Connected Text may not be dead yet!

Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 26, 2018 at 11:45 PM

tightbeam wrote:
>If he can’t handle it, he could always open source it. That’s the ideal
>exit strategy for developers who can no longer maintain their software.
>Of course it almost never happens.

Indeed. And that raises the next question. Would you prefer that instead he stopped selling the software and took his website and forum offline?

I’d prefer if developers of abandoned software kept making it available to those interested, rather than making them inaccessible to the world.

There is an argument to be made that certain pieces of very well-made software belong to the intellectual history of the world, rather than to their makers, like great books or works of art.

E.g. the owner of Natara Bonsai, another software that I love, has decided to pull the website and stop selling licences. It is a fully functioning software that continues to work perfectly well, if you’re lucky enough to own a licence.

I constantly get emails through my blog from people trying to find out how they could buy a licence. The two blog posts that contain instructions on where to download the software from (answer: the Internet Archive) have so far been visited around 5000 times since 2014. I get people looking for it daily.

It’s a pity that the owner has decided to deny the world access to his work, and a lot of people have been frustrated in their attempt to get access to it.

So I’d say Eduardo is being kind that he continues to make his software available and I hope he is not being put off by this thread.

I do understand the point about managing expectations of prospective customers or that it might be frustrating not to get support if you based your business on this software.

But great programmers are not always the best salespeople or the greatest of marketers or the best customer service reps, as those are different skills.