game and if I had to upgrade every six months to play with everyone else it'd be prohibitive.
It's a big obligation that the maker of Textmate and Notch of Minecraft took on but founders do sillier things (look at the deals VCs cut) for funding.
This is exactly what I was thinking. If Macro wants to give someone more money than power to him. There are developers who I've bought additional licenses for friends in the slim hope that they would use the app but worst case I supported the developer.
Forcing everyone to support your love for a developer is asine. Macro may be head over heels for TextMate but there are a lot of people who are extremely frustrated with broken promises from MacroMates. Forcing them to pay more is a slap in the face.
Then here's an idea that may make everybody here happy: the price for the software new is $60. The price for the software with a code from the previous edition is what you want. You can put in $60, or $0, or $256. How 'bout that?
Marco's position, which I support, is a little like Warren Buffett pointing out that his taxes are too low, which I also support.
People who reply "Well if you think your taxes are so low, make a voluntary contribution" are probably-deliberately overlooking that the goal isn't for an individual to pay more, it's to provide meaningful support to the entity which needs the revenue, whether that's Allen Odgaard or the US government.
I'm not suggesting a "voluntary contribution" (i.e. a donate button beside a free download link.) I'm suggesting a real payment/checkout process, with a lot of inbuilt social pressure to put in a number that's not zero. You know, like how the Humble Indie Bundles work.
I believe (and imagine this is what grandparent meant) that this looks more like a case of "every table will leave a tip, so just charge more than the original menu price when the bill comes".
IMHO If Mr. Pink does not want to tip he should have the right not to do it, since that was the original agreement.
Your example is horrid. Tips are in no way a signal to the chef.
In fact, you're "supposed" to tip about the same for a poorly cooked meal as a good one so as to avoid unreasonably short-changing your server who had nothing to do with the quality.
Tips are merely how restaurants get away with lying about their prices. They don't pay their employees minimum wage knowing you'll be gullible enough to pay the unannounced post-bill markup without a fuss.
This doesn't even rate on my list of worthy causes. The developer of TextMate got paid when I bought a license for that software. He runs/owns a business running for profit and he has the means and expertise to make that. And indeed he will if he gets a second version out.
There are countless NPOs and registered charities that require donations and spend the money on running wholly unprofitable services to people who have no way of paying the organisation back. Services that, as a result, would not exist (and be actively avoided if they did) if left to the free market.
They deserve whatever money you're willing to throw away a hell of a lot more than a developer who has trouble keeping his shit in order.
I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends' development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine. More power to him.
But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive you; just charge everyone." Let's ignore entirely whether that's a contract violation and just focus on whether it's fair.
Zoom back several years to the era Marco's talking about. TextMate 1.0 ships. It's a nice editor--really nice, actually--but it has a lot of rough edges to it. But, Allen promises, buy now anyway; upgrades through version 2.0 are completely free. So a lot of people, including me, slapped down money to buy version 1.0 on this promise. (And in my case, also to support an upstart dev who was daring to take down the 800-pound gorilla of Mac text editors, Bare Bones' BBEdit.)
But that promise never materialized. TextMate got a lot of improvements initially, but there's now a relatively large collection of third-party plugins you need just to achieve parity with the now-native versions of Vim and Emacs that can be had for free.
And in exchange for not shipping anything for literally years, you want to reward him by paying him more?
What am I missing here?