21 ms·

Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

450 points by kevkav 8y ago

zaarn 8y ago
Quite a neat insight and somewhat confirming what I think personally; Linux users largely don't use Linux for FLOSS reasons. People who do use Linux for FLOSS reasons are however rather loud. I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Doing it right largely involves "don't treat the customer as a walking wallet" and "don't fuck over the customer". Most people would probably happily give you cash for that but I suspect Windows people and especially Mac people are more used to paying cash to get software ... sort of and then being treated like a walking wallet. Example: Anti-Virus vendors and Adobe.
- dlkinney 8y ago
  As one of the "Linux for FLOSS" users--and, yes, quite loud about it--I am inclined to agree. I would pay good money for a high quality application on Linux. But in large part, one of the less-philosophical, more-practical things that I value about FLOSS is the opportunity to fix things if something doesn't work right. While I would gladly purchase an incredible, closed source application, I would much more value the distribution of the source code (with a workable build chain) along with that purchase. In that manner, I KNOW I'm not just a buck in their wallet. It protects my purchase, to some degree, and demonstrates a good faith relationship with the developer. Even if I'm not allowed to distribute the code, and much prefer FLOSS, the right to maintain my purchase is incredibly important to me. Of course, that's almost never an option, but to my mind, that would be a fair compromise... ~A Loud FLOSS Supporter
  - zaarn 8y ago
    That would be another options, yes, though I don't think I've seen many employ source-available while also giving access to a working build chain/script.
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    I've always thought that this is the key to bridging the gap between proprietary and OSS, and it's what we do with our software. In our case, the source code does cost extra, but that's because we're selling developer libraries and we typically need to provide extra support to customers that purchase the source code because they are also (typically) customizing the source code in some way.
    - seventhtiger 8y ago
      I really like how Epic is handling Unreal Engine 4. The source is available, and the standard license is revenue share. It's not necessarily open source, but it reaped so many benefits from public contributions. You can modify it and extend it for your own use. The revenue share means they are actively interested in your success. Of course video games are highly public consumer products. So you can't actually abuse their model because if your game is successful it will be well known.
      - TimJYoung 8y ago
        I think you may be on to something here. For smaller companies like us that are in niche markets, the source code being available isn't a big deal because the level of piracy is fairly low (and you don't get support). For larger companies in larger markets, it's much, much easier to see when someone is abusing a license or pirating the software without paying.
  - huhtenberg 8y ago
    > I would much more value the distribution of the source code along with that purchase. Everyone would until they realize how exceptionally hard and draining it is for a vendor to deal with blatant rip-offs and trivial repackaging of said source code, sold under a different name for a fraction of the price by some random outlet in China.
- FooBarWidget 8y ago
  > I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Hm, this reminds me of the Caddy, the HTTP server with Let's Encrypt integration. It's still open source, but a while ago they made the binaries paid (if you want it for free you need to compile it yourself). They got a lot hate for that; people were even accusing them of having become closed source.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    I stopped used Caddy on that event. It wasn't purely for the binary, the server also has a number of issues when mainly used as a proxy and a number of other problems for more advanced use cases. I think the problem really is, atleast what I thought, was that the binary wasn't something I'd pay for. I could trivially compile it myself. Additionally the price was IIRC quite high for some hobbyists like myself. Plus putting advertisements in the header (or was that a separate event?) If it had been a 10$/a license for the binary I would likely have done that but at the time it seemed cheaper to just switch to nginx. Also keep in mind the different audience. There is server admins and developers. When I wear my server admin hat and license software, that is usually because there is no or not comparable free alternatives that I couldn't setup myself in a few hours of work. When I wear my developer hat I'm lazy and I will pay for software to save a few minutes of work if it's good enough. Of course, I don't agree with the people who said it had become closed source, that is silly.
  - detaro 8y ago
    I think the Caddy mess had a bunch of factors complicating it, and isn't a good comparison. E.g. they promoted themselves as an easy and powerful solution for people that aren't really sysadmin/server types, and then hurt that exact demographic by from one day to the other requiring them to either pay a not-insignificant amount of money or learn how to compile a product they choose because it's really easy themselves. People really don't like bait-and-switch.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      I cannot see someone trying to get paid for their work as a "bait and switch".
- nine_k 8y ago
  I tend to disagree. You may see GNU folks as crackpots, but in many aspects they are right, for business reasons. I have an increasingly hard time to admit in my core stack anything that is not open-source (even if not free-as-in-freedom). Commercial offerings come and go, change their terms, etc. They can do something that goes contrary to my interests, and I have no recourse, and nobody has. This is on the top of problems while troubleshooting. Being able to look at the source, understand what's happening, and maybe even quickly patch it is indispensable when running a production system, and suddenly encountering a problem. That is, I don't use open-source programs because they don't cost money. E.g. I've donated more to Mozilla than many commercial products cost. I happily install paid versions of open-source apps on Android, as a way to pay the developers. I won't mind to buy paid support for open-source products. But the openness is very important for something that is not a quick fix for a temporary problem.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Being able to look at the source and troubleshoot it is not mutually exclusive to a product being proprietary (ie, source available would give you this). There is also plenty of business I know that do everything in their power to ensure that if they go away the customer isn't left helpless (this is very popular in some parts of industrial engineering where it's common sense to hand over the blue print along with a service contract). It's just very popular for software vendors to behave without care for the user but it's not the only business model and I think that's a common mistake of some people (ie, believing that FLOSS and proprietary is a binary property that will automatically mean certain things like you mentioned).
    - nine_k 8y ago
      Sure, if you're a big enough customer, you can have access to (relevant parts of) source code, and various forms of preferential treatment. I've seen his firsthand. This is the norm with big vendors that are on the market for many decades, and not going anywhere (e.g. Microsoft). If you are a smaller fish, you have fewer of these options, because they just cost money. Of course it's often cost-effective to quickly start using a piece of commercial software or SaaS, e.g. Slack or Gmail, as opposed to hosting your own chat or email with opensource solutions. As with any software where you put your important data, you need to know your way out, and a way to transfer these data to different software / SaaS. With email, it's reasonably easy; don't know about Slack. With open-source solutions it's usually reasonably easy, too, and it's easier to find, or at least to produce, a migration tool. In some cases, there's just no free alternative; e.g. if you are writing a PC game, you can't realistically stay away from Windows.
- acomjean 8y ago
  Every year end when I do my charitable donations I go through the applications I’ve been using and donate 10-20$. It’s not a ton but it’s something. Libre office/Mozilla/ eclipse foundation/ sequel pro/ aqua emacs...
- greenhatman 8y ago
  I use it partly for FLOSS reasons. But I'm not an absolutist. I still pay for JetBrains IDEs, and I pay for Mailspring (https://getmailspring.com/ https://getmailspring.com/), among others. FLOSS is also arguably more important in some software. OS is most important. Technically IDEs are very important too, but there just isn't an open source alternative for JetBrains IDEs. And they definitely deserve the money.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  I think they do even if they don't know it. After all, GNU/Linux is the way it is because it is FLOSS. You might just as well say people don't use cars because of the wheels.
- clircle 8y ago
  I started using Linux for FLOSS reasons about 15 years ago, but now that I'm older and mostly just care about my computer working the way I want it, without bugs and distractions, I have really shifted away from my old free software opinions. I still use Debian Linux for my home computers. My wife even uses a XPS Developer edition. I would like to switch to Windows 10 for the battery life upgrade, but I find that Windows is slow and has a lot of distractions (eye candy and advertisements) compared to my Linux computers. The virtual desktop management isn't as convenient as it is on Linux (Mate desktop). Emacs, Git, Elfeed, and a lot of the other Emacs-related features/plug-ins I like to use everyday are also dog-slow on Windows, which is the real deal-breaker for me.
- lmm 8y ago
  In principle I'd happily pay for a good application. But not being able to use my normal package manager to install it and keep it up to date would already be imposing a significant cost.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    That's not totally unsolvable. Flatpak leaves this kind of stuff open so you could implement a storefront in flatpak. PPA's on Ubuntu would do to but other distros are less equipped to deal with it, in that case an AppImage might be better.
alexmorse 8y ago
I would insta-buy a lot of linux proprietary software if it fit my needs. No question, no hesitation. Things like: lightroom, sketch, omnigraffle, Your email client looks very well done! Doesn't apply to me, but if I had to use outlook/office 365 I would probably snap it up.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  How many people are actually free to use this product? My work uses outlook+office but, due to 101 different things, we are locked into windows and ie. How many people use outlook+office for email but are also free enough from other restrictions to be allowed linux? Our office is so locked imto win7 that the ongoing upgrade to win10 is killing things. People are migrating to the few win7 machines to complete essential tasks that now seem impossible on win10. Win7 laptops are being hidden from the IT guys in padlocked security cabinets to prevent the upgrade. We are doomed.
  - kevkav 8y ago
    A lot of people can use Hiri because runs on Windows and Mac too.
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      Then again, so does Outlook.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Plenty of people work for much smaller companies than big corporates. In fact I'd go so far as to say that most people do.
- ISL 8y ago
  > lightroom Tried Darktable?
  - ISL 8y ago
    Too late to edit -- just wanted to add that I use it daily, and Darktable's capabilities exceed my own. I haven't used Lightroom, but I don't feel crippled. Essentially every image here https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/ https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/ has been processed in Darktable and GIMP.
robert_foss 8y ago
Other than being engaged by Canonical, is there a reason the Snap platform be preferable to the Flatpak one?
- teamhappy 8y ago
  Here's a very detailed comparison: https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-projects#comparison https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-project...
- robotmay 8y ago
  I dunno if I'm doing it wrong, but I really don't like the .AppImage thing. I've never had it successfully add itself to my system, and I don't like that it isn't actually part of a package management system. I totally understand the frustration of developers wanting to release on Linux and balking at the faff of adding your app to ~n package managers, but AppImage seems to be the wrong solution to that problem. Snaps are quite nice though, from my experience so far. I've found the documentation a bit lacking, though it is improving. EDIT: I got confused thinking FlatPak == AppImage, so you can ignore most of the above! I'm gonna check out the FlatPak system, looks interesting.
- adsche 8y ago
  Snap does not even support systems where the home directory is not /home/$user (e.g., a lot of NFS setups) so I'd be very careful. It's a long standing bug and not even the (so far useless) error message has been adjusted. To distribute to Ubuntu users it's good though, due to being well integrated.
pmlnr 8y ago
Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript. EDIT: apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.
- captainbland 8y ago
  I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. Not an easy thing to do with a static blog.
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    > they say it pays from subscribed users What's the actual money flow from that, less, or more, than 1cent/reader? Does it actually worth it?
    - truthwhisperer 8y ago
      Agree good point.
  - Theizestooke 8y ago
    Who said that? Because I doubt there's any money in it, more likely they're doing it for "more exposure".
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. That doesn't concern non-monetized posts/blogs like the above.
    - captainbland 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure even a publicly accessible post can be monetised if subscribed users are 'clapping' on it. Feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood.
cirgue 8y ago
I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything that relies on having an attractive and efficient GUI)
- kevkav 8y ago
  Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?
  - staticelf 8y ago
    I'm also interested in this question. Because looking at myself, I have paid for several apps on both Windows and MacOS but never on Linux. Although to be fair I stopped using Linux as a desktop OS before I had the economic security needed to purchase apps in the first place.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Not OP, but: I have sunk a few hundred bucks into Steam after it added Linux support. I had a Steam account before that, but I never purchased anything that cost money.
  - swalsh 8y ago
    I've paid for RubyMine, and PHP Storm. Not exclusively Linux, but that was the platform I was running it on.
  - simion314 8y ago
    Intellij IDEA, also Steam or GOG games
  - pmontra 8y ago
    A couple of months of Intellij because a customer wanted me to work on a Java project which used that IDE. I delivered in the first month and paid for the second one because I didn't realize it was autorenewing. That was a long time ago. I also received a Steam game from a friend as Christmas present. I didn't pay but he did. Probably nothing else.
skrowl 8y ago
I'd imagine for most Linux users (not all, of course) that they're not interested in paid proprietary products, which is why they chose Linux in the first place.
- pythonaut_16 8y ago
  There is little to no evidence of this. I don't think I've ever seen someone claim to use Linux because it's free (no cost). It's almost always because it's an open platform or because it has the best tools for the job they're doing (e.g. development work). So in that sense, a Linux user might be less likely to use a product if they care most about the openness of the platform.
  - detaro 8y ago
    > So in that sense, a Linux user might be less likely to use a product if they care most about the openness of the platform. which would mean they aren't interested in a paid proprietary product, just like the parent said? They didn't say people choose Linux because it doesn't cost money. (Although in my experience, some people absolutely do choose Linux because it's free as in beer, especially at first)
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >I don't think I've ever seen someone claim to use Linux because it's free (no cost). It's almost always because it's an open platform or because it has the best tools for the job they're doing (e.g. development work). Then those people are lying. Free is absolutely a factor for many.
    - Thomashuet 8y ago
      It improved a bit recently but in most countries it is difficult to buy a laptop without paying for Windows with it. When you install Linux on such a laptop, you obviously don't do it for the money. And given the availability of non Windows laptops, I would think this is the most common case for linux on laptops.
    - 8y ago
sandworm101 8y ago
"First stop, reddit" Dont go to reddit for market research. You will only find extreem views on reddit. They are the younger crowd. Try the ubuntu or mint forums if you want to talk to average linux users. I myself would pay for such an email client because no good foss one exists atm. But i find it very odd that such basic software isnt yet free. I dont like the idea of having my email handled by propietary software.
- kevkav 8y ago
  Yup. Lesson learned on that one alright. It was a mistake.
- sv12l 8y ago
  Agree, esp avoid /r/linux, they are not suitably representative of larger Linux community out there.
- Klover 8y ago
  While I was typing my question at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592842 you already answered it here. Thanks!
- billfruit 8y ago
  Along with the Ubuntu and mint, I would also suggest the archlinux forums, they are quite active.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    I'd actually recommend the Arch forums over Ubuntu or Mint. The community seems a lot more friendly IMO.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > I dont like the idea of having my email handled by propietary software. Fair point, although I'll point out that you're commenting on a story about a client specifically designed for Microsoft Exchange.
aargh_aargh 8y ago
Thank you for your honest thoughts, Dave, I appreciate you openly talking about both the positves and the negatives.
erric 8y ago
`“Hiri” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.` Is it really expensive for a dev to get a cert from apple? I don't develop so i've never looked.
- nhf 8y ago
  $99 per year.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    $67/y from K-Software if you buy 4 years' at once.
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
As a Linux user, while I would certainly prefer to use a FLOSS app, I'm perfectly willing to pay for proprietary software if it scratches an itch that free software simply can't. I bought a license for SublimeText, because I believe it still blows all other code editors out of the water. I purchased InSync, because there's no comparable Google Drive client for Linux that just works. I'd very much like it if the apps were FLOSS, and be allowed to donate or something to support their efforts, but I believe it's important to be willing to compensate the developer on their terms rather than on mine.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  > I bought a license for SublimeText. I did the same thing about six years ago and it was $75 then. Since then its only gone up $5. For me, this is really impressive. As adobe continues to increase the cost of their software seemingly daily, it's nice to see a company invest in their product while still maintaining a very, very affordable product. I agree on the paid side as well. I just recently went "full Linux" and have no qualms about buying quality software that makes my job as a developer easier.
Klover 8y ago
Regarding: "Forge strong relationships with your Linux users. Make it easy for them to get in touch. Listen to them. Linux is a community — word will spread!" Where would be a good place to ask average users of desktop Linux questions? * Hiri went to Reddit. I would think that the r/linux community is a very tiny subset of users. Young and bored, who just want to be part of something? Criticizing the mainstream like Microsoft, Ubuntu, GNOME. Like goths and punks from before? That was the impression it gave me when I visited it a few months ago. Doesn't seem to be very representative of the average desktop Linux user. * IRC is likely too technical. Finding sysadmins and developers there should be no problem, but they're likely not your average user. * Since Linux is such a small section of the market, it probably won't be of any use to try other social media websites. You can find Windows and iOS users in any community, but not Linux users. Unless there is no such thing as an average Linux desktop user. Maybe there is no mom & pop, without geeky interests, careers outside of tech, who have Ubuntu on their laptop. Maybe it's all sysadmins, developers, nerds, and youngsters. In which case I don't think there will be a lot of reason to sell anything there other than games and tools like Sublime, although the games might be better on Windows and iOS.
lloydde 8y ago
> Turns out there aren’t a lot of email clients for Linux users that work with Exchange / Office 365 Has Linux on the desktop really fallen so far in the last years? When did the decay really set in? How does open source friendly Microsoft not see Linux email clients support falling behind at least as a problem in MS documenting its APIs, if not an opportunity to participate in the major open source clients and influence and attract developers?
- pidg 8y ago
  Office 365 comes with a very good web verison of Outlook, which supports more modern features than most email clients do (such as Office 365 Groups). I suspect it doesn't bother them hugely that desktop client support is falling behind on any platform. edited to add: Oddly I can't find much marketing by Microsoft of the browser Outlook, otherwise I'd link it here, but I'd say it's about 85-90% feature complete compared with the desktop client.
  - kevkav 8y ago
    I do agree that the Outlook web app is good and is getting better all the time. Personally though (and I think a lot of people would agree), I like to have a standalone email client that doesn't constantly get lost in tab clutter.
    - jrockway 8y ago
      Having used webmail for about 7 years (I used Gnus before), the tab clutter problem is easy to avoid. Right click the tab, select "Pin tab", and you're done.
- megaman22 8y ago
  I'm not sure it's worth building an email client that works with Exchange/Office 365 on Linux, when you can use the web interface. Particularly as much of a PITA that trying to use EWS is, and how different it is for on-premise vs Office 365 usage. It's currently a toss-up whether it's even worth trying to use Outlook on Windows desktops, as much of a buggy, hogging, piece of garbage it is.
nailer 8y ago
As an old school Linux desktop person from back in the day: whatever happened to Evolution? The whole reason it was created was to sell an Exchange client plugin.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  The original plugin worked with the WebDAV support in Exchange, which was removed some versions ago. To make it work properly you need to support the MAPI protocol Outlook uses, which is undocumented and (at least used to be) obfuscated.
- keverets 8y ago
  I use Evolution every day with the evolution-ews plugin for accessing an Exchange server. It's still a bit clunky as it always was, and has some issues when switching between wired/wireless networks, but otherwise works fine for email, calendar, and contacts.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Same, once or twice a week I have to close evolution and open it again to get it to resync but otherwise it's less painful than Outlook 16 on W10.
- aeroevan 8y ago
  evolution (and evolution-ews, which is open source) work very well for office365. I personally only use the calendaring as read-only, but I assume it can create events. Email works fine.
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
I think this piece (along with many, many others in the genre) is unduly discounting the practical implications of a proprietary binary for users, preferring to blame a preference for open source solely on a "fundamentalist FOSS mentality". For example, my next GPU is going to be a Radeon largely because I'm tired of the weird issues that come with installing/updating proprietary drivers, the lack of transparency around bug reports, and the general disconnects with the rest of the FOSS ecosystem. The specific issues for applications are different, but there are parallels. The key thing is that FOSS on Linux isn't just an ideology, it's also an ecosystem and a set of norms and practices. When you ship a proprietary product, users have to weigh the cost of opting out of all of that, not just the sticker price. Nobody with any sense would ship a Windows package solely as source code and expect Windows users to love it. I can't imagine anyone blaming a weak reception of such a product on a "fundamentalist proprietary blob mentality". But when they similarly sidestep standard practices on Linux, any friction is almost reflexively attributed to the users being unreasonable.
- kevkav 8y ago
  The intention of the article was in no an attack on the "FOSS mentality". FOSS is a reality and is a great thing! The point that was being made, was that promoting paid linux applications is a challenge. And that that challenge becomes more difficult because we need to operate in an environment where many of the biggest publications do not want to know anything about non-FOSS apps.
  - hitekker 8y ago
    You did right by your customers, you made a solid product and you’re not hurting anyone with your business. Better just to ignore the religious radicals sneering on the sidelines.
  - antt 8y ago
    Then why kick a hornets nests? As others have noted Linux for home and Linux for work are two completely different things. At work I use RHEL 7, packages 5 years out of date, don't have access to build tools to incorporate patches myself and a million and one other things I would never tolerate at home. Throwing some more money after a program that lets me not touch outlook sounds like a great idea. At home I do none of the above things I can't think of a reason why I would ever touch a binary blob. There are plenty of people who feel the same. Don't come into a hobbyist environment selling corporate solutions expecting a warm welcome. Instead of /r/linux go to /r/sysadmin or some such.
TuringTest 8y ago
"Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day. This is not a problem with the mainstream tech blogs and is a problem unique to Linux." It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base. While not all Linux users have a problem with using proprietary source (and those would be their natural clients), most got attracted to the platform for the advantages of its open and freely usable code. IMHO it would do him good to understand and respect the reasons why his potential users value free-libre-open source software, and learn to communicate without disparaging them.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  My intention with this comment isn't to promote a culture of weaponized offense-taking. And I'm not even sure if the OP meant the term "fundamentalist" as an insult. But if so ... I think this would be insulting to persons who self-identify as Fundamentalist Christians [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
  - TuringTest 8y ago
    Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English. Fundamentalist Christians may decide to identify themselves with that word, but I've never heard of a FLOSS group calling themselves "Fundamentalist Open-Sourcers". Besides, the insult was not merely in that term, but also considering a "problem" (for him, maybe!) that some Linux users may want to keep their systems pure in terms of no-proprietary software (thus maintaining the Four Freedoms for their whole system), and complaining that popular venues in the community won't advertise his product for being closed-source, which is entirely their prerogative.
    - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
      > Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English. You may have misunderstood my point. Based on the assumption that the OP wants to avoid unintended insults, I was pointing out the issues one could associate with using "fundamentalist" as a term of derision. I'm not trying to play PC-police. I was just raising the point in case the OP would want to know. tl;dr There are many English words that basically indicate membership in a particular group. Using those words as a term of derision is a slight against the target of those words and the original group. E.g., "vandal", "gyp", or "hysterical". Or to whit, treating "fundamentalist" as synonymous with blind dogmatism.
magduf 8y ago
The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need for this? This is a product for businesses. The dynamics are different: businesses can easily be convinced to pay for software, since they do so already. If it solves a business need, this is an easy sell. The way to make money with Linux software has always been to focus on the business market, because you're just not going to get any significant number of home Linux users or enthusiasts to pay for your software. And then, ignore the home/enthusiast users. No, I wouldn't pay for an email client either, but I don't need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server at home. If my workplace were trying to switch to Linux, however, I'd readily recommend such a product to management.
- ssdd 8y ago
  I completely agree. There are very few paid software for which we don't already have a FLOSS software that can compete with it. Linux users are normally good at finding FLOSS alternatives to paid softwares. Another thing that author can do is to compare Linux home users sales results with Windows home users for any of their product that is available for both platforms. Sales would be similar as long as Linux and Windows software marketplace for that area is same.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    I tried and failed to find a quality git gui for linux, (coming from SourceTree on OSX). I tried a number and they either had awful UI, lacked functionality, or were too buggy. In the end I ended up paying for a license to GitKraken and am quite happy.
    - merb 8y ago
pytyper2 8y ago
The authors thought "..tracking exactly where those Snap installs are coming from isn’t possible at the moment.." was interesting. My opinion is that this is a good thing and I don't ever want it to be possible to see where those installs are coming from.
zerr 8y ago
What about suse, rhel and other distros?
- sv12l 8y ago
  Install snap and off you go.
afarrell 8y ago
> And before you cry “support model!” — it isn’t going to work for us — our product simply doesn’t require that much support. Indeed, a well-designed product aimed at people who would balk at putting the product’s name on their CV shouldn’t.
siscia 8y ago
I am trying to make a living with a software product, a database in particular. RediSQL, SQL steroids for Redis: http://redbeardlab.tech/rediSQL/ http://redbeardlab.tech/rediSQL/ So let me share a different point of view. I find it extremely, extremely difficult. As far as I know, if you need a solution for in memory SQL as cache layer or also as main persistent layer it is the only available solution, on top of that it works on top of existing, widely deployed solution. But still I haven't received a single request for support or I have been able to make a single sale. Of course, I believe is mostly my fault, because similar businesses models (sidekiq) seems to work but, if you ask me, it is definitely not worthed to enter this market. I will try to focus more on marketing for the following months but if it doesn't work neither I am just going to remove the open source part and use it as an internal advantage for my consulting business. I found it just too convenient respect to Pg or MySQL or Mongo. I really believe it is a pity, but I believe that if this product, by the end of the year, doesn't work I will just stop developing product for software developers. It is just not worthed.
- jsty 8y ago
  A small amount of hopefully useful feedback from someone who purchases business software: 1/ Your website gives a 'open source hobby app' vibe over 'professional, dependable software business'. Selling support contracts in particular requires some expectation that there's a solid business standing behind it that won't just be gone tomorrow. 2/ The 'redirect to an external store to download / purchase' will probably be making any sales funnel leak like a sieve. There's a complete discontinuity between the design of the two sites, and along with trusting you with their information / card details, they now have to trust a random third party. 3/ For a ~€1000 piece of software, I'd expect at least some period of eg. email support, rather than just supporting through Github issues. 4/ I'd remove the option of having the open source edition available through sign-up and just link clearly to the latest release. If you're struggling to even get any interest on the commercial side, getting it out in front of as many people as possible would be my priority. A clear and unambiguous 'Get started' section that doesn't worry about open vs. Pro is probably a good idea too. Worry about converting those to paid users later.
  - 8y ago
bumholio 8y ago
I don't understand, why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source? Why can't most commercial software ship with sources, with a sane license that allows a license holder to study, recompile and modify, but not publish derivative work? 90% of the people who want the source would not pirate the software, and 100% the pirates are satisfied with a binary copy. And don't tell me about copy protection, in practice it's just as effective as a line in the EULA: for any worthwhile software, those who don't care about the license don't care about copy protection either. I have no problem paying for software, but I don't want to surrender all control of my hardware for a 3rd party to run secret code on it.
- LarryL 8y ago
