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This. I'm surprised this is the only comment on here suggesting this. It's the most obvious way to gracefully sunset an app. "This isn't making us any money, i

This. I'm surprised this is the only comment on here suggesting this. It's the most obvious way to gracefully sunset an app. "This isn't making us any money, it's costing us money to maintain. If you still depend on it, here's the tools that will allow you to continue to depend on it"

zarify 10y ago
I doubt open sourcing something moderately complex is as easy or cheap as that though, particularly if there are other technologies involved that you don't own. It's one thing to say it should be open sourced but to put further effort into something that's already losing you money just for the love of it doesn't seem like a winning proposition.
akshayn 10y ago
They'd need to continue paying for their font license. "The biggest factor is that we have recurring costs: the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface." They'd need to continue paying for their font license.
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Or switch to a free font.
- mox1 10y ago
  The font is not cheap either*. When you can barely get people to pay $0.99 for a industry leading app, how on earth can you justify paying so much $$ for a font. I mean switch to the closest google / open source version and call it good enough. [1] http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/overview/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/overview/
  - timdierks 10y ago
    It's $300/year from what I can see. Not free, but if you think it's a valuable part of your design, a small cost, unless you just don't have a viable business in the first place.
- phowat 10y ago
  That's hardly a showstopper. They could easily remove the proprietary font when open sourcing. I doubt the heavy users of this app are using solely because the font is beautiful.
- jgruber 10y ago
  I shouldn't have included the font licensing fee (and in fact have since edited the article to remove it). Our annual server fees are 15-20x the cost of the font license. What I was thinking about was opening sourcing the app. If we do that, we'll have to replace Ideal Sans with another font. The obvious choice would be iOS's system font.

zarify 10y ago

I doubt open sourcing something moderately complex is as easy or cheap as that though, particularly if there are other technologies involved that you don't own. It's one thing to say it should be open sourced but to put further effort into something that's already losing you money just for the love of it doesn't seem like a winning proposition.

akshayn 10y ago

They'd need to continue paying for their font license. "The biggest factor is that we have recurring costs: the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper’s typeface." They'd need to continue paying for their font license.

jsprogrammer 10y ago
Or switch to a free font.
mox1 10y ago
The font is not cheap either*. When you can barely get people to pay $0.99 for a industry leading app, how on earth can you justify paying so much $$ for a font. I mean switch to the closest google / open source version and call it good enough. [1] http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/overview/ http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/overview/
- timdierks 10y ago
  It's $300/year from what I can see. Not free, but if you think it's a valuable part of your design, a small cost, unless you just don't have a viable business in the first place.
phowat 10y ago
That's hardly a showstopper. They could easily remove the proprietary font when open sourcing. I doubt the heavy users of this app are using solely because the font is beautiful.
jgruber 10y ago
I shouldn't have included the font licensing fee (and in fact have since edited the article to remove it). Our annual server fees are 15-20x the cost of the font license. What I was thinking about was opening sourcing the app. If we do that, we'll have to replace Ideal Sans with another font. The obvious choice would be iOS's system font.