

Why Textmate 2.0 is not Developed in the Open - jawngee
http://blog.macromates.com/2010/why-2-0-is-not-developed-in-the-open/

======
compay
Allan was saying "the end is in sight" 6 months ago.

<http://blog.macromates.com/2009/working-on-it/>

This really reminds me of a series of blog posts by Chad Fowler, warning
against the "big rewrite."

<http://chadfowler.com/2006/12/27/the-big-rewrite>

Now he says the next version will be out "maybe in 6 more months if everything
goes right." In other words: "I have absolutely no idea when or if I'm ever
going to finish it."

Which, of course, is fine. It's his project and he has every right to
develop/mismanage it as he sees fit. But I got tired of waiting for basic
things like split-window to be implemented and went back to vim a while ago.
If 2.0 ever comes out I'll definitely check it out but for now I'm happily
using vim.

~~~
eli
Joel also wrote a pretty popular piece about big rewrites a decade ago:
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html>

The title is "Things You Should Never Do, Part I"

~~~
blasdel
...and his example is the Mozilla rewrite, which was wildly successful!

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm not sure Netscape's investors would agree with you.

------
aaronsw
For the record, here's the letter I wrote to Allan that this post is
responding to:

Subject: what happened to TextMate?

When TextMate came out, it was the most fun application I had ever used -- to
this day, have ever used, in fact. I subscribed to the cutting edge updates
and it seemed like every day I'd sit down to my computer to work and my editor
would be filled with brilliant new features that I hadn't even considered were
possible from a text editor. Indeed, who would have ever thought that one's
text editor could be a source of joy or entertainment?

But since TextMate 2 started, there hasn't been a single change. Why not let
people use TextMate 2 the same way? Why not let them experience the joy of
watching the day-to-day morphs of new features and changes and rethinking. You
could declare it was only for those who wanted to live on the edge with
breakage and the rest, that TextMate 1 was always available for those who just
wanted to work. But don't we deserve the option?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_But don't we deserve the option?_

No. It might be nice to have, you might want it, you might even need it
desperately, but you don't _deserve_ it.

~~~
notauser
If you start thinking like that, then you don't deserve your customer's money.

This isn't an open source project where obligations are low - and even in open
source projects there are _some_ obligations - this is a business that has
obligations both contractual and implied, and if you fail to honor _or modify_
them then you can expect customers to go elsewhere.

~~~
GHFigs
From Allan's post: _I feel I should stress that I am not posting these “status
posts” in an attempt of painting some picture of TM 2.0 being around the
corner to increase sales or avoid having people jump ship. Please make your
decisions about what software to use/buy/support based on released software,
not what I or someone else writes about “the future” (which none of us can
predict)._

~~~
notauser
Which is an attempt to modify the implied obligations that have arisen from:

\- Previous announcements that there would be a text mate 2.

\- General expectations about what normal software companies do.

The point I was hoping to make is that people have expectations based on what
_they_ believe has/will/should happen, no matter what you believe you have
promised, and you either need to deliver on those or change those
expectations. If you don't then you might be surprised at their
disappointment, but it's pretty inevitable should you fail to manage
expectations well enough.

If that sounds stupid or unreasonable to you, then I mostly agree, but these
are people you are dealing with and they don't always operate in a logical
fashion.

(Incidentally implied obligations are also recognized in law. They don't have
to be written into the contract to exist. One example from the UK is employer
supplied perks that aren't in your contract. I'm not suggesting that there is
any legal obligation in this case (as opposed to an expectation), but they do
arise - there's some more information at
<http://www.gillhams.com/articles/141.cfm> )

------
antileet
Sometimes I feel that the openness of development in some projects today
(especially in open source ones) somehow nullify the charm of finding a new
release and discovering all the little new bells and whistles.

I remember many years ago when I was young and didn't have an internet
connection, my friend got the new version of a music player we used on a CD
from another friend. I hadn't seen it or read about it before installing it,
and had a genuinely fresh and enjoyable experience trying it out.

An open source project that I like, follow and contribute to had a new stable
release a while back. While reading the release notes, I noticed the number of
new features added in the span of a few months were staggering, but the
magnitude of which I never noticed because I was always on the trunk build.

Sometimes I wish for that childlike curiosity, suspense and surprise that
accompanied these kind of things.

I'm sure all the Textmate users will be pleasantly surprised when a new,
rewritten, fully polished version of their editor will be made available.

------
Maciek416
Back in October I emailed Allan asking whether he'd be interested in the
concept of a "Textmate Liberation Fund" that would compel him to open the
source if enough money was raised. I think Allan deserves to be able to derive
some income from v2.0, and that one of the driving factors behind its lateness
is his promise that it will be a free upgrade for all current Textmate owners.
I can't be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Textmate has begun to wane in
its influence and mind share amongst coders, so 2.0 therefore probably doesn't
represent a lot of income for him (or anyone else associated with Macromates).
Many people have offered to pay for 2.0 on his blog comments, be he won't have
any of it. Admirable, but nevertheless, Textmate remains the hostage of an
awkward situation.

The response I got:

"Right now we are working hard on getting 2.0 out the door, we haven't really
been thinking of much other than that"

Which I find hard to believe in light of the above post.. But I still hope
he'll get it out in 2010. Either Allan & co. have day jobs and no time to work
on this thing, or we're looking at a Duke Nukem Forever / Netscape mega-
rewrite syndrome situation. Either way, it sucks for the fans.