  > why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source? I see at least 2 reasons. 1) Mindset (and ignorance) I've worked in big telecom companies, in their technical teams, which means people who know about programming in big (BIG/HUGE) projects. Even there, many of their -very- experienced tech people were AFRAID of anything open-source. They were terrified that using anything that had the words "open" or "free" (as in free software) would mean that they would have to "give" their code "gratis" and lose their customers. The irony? Those programs were BIG projects that were only useable with their hardware (think stuff like devices' OSs & supervision UIs for telecom equipments), it would not have worked with other devices and any attempt at an adaptation would have cost more than developing from scratch. Add to that that they only sold to a handful of companies (those hardware + software solution are expensive) so they would immediately have noticed that something was wrong, and you see how INSANE it was that they were afraid. They had completely bought the FUD from Microsoft and the like. And thoss were TECHNICAL people, I leave to your imagination the attitude of managers... :-((( 2) Quality (or lack thereof) A lot (if not most) of code done for "enterprise software" is of pretty bad quality (and I'm being nice). I've seen such horrors that you are left to wonder how anything AT ALL could work. The incompetence was staggering, comments and tests inexistant, no source management, no documentation, "if" conditions spread over hundreds of lines, 10 thousand lines of SQL in a single file, config files thousands of lines long maintained by hand (which I showed contained hundreds of errors), etc. Showing how "sausages are made" (an horrifying view) would be bad, maybe even suicide (once their ineptitude would be proven) for those companies. On the other hand, the bad quality would have quaranteed that nobody used their projects (LOL). Even compiling them was a HARD task. Real example: I had just arrived on a project where the most experienced guy was unable to install on my computer the tools needed for development... I had to write code "blind": without linking & testing nor documentation. Am I surprising you when I tell you it did not go well? (And they had the nerve of blaming me for their incompetence!)
Ocha 8y ago
FYI website is unreachable through https://hiri.com/ https://hiri.com/
- kevkav 8y ago
  Aww man :( Thanks for pointing that out. Please use https://www.hiri.com https://www.hiri.com instead.
Separo 8y ago
If Sketch was available on Ubuntu I'd switch.
- kevkav 8y ago
  I would absolutely love a linux version of Sketch. Can't see it happening though.
- thepumpkin1979 8y ago
  There’s a bigger chance Figma comes to Linux faster than Sketch, Figma since is based on Electron. Sketch is heavily dependent on Cocoa and Mac.
yAnonymous 8y ago
It's good to have a working Exchange client for Linux, proprietary or not. I'd hope that they polish Hiri a bit before they implement Gmail and IMAP support though, because it does have some rough edges, mostly with the UI. As for the FOSS enthusiasts, I'd recommend ignoring them.
wink 8y ago
Step 1: excited. An email client I've never heard of? Step 2: interested: read article, read webpage Step 3: meh. They call it email client, but it's only for Exchange/Office365 Some additional notes on the website: it's nice that there's a 50% discount, it usually helps to show the before/after prices ;)
archi42 8y ago
I believe having more proprietary software available on all platforms (including Mac) improves the situation - especially something "basic" like a mail client. Yes, FOSS and Linux are "a more natural" match than proprietary and Linux, but the truth is: You can't get everything you might want/need for free at an acceptable quality . Working for a company which sells niche-software for both Windows (most customers) and Linux (some big $$$ customers), I am happy to see more mainstream developers doing the same. If you're a making consumer software: Please try to follow suit! Internally, we develop on and for Linux, but our code is cross platform enough (thanks Qt) to easily build on Linux and Windows. The biggest issue for me is remembering which C++ constructs work with GCC/clang but not with the MS compiler (which improved a lot in the last years - and which our CI usually notifies me about).
craigsmansion 8y ago
> There is a lot to be said for products that have been shaped by free market forces. So, not only are Linux users "fundamentalists", they are communists as well? > If Linux as a platform is going to succeed, Linux users [..] So adopting proprietary software is going to make Linux "a success"? > think about the richness of the entire ecosystem rather than seek to limit it. FOSS "limiting the richness of the entire ecosystem"? That's rich, indeed.
green7ea 8y ago
The app looks very nice. Which UI toolkit does it use?
dopeboy 8y ago
This was a great read. I've been using Linux since 2005 and I've always wondered what selling paid-for software is like on Linux. Thank you for taking the time to build a venture for Linux users, I really appreciate it.
bachmeier 8y ago
Nice: half price offer Not so nice: expires in about three hours so you give up the ability to try the software first
turbinerneiter 8y ago
Did anyone in here actually try? I installed the snap, from there on it went downhill: * after start, I get "Nouveau is known to cause crashes" -> restart for fixed rendering * after I login, there are no mails showing up, but there is also no "Something went wrong with your login" * when I click on the calendar, there is a "Sorry. We are unable to load your calendar" * when I try to send mail: "Yikes, something went wrong."
- calcifer 8y ago
  Any particular reason you are using Nouveau? Nvidia users on Linux overwhelmingly [1] prefer the official binary blob. [1] https://i.imgur.com/mL98GZA.png https://i.imgur.com/mL98GZA.png
  - turbinerneiter 8y ago
    It's an experimental Fedora Atomic Workstation install - GPU drivers are the least of the problems on this system ;)
eberkund 8y ago
I am optimistic about snaps even though after using them I found a lot of kinks that still need to be ironed out. But for the users downloading free software which is the main use case they are targeting first it works great. I say "for users" because wrestling with snapcraft (the command used to build snap packages) can be pretty frustrating for non-trivial programs. Cross compiling for arm was one thing that I was struggling with and ended up just doing my arm builds on a Raspberry Pi. A think many issues could be resolved by having snapcraft use it's own repo sources rather than whatever the host OS is using. Also for proprietary apps there is currently no way to have a private "store" so you are limited to installing from a .snap package using --dangerous --devmode flags and lose a lot of the benefits of using snaps in the first place (mainly automated updates).
tiatia123 8y ago
Well, I would be more than happy to buy a decent Linux IMAP client. 1. I never heard about your product 2. Can I use it as a regular IMAP client? I am waiting for a linux version of this: https://www.ivelope.com/invite/RunItUpTheFlagpoleHackerSeaChange https://www.ivelope.com/invite/RunItUpTheFlagpoleHackerSeaCh... (shitty invitation link that gets me ahead in the queue)
seba_dos1 8y ago
I would happily pay and already did in some cases, as long as it's not proprietary. (initial title was: "Will Linux users pay for apps?")
alexnewman 8y ago
I just don't buy it. I'd pay you if you opened your komono and had a github. I just can't trust a tiny startup like you with my email.
CMCDragonkai 8y ago
I've wondered how proprietary software vendors distribute their software on the myriad of Linux distros and their package managers. That is if you want to keep the workflow of using the package manager to automate the installation and uninstallation. Unlike app stores, there's no linux package manager that allows payments before delivery of software.
- oblio 8y ago
  It depends on the application. Many either deliver a generic binary of a DEB + RPM. Or more recently a Docker container or one of the other containers (Snap, etc). Then that has a proprietary license checker based on either a license file or a license service, basically the service phones home to check the license.
shmerl 8y ago
> This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users I agree. Closed source communication tools are not a good proposition in general and especially for Linux users. That said, Exchange itself is a closed mess and existing FOSS tools are trying to working around a problem of MS lock-in.
RaleyField 8y ago
People that use Linux and people who frequent Linux related websites don't necessarily have a lot in common. I use Ubuntu daily, couldn't care less for what some zealots have to say on Reddit. I use it because it's the least wrong platform, not because it's FOSS.
spicyusername 8y ago
Definitely interested in a Gmail web client alternative
poelzi 8y ago
I just recently payed 300 euros for bitwig studio, because it's really good software and works nicely on Linux. I looked at the OSS DAWs out there and found them all unusable or just no fun to use.
gytdev 8y ago
I hope some people from Adobe are reading this. Me personally and my friends are holding back on Linux as a daily driver only because it does not support Photoshop and You have to learn GIMP
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450 points by kevkav 8y ago

