

On the business of e-mail clients / Sparrow - waseemsadiq
http://gist.io/3158327

======
ricardobeat
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 even own a copy of what you bought; if
it's gone, it's _really gone_ and you're never going to see that software
again. Companies have thrived on "one-off" sales for decades. Want more money?
Develop something new, the work is already paid off.

~~~
nl
_Companies have thrived on "one-off" sales for decades._

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)

------
LoganCale
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 products to another developer, or open sourced it to
allow others to pick up where they left off. If they had done that, I would've
still had a bit of respect for them. Killing development entirely on a product
used and loved by many is stupid and, while within their moral rights, a bit
of a dick move.

~~~
Kerrick
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 disabling or hobbling the application,
it simply means they aren't developing _more_ features for it--only bug fixes
and maintenance.

~~~
azza-bazoo
> You still have the same email client you paid for, you weren't paying for
> future features.

Although I agree, if you look through the other Sparrow threads there's a
strong theme of "I paid with the expectation of future improvements". And that
doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, given how quickly they'd shipped
improvements before.

It feels like there's some larger argument here around what exactly you're
buying when you pay for software. After all, many small vendors say things
like "pay us so we can continue our work", which certainly suggests you'll be
getting more in future.

------
idan
Offtopic: made me proud to see gist.io on a submission domain.

~~~
waseemsadiq
Feature request: allow me to login with my github account and see some usage
stats like nr. of views :-)

~~~
idan
Logged—I'm keeping track of feature requests at
<http://github.com/idan/gistio/issues>

------
adambenayoun
I think Matt Gemmell put it really well:
[http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-
acquisitio...](http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/)

"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.

~~~
atirip
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 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.

~~~
stevenwei
I think (b) and (c) are overly dramatic here. Doomed to work to the end of
their lives for a big corporation? These are the guys that just sold their 5
person company for $25M.

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.

~~~
adambenayoun
Yes, indeed - I tend to agree with you. I think people are over dramatizing
this sale probably because they were tied emotionally. This is a good thing
actually, it means that there is still a huge opportunity for email clients
and people are more likely to switch if a good client emerge. (I know I
would).

I also think that this sale is not a bad thing necessarly. It won't stop us
from spending more money on software, on the contrary. I think that if there
are more exits available for indie developers, more developers might opt to go
the indie route in the future knowing they might have a chance at getting
acquired and thus having more developers launching great software.

Again, I don't think the Sparrow team made a mistake and I applaud them for
selling their company and joining a 'corporate', if that is what they wanted
to do - good for them. I'll surely buy more software from them in the future.

(I'll probably get downvoted to the ground like my other comments on that
thread for having somewhat different views from the mob).

------
jasonlotito
Why not just charge for upgrades? People keep talking about one-time payments
as if that's the only choice.