~~~
dhh
Allan is a computer scientist in the truest sense of the word. Intensely
fascinated by doing core research and discovering new, deep insights. He has
made enough money off TextMate to allow him to pursue this passion without
much concern for the commercial reality of releasing software regularly to
keep the natives calm. Good for him!

There's no day job to attend to, just his quest for quality as declared by
Allan himself. Despite being a good friend of Allan and helping him get
TextMate v1.0 out the door based on almost exactly the opposite principles, I
can't help but respect his dedication to perfection and his lifestyle design
around it.

~~~
colomon
I don't understand the impatient people here. TextMate 1.0 is pretty easily
the best editor I have ever used for programming. The lousy multi-file search,
my major complaint with it, is no longer an issue thanks to the terrific Ack
bundle. I have a few minor complaints about how things work, but there is no
guarantee 2.0 will be any better there. If a better 2.0 does come along,
that's great, but why worry about it?

~~~
dhh
I feel the same way. I have no urgency for 2.0. Even search isn't much of an
issue if you just restrict your project scope a bit. For example, for Rails
apps I just open everything but log and vendor and everything is snappity
snap.

------
gecko
Ah yes, TextMate: the text editor that proves that the patent-pending Duke
Nukem Development Model™ need not be reserved for video games.

~~~
icey
I am trying to think of a time that a project has gone dark like this to
develop the "next awesome version" and succeeded.

I can't think of a time where it's worked, but I'm sure there's at least one
example of it happening, right?

~~~
teilo
Emacs. Yeah, it was developed open source, but how many people, honestly, paid
any attention at all to the trunk builds before the next major release?

<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsReleaseDates>

~~~
jrockway
_how many people, honestly, paid any attention at all to the trunk builds
before the next major release_

How many people used the "stable" version while Emacs 23 was being prepared
for release? I don't know of anyone; Emacs 23 had too many useful features for
anyone to wait.

Notice how Emacs users had the option of using an "unstable" version before it
was released, whereas Textmate users don't have that option.

------
kez
Good to see such a considered approach in this day and age.

In my eyes, there could be no TextMate 2, and I wouldn't complain. It is such
a sturdy, reliable piece of software (with comparatively little in the same
league), that it seems unlikely to experience a Quicksilver-esque exodus
(although that was dead, not just on the slow burn).

~~~
DougBTX
Quicksilver is dead?? I still use it every day. Where did people go? :-/

~~~
draegtun
Actually its not dead, just the developer (Nicholas Jitkoff) stopped
developing it but did make it opensource:
<http://groups.google.co.uk/group/blacktree-quicksilver>

Jitkoff works at Google and went on to produce QS "clones" called Google
Desktop & Google Quick Search Box:
[http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-google-
qui...](http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-google-quick-search-
box.html)

I'm still using the original non-opensource QS here with no problems (well at
least no probs on Tiger!).

~~~
dazmax
I've trying Google QSB; it is super fast, looks great, and works more like QS
than LaunchBar. It is supposedly extensible, so hopefully people develop for
it.

------
terrellm
TextMate is one of only a very few applications for which I'd actually tell
someone to buy a Mac (CSSEdit and Coda being 2 more).

It's such an essential tool for so many developers - I'm in it each day for my
rails apps - that I can't imagine the pressure being placed on Allan to make
it "just like 1.0 but better".

I really like Maciek416's "Textmate Liberation Fund" and see where that has
the potential to make Allan more money than giving away a free upgrade.

------
st3fan
"I know I aimed to describe some of the abstractions 2.0 will introduce, but
the intent was to have someone else write about this which didn’t work out,
and me writing blog posts is a serious drain on my resources"

He has been working on 2.0 for at least 2 years now and spending 15 to 30
minutes on maybe a weekly blog posting or even twitter messages is a 'drain'
on resources?

I don't get it. Sounds like bad time management to me.

~~~
simonw
It takes me hours to write a blog post, and I then lose the best part of a day
to following up comments, reading associated discussions on Hacker News, etc.
I can see Allan's point.

~~~
boucher
This is the truth. A well written blog post, with good supporting materials,
can easily take a day to write, and then a day to deal with the "response."

------
nailer
Using a local text editor when everything else is in the browser doesn't make
as much sense as it once did.

Textmate is Cocoa right? I'd be useful if they could produce a web version
with cappuccino. It'd be great to fire up a browser, point Textmate.com to my
Github repository, and work.

~~~
simonw
I'd rather have Textmate provide a browser plugin, so I can use it in any
textarea.

~~~
stephencelis
This was making the rounds just yesterday:

<http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/quickcursor/>

------
joe_the_user
If Textmate isn't an open application, I can't be concerned with whether or
not it's developed in the open.

In fact, developing a closed source app "in the open" is a bit questionable.
The users invest time and energy into a tweaking a product which remains the
sole property of the original owner. The owner, besides simply charging money
for the product, can just sit on the product, throw away all the user
contributions or take the product in a completely different direction.

It's hard developing software on your own and I can sympathize with the desire
for compensation. I'm not sure what the solution to the situation is.