Quite a neat insight and somewhat confirming what I think personally; Linux users largely don't use Linux for FLOSS reasons. People who do use Linux for FLOSS reasons are however rather loud. I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Doing it right largely involves "don't treat the customer as a walking wallet" and "don't fuck over the customer". Most people would probably happily give you cash for that but I suspect Windows people and especially Mac people are more used to paying cash to get software ... sort of and then being treated like a walking wallet. Example: Anti-Virus vendors and Adobe.

dlkinney 8y ago
As one of the "Linux for FLOSS" users--and, yes, quite loud about it--I am inclined to agree. I would pay good money for a high quality application on Linux. But in large part, one of the less-philosophical, more-practical things that I value about FLOSS is the opportunity to fix things if something doesn't work right. While I would gladly purchase an incredible, closed source application, I would much more value the distribution of the source code (with a workable build chain) along with that purchase. In that manner, I KNOW I'm not just a buck in their wallet. It protects my purchase, to some degree, and demonstrates a good faith relationship with the developer. Even if I'm not allowed to distribute the code, and much prefer FLOSS, the right to maintain my purchase is incredibly important to me. Of course, that's almost never an option, but to my mind, that would be a fair compromise... ~A Loud FLOSS Supporter
- zaarn 8y ago
  That would be another options, yes, though I don't think I've seen many employ source-available while also giving access to a working build chain/script.
- TimJYoung 8y ago
  I've always thought that this is the key to bridging the gap between proprietary and OSS, and it's what we do with our software. In our case, the source code does cost extra, but that's because we're selling developer libraries and we typically need to provide extra support to customers that purchase the source code because they are also (typically) customizing the source code in some way.
  - seventhtiger 8y ago
    I really like how Epic is handling Unreal Engine 4. The source is available, and the standard license is revenue share. It's not necessarily open source, but it reaped so many benefits from public contributions. You can modify it and extend it for your own use. The revenue share means they are actively interested in your success. Of course video games are highly public consumer products. So you can't actually abuse their model because if your game is successful it will be well known.
    - TimJYoung 8y ago
      I think you may be on to something here. For smaller companies like us that are in niche markets, the source code being available isn't a big deal because the level of piracy is fairly low (and you don't get support). For larger companies in larger markets, it's much, much easier to see when someone is abusing a license or pirating the software without paying.
- huhtenberg 8y ago
  > I would much more value the distribution of the source code along with that purchase. Everyone would until they realize how exceptionally hard and draining it is for a vendor to deal with blatant rip-offs and trivial repackaging of said source code, sold under a different name for a fraction of the price by some random outlet in China.
FooBarWidget 8y ago
> I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Hm, this reminds me of the Caddy, the HTTP server with Let's Encrypt integration. It's still open source, but a while ago they made the binaries paid (if you want it for free you need to compile it yourself). They got a lot hate for that; people were even accusing them of having become closed source.
- zaarn 8y ago
  I stopped used Caddy on that event. It wasn't purely for the binary, the server also has a number of issues when mainly used as a proxy and a number of other problems for more advanced use cases. I think the problem really is, atleast what I thought, was that the binary wasn't something I'd pay for. I could trivially compile it myself. Additionally the price was IIRC quite high for some hobbyists like myself. Plus putting advertisements in the header (or was that a separate event?) If it had been a 10$/a license for the binary I would likely have done that but at the time it seemed cheaper to just switch to nginx. Also keep in mind the different audience. There is server admins and developers. When I wear my server admin hat and license software, that is usually because there is no or not comparable free alternatives that I couldn't setup myself in a few hours of work. When I wear my developer hat I'm lazy and I will pay for software to save a few minutes of work if it's good enough. Of course, I don't agree with the people who said it had become closed source, that is silly.
- detaro 8y ago
  I think the Caddy mess had a bunch of factors complicating it, and isn't a good comparison. E.g. they promoted themselves as an easy and powerful solution for people that aren't really sysadmin/server types, and then hurt that exact demographic by from one day to the other requiring them to either pay a not-insignificant amount of money or learn how to compile a product they choose because it's really easy themselves. People really don't like bait-and-switch.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I cannot see someone trying to get paid for their work as a "bait and switch".
nine_k 8y ago
I tend to disagree. You may see GNU folks as crackpots, but in many aspects they are right, for business reasons. I have an increasingly hard time to admit in my core stack anything that is not open-source (even if not free-as-in-freedom). Commercial offerings come and go, change their terms, etc. They can do something that goes contrary to my interests, and I have no recourse, and nobody has. This is on the top of problems while troubleshooting. Being able to look at the source, understand what's happening, and maybe even quickly patch it is indispensable when running a production system, and suddenly encountering a problem. That is, I don't use open-source programs because they don't cost money. E.g. I've donated more to Mozilla than many commercial products cost. I happily install paid versions of open-source apps on Android, as a way to pay the developers. I won't mind to buy paid support for open-source products. But the openness is very important for something that is not a quick fix for a temporary problem.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Being able to look at the source and troubleshoot it is not mutually exclusive to a product being proprietary (ie, source available would give you this). There is also plenty of business I know that do everything in their power to ensure that if they go away the customer isn't left helpless (this is very popular in some parts of industrial engineering where it's common sense to hand over the blue print along with a service contract). It's just very popular for software vendors to behave without care for the user but it's not the only business model and I think that's a common mistake of some people (ie, believing that FLOSS and proprietary is a binary property that will automatically mean certain things like you mentioned).
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Sure, if you're a big enough customer, you can have access to (relevant parts of) source code, and various forms of preferential treatment. I've seen his firsthand. This is the norm with big vendors that are on the market for many decades, and not going anywhere (e.g. Microsoft). If you are a smaller fish, you have fewer of these options, because they just cost money. Of course it's often cost-effective to quickly start using a piece of commercial software or SaaS, e.g. Slack or Gmail, as opposed to hosting your own chat or email with opensource solutions. As with any software where you put your important data, you need to know your way out, and a way to transfer these data to different software / SaaS. With email, it's reasonably easy; don't know about Slack. With open-source solutions it's usually reasonably easy, too, and it's easier to find, or at least to produce, a migration tool. In some cases, there's just no free alternative; e.g. if you are writing a PC game, you can't realistically stay away from Windows.
acomjean 8y ago
Every year end when I do my charitable donations I go through the applications I’ve been using and donate 10-20$. It’s not a ton but it’s something. Libre office/Mozilla/ eclipse foundation/ sequel pro/ aqua emacs...
greenhatman 8y ago
I use it partly for FLOSS reasons. But I'm not an absolutist. I still pay for JetBrains IDEs, and I pay for Mailspring (https://getmailspring.com/ https://getmailspring.com/), among others. FLOSS is also arguably more important in some software. OS is most important. Technically IDEs are very important too, but there just isn't an open source alternative for JetBrains IDEs. And they definitely deserve the money.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
I think they do even if they don't know it. After all, GNU/Linux is the way it is because it is FLOSS. You might just as well say people don't use cars because of the wheels.
clircle 8y ago
I started using Linux for FLOSS reasons about 15 years ago, but now that I'm older and mostly just care about my computer working the way I want it, without bugs and distractions, I have really shifted away from my old free software opinions. I still use Debian Linux for my home computers. My wife even uses a XPS Developer edition. I would like to switch to Windows 10 for the battery life upgrade, but I find that Windows is slow and has a lot of distractions (eye candy and advertisements) compared to my Linux computers. The virtual desktop management isn't as convenient as it is on Linux (Mate desktop). Emacs, Git, Elfeed, and a lot of the other Emacs-related features/plug-ins I like to use everyday are also dog-slow on Windows, which is the real deal-breaker for me.
lmm 8y ago
In principle I'd happily pay for a good application. But not being able to use my normal package manager to install it and keep it up to date would already be imposing a significant cost.
- zaarn 8y ago
  That's not totally unsolvable. Flatpak leaves this kind of stuff open so you could implement a storefront in flatpak. PPA's on Ubuntu would do to but other distros are less equipped to deal with it, in that case an AppImage might be better.

