
Crashlytics Enterprise Is Now Free - johns
http://www.crashlytics.com/blog/crashlytics-enterprise-is-now-free/
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hamidpalo
Boy does this look like the beginnings of an ad network.

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BIackSwan
If everything is free and unlimited... How are they gonna make money?

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kenrikm
How does google analytics make money? they just want our data.

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dmethvin
This must be an enterprise product, because I can't tell exactly what it does
from the blog post or the home page. Is it like Errorception? What languages
does it support? No need to explain in a comment here, just point me to the
page on their site that I can't find -- but must be there -- that explains in
simple terms.

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pnachbaur
It's a SDK for mobile apps (Android/iOS). There doesn't seem to be a page with
every product on it, but the product link at the top leads you to explanations
like: <http://try.crashlytics.com/reports/>

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lollymatch
I don't understand why anyone would use this now. It was one thing when Google
bought Urchin, which was already incredibly pervasive.

But Crashlytics is a relatively mediocre solution that doesn't already have
market dominance. I guess that probably made them cheaper to acquire, but now
that we know that Twitter wants them to spy on everyone's mobile apps, why
would anyone use them?

There are other crash reporting solutions, and we're not already locked in. It
seems like a bad tactical move for Twitter to have telegraphed why they wanted
Crashlytics so clearly.

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danielsju6
I'm curious to know how you think Crashalytics is a mediocre solution.

I run AppBlade (a tangentially competitive service which offers open-source
[PLCrashReporter based] crash reporting for enterprises) I have customers that
opt to use Crashalytics when closed-source isn't a show stopper and have huge
respect for Wayne and the team.

From what I understand they use Mach Exceptions which are the hairy/scary holy
grail for exception reporting in Darwin. Mediocre is using signal handlers
which the rest of us mortals do.

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pifflesnort
Mach exceptions aren't the "holy grail", they're private API on iOS. That is
why nobody is using them. If you want Mach exception handling, it should only
take a couple days (if that) for a qualified engineer to implement, of which
there are quite a few available from the Mac OS X olden days.

Mach exception handling was explained in _2001_ on the OmniGroup's macosx-dev
mailing list: [http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-
dev/2000-Jun...](http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-
dev/2000-June/014178.html)

Crashlytics is big on marketing (your use of the phrase "holy grail" came
straight from their press release), but they're possibly less than forthcoming
when it comes to explaining the realities of their technical solutions. Due to
this fact alone, I can't share your respect for Crashlytics' management.

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danielsju6
Thank you for a detailed response, we're mostly an iOS shop (little OSX
experience) few here will touch a private API out of fear of Apple's wrath and
Boston based, so it's hard to not get caught by the marketing wake. You've
demonstrated knowledge and I'm satisfied with your belief that they are a
mediocre solution.

Since you seem to have some knowledge in the field and an alternative opinion
to engineers here, what is your preference for iOS crash reporting? We're
currently reevaluating PLCrashReporter in our SDK but need things to be open-
source.

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ttol
Hi pifflesnort,

Wayne here. We're _extremely_ proud of the work that the team here at
Crashlytics has put into our crash reporting solution. There are many flaws in
PLCR that we've addressed -- our customers, like Twitter, Vine, Square, Yelp,
OpenTable, Hipmunk, Delta, Kayak, and others, enjoy the increased visibility
as well as the wider net to catch issues that other solutions cannot.

We look forward to improving our solution even further - stay tuned ;-)

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pifflesnort
> _Wayne here. We're extremely proud of the work that the team here at
> Crashlytics has put into our crash reporting solution._

Can you explain why you're using headers for private data structures from the
Mac SDK on iOS, while also stating the following?

"At Crashlytics, one of our founding principals has been an extreme (some
would say, absurd) attention to detail. Crash detection and reporting,
particularly on iOS, is a complex and esoteric problem to solve, with arcane
restrictions that throw modern programming practices out the window."

Copying in private headers from the Mac SDK for use on iOS isn't something you
can do accidentally.

> _There are many flaws in PLCR that we've addressed -- our customers,like
> Twitter, Vine, Square, Yelp, OpenTable, Hipmunk, Delta, Kayak, and others,
> enjoy the increased visibility as well as the wider net to catch issues that
> other solutions cannot._

We're discussing systems software engineering on the level of compilers and
operating systems. Without concrete information, you are not providing what an
actual engineer requires to evaluate your solution.

This topic is deep, broad, and complicated. This deserves honest engineering
discourse.

A specific example. In a blog post, you state:

"Need to allocate memory at crash-time? Revisit your approach. Thinking of
calling an Objective-C method? Dream on."

Those things are not possible because of the requirement that signal and
exception handlers be async-safe. Ironically, while Crashlytics does not use
Objective-C, it still includes code that is not async-safe.

These kinds of mistakes are a fact of engineering, which is why good engineers
are humble engineers. Your unequivocal boastful marketing -- and evaluation of
other solutions -- is perhaps not entirely forthcoming.

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PanMan
I wonder if this is good or bad news: After the twitter acquisition, the
expensive product becomes free. I rather have a free product, but as a
customer I would be worried shutdown is next.

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ttol
Wayne from Crashlytics here. Don't worry, a shut down is not next :-)

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mdiep
I really liked the sound of Crashlytics. Then Twitter bought it. Now it's
free. I don't trust Twitter and I don't trust free, so I'm less likely to use
this.

If I don't understand why something is free, I grow suspicious. I want to know
how a company plans to make money before I sign up for its services.