alexmorse 8y ago

I would insta-buy a lot of linux proprietary software if it fit my needs. No question, no hesitation. Things like: lightroom, sketch, omnigraffle, Your email client looks very well done! Doesn't apply to me, but if I had to use outlook/office 365 I would probably snap it up.

sandworm101 8y ago
How many people are actually free to use this product? My work uses outlook+office but, due to 101 different things, we are locked into windows and ie. How many people use outlook+office for email but are also free enough from other restrictions to be allowed linux? Our office is so locked imto win7 that the ongoing upgrade to win10 is killing things. People are migrating to the few win7 machines to complete essential tasks that now seem impossible on win10. Win7 laptops are being hidden from the IT guys in padlocked security cabinets to prevent the upgrade. We are doomed.
- kevkav 8y ago
  A lot of people can use Hiri because runs on Windows and Mac too.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Then again, so does Outlook.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Plenty of people work for much smaller companies than big corporates. In fact I'd go so far as to say that most people do.
ISL 8y ago
> lightroom Tried Darktable?
- ISL 8y ago
  Too late to edit -- just wanted to add that I use it daily, and Darktable's capabilities exceed my own. I haven't used Lightroom, but I don't feel crippled. Essentially every image here https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/ https://www.instagram.com/charliehagedorn/ has been processed in Darktable and GIMP.

robert_foss 8y ago

Other than being engaged by Canonical, is there a reason the Snap platform be preferable to the Flatpak one?

teamhappy 8y ago
Here's a very detailed comparison: https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-projects#comparison https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/Similar-project...
robotmay 8y ago
I dunno if I'm doing it wrong, but I really don't like the .AppImage thing. I've never had it successfully add itself to my system, and I don't like that it isn't actually part of a package management system. I totally understand the frustration of developers wanting to release on Linux and balking at the faff of adding your app to ~n package managers, but AppImage seems to be the wrong solution to that problem. Snaps are quite nice though, from my experience so far. I've found the documentation a bit lacking, though it is improving. EDIT: I got confused thinking FlatPak == AppImage, so you can ignore most of the above! I'm gonna check out the FlatPak system, looks interesting.
adsche 8y ago
Snap does not even support systems where the home directory is not /home/$user (e.g., a lot of NFS setups) so I'd be very careful. It's a long standing bug and not even the (so far useless) error message has been adjusted. To distribute to Ubuntu users it's good though, due to being well integrated.

pmlnr 8y ago

Completely unrelated to the contents: Please, publishers, I beg you: walk away from medium. It's terrible for us, your readers. Set up a static blog, with a domain, go WordPress, Grav, Typo3, anything, but without stupidly large sticky header/footer and without heavy javascript. EDIT: apparently 121KB javascript is not heavy. I still believe it's an overkill for 30KB content.

captainbland 8y ago
I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. Not an easy thing to do with a static blog.
- pmlnr 8y ago
  > they say it pays from subscribed users What's the actual money flow from that, less, or more, than 1cent/reader? Does it actually worth it?
  - truthwhisperer 8y ago
    Agree good point.
- Theizestooke 8y ago
  Who said that? Because I doubt there's any money in it, more likely they're doing it for "more exposure".
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I think people are going to Medium because they say it pays from subscribed users. That doesn't concern non-monetized posts/blogs like the above.
  - captainbland 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure even a publicly accessible post can be monetised if subscribed users are 'clapping' on it. Feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood.

cirgue 8y ago

I am increasingly happy to pay for software and services as long as the organization producing the software has no relationship with advertisers. I would rather pay money than use something for free that includes advertising. If there are good open-source alternatives I will always prefer those, but there are definitely some things that open-source will never be able to really make work effectively (notably anything that relies on having an attractive and efficient GUI)

kevkav 8y ago
Out of interest, what linux apps have you paid for?
- staticelf 8y ago
  I'm also interested in this question. Because looking at myself, I have paid for several apps on both Windows and MacOS but never on Linux. Although to be fair I stopped using Linux as a desktop OS before I had the economic security needed to purchase apps in the first place.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Not OP, but: I have sunk a few hundred bucks into Steam after it added Linux support. I had a Steam account before that, but I never purchased anything that cost money.
- swalsh 8y ago
  I've paid for RubyMine, and PHP Storm. Not exclusively Linux, but that was the platform I was running it on.
- simion314 8y ago
  Intellij IDEA, also Steam or GOG games
- pmontra 8y ago
  A couple of months of Intellij because a customer wanted me to work on a Java project which used that IDE. I delivered in the first month and paid for the second one because I didn't realize it was autorenewing. That was a long time ago. I also received a Steam game from a friend as Christmas present. I didn't pay but he did. Probably nothing else.

skrowl 8y ago

I'd imagine for most Linux users (not all, of course) that they're not interested in paid proprietary products, which is why they chose Linux in the first place.

pythonaut_16 8y ago
There is little to no evidence of this. I don't think I've ever seen someone claim to use Linux because it's free (no cost). It's almost always because it's an open platform or because it has the best tools for the job they're doing (e.g. development work). So in that sense, a Linux user might be less likely to use a product if they care most about the openness of the platform.
- detaro 8y ago
  > So in that sense, a Linux user might be less likely to use a product if they care most about the openness of the platform. which would mean they aren't interested in a paid proprietary product, just like the parent said? They didn't say people choose Linux because it doesn't cost money. (Although in my experience, some people absolutely do choose Linux because it's free as in beer, especially at first)
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I don't think I've ever seen someone claim to use Linux because it's free (no cost). It's almost always because it's an open platform or because it has the best tools for the job they're doing (e.g. development work). Then those people are lying. Free is absolutely a factor for many.
  - Thomashuet 8y ago
    It improved a bit recently but in most countries it is difficult to buy a laptop without paying for Windows with it. When you install Linux on such a laptop, you obviously don't do it for the money. And given the availability of non Windows laptops, I would think this is the most common case for linux on laptops.
  - 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago

"First stop, reddit" Dont go to reddit for market research. You will only find extreem views on reddit. They are the younger crowd. Try the ubuntu or mint forums if you want to talk to average linux users. I myself would pay for such an email client because no good foss one exists atm. But i find it very odd that such basic software isnt yet free. I dont like the idea of having my email handled by propietary software.

kevkav 8y ago
Yup. Lesson learned on that one alright. It was a mistake.
sv12l 8y ago
Agree, esp avoid /r/linux, they are not suitably representative of larger Linux community out there.
Klover 8y ago
While I was typing my question at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17592842 you already answered it here. Thanks!
billfruit 8y ago
Along with the Ubuntu and mint, I would also suggest the archlinux forums, they are quite active.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I'd actually recommend the Arch forums over Ubuntu or Mint. The community seems a lot more friendly IMO.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
> I dont like the idea of having my email handled by propietary software. Fair point, although I'll point out that you're commenting on a story about a client specifically designed for Microsoft Exchange.

aargh_aargh 8y ago

Thank you for your honest thoughts, Dave, I appreciate you openly talking about both the positves and the negatives.

erric 8y ago

`“Hiri” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.` Is it really expensive for a dev to get a cert from apple? I don't develop so i've never looked.

nhf 8y ago
$99 per year.
- GordonS 8y ago
  $67/y from K-Software if you buy 4 years' at once.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

As a Linux user, while I would certainly prefer to use a FLOSS app, I'm perfectly willing to pay for proprietary software if it scratches an itch that free software simply can't. I bought a license for SublimeText, because I believe it still blows all other code editors out of the water. I purchased InSync, because there's no comparable Google Drive client for Linux that just works. I'd very much like it if the apps were FLOSS, and be allowed to donate or something to support their efforts, but I believe it's important to be willing to compensate the developer on their terms rather than on mine.

at-fates-hands 8y ago
> I bought a license for SublimeText. I did the same thing about six years ago and it was $75 then. Since then its only gone up $5. For me, this is really impressive. As adobe continues to increase the cost of their software seemingly daily, it's nice to see a company invest in their product while still maintaining a very, very affordable product. I agree on the paid side as well. I just recently went "full Linux" and have no qualms about buying quality software that makes my job as a developer easier.

Klover 8y ago

Regarding: "Forge strong relationships with your Linux users. Make it easy for them to get in touch. Listen to them. Linux is a community — word will spread!" Where would be a good place to ask average users of desktop Linux questions? * Hiri went to Reddit. I would think that the r/linux community is a very tiny subset of users. Young and bored, who just want to be part of something? Criticizing the mainstream like Microsoft, Ubuntu, GNOME. Like goths and punks from before? That was the impression it gave me when I visited it a few months ago. Doesn't seem to be very representative of the average desktop Linux user. * IRC is likely too technical. Finding sysadmins and developers there should be no problem, but they're likely not your average user. * Since Linux is such a small section of the market, it probably won't be of any use to try other social media websites. You can find Windows and iOS users in any community, but not Linux users. Unless there is no such thing as an average Linux desktop user. Maybe there is no mom & pop, without geeky interests, careers outside of tech, who have Ubuntu on their laptop. Maybe it's all sysadmins, developers, nerds, and youngsters. In which case I don't think there will be a lot of reason to sell anything there other than games and tools like Sublime, although the games might be better on Windows and iOS.

lloydde 8y ago

> Turns out there aren’t a lot of email clients for Linux users that work with Exchange / Office 365 Has Linux on the desktop really fallen so far in the last years? When did the decay really set in? How does open source friendly Microsoft not see Linux email clients support falling behind at least as a problem in MS documenting its APIs, if not an opportunity to participate in the major open source clients and influence and attract developers?

pidg 8y ago
Office 365 comes with a very good web verison of Outlook, which supports more modern features than most email clients do (such as Office 365 Groups). I suspect it doesn't bother them hugely that desktop client support is falling behind on any platform. edited to add: Oddly I can't find much marketing by Microsoft of the browser Outlook, otherwise I'd link it here, but I'd say it's about 85-90% feature complete compared with the desktop client.
- kevkav 8y ago
  I do agree that the Outlook web app is good and is getting better all the time. Personally though (and I think a lot of people would agree), I like to have a standalone email client that doesn't constantly get lost in tab clutter.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    Having used webmail for about 7 years (I used Gnus before), the tab clutter problem is easy to avoid. Right click the tab, select "Pin tab", and you're done.
megaman22 8y ago
I'm not sure it's worth building an email client that works with Exchange/Office 365 on Linux, when you can use the web interface. Particularly as much of a PITA that trying to use EWS is, and how different it is for on-premise vs Office 365 usage. It's currently a toss-up whether it's even worth trying to use Outlook on Windows desktops, as much of a buggy, hogging, piece of garbage it is.

nailer 8y ago

As an old school Linux desktop person from back in the day: whatever happened to Evolution? The whole reason it was created was to sell an Exchange client plugin.

tinus_hn 8y ago
The original plugin worked with the WebDAV support in Exchange, which was removed some versions ago. To make it work properly you need to support the MAPI protocol Outlook uses, which is undocumented and (at least used to be) obfuscated.
keverets 8y ago
I use Evolution every day with the evolution-ews plugin for accessing an Exchange server. It's still a bit clunky as it always was, and has some issues when switching between wired/wireless networks, but otherwise works fine for email, calendar, and contacts.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Same, once or twice a week I have to close evolution and open it again to get it to resync but otherwise it's less painful than Outlook 16 on W10.
aeroevan 8y ago
evolution (and evolution-ews, which is open source) work very well for office365. I personally only use the calendaring as read-only, but I assume it can create events. Email works fine.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

I think this piece (along with many, many others in the genre) is unduly discounting the practical implications of a proprietary binary for users, preferring to blame a preference for open source solely on a "fundamentalist FOSS mentality". For example, my next GPU is going to be a Radeon largely because I'm tired of the weird issues that come with installing/updating proprietary drivers, the lack of transparency around bug reports, and the general disconnects with the rest of the FOSS ecosystem. The specific issues for applications are different, but there are parallels. The key thing is that FOSS on Linux isn't just an ideology, it's also an ecosystem and a set of norms and practices. When you ship a proprietary product, users have to weigh the cost of opting out of all of that, not just the sticker price. Nobody with any sense would ship a Windows package solely as source code and expect Windows users to love it. I can't imagine anyone blaming a weak reception of such a product on a "fundamentalist proprietary blob mentality". But when they similarly sidestep standard practices on Linux, any friction is almost reflexively attributed to the users being unreasonable.

kevkav 8y ago
The intention of the article was in no an attack on the "FOSS mentality". FOSS is a reality and is a great thing! The point that was being made, was that promoting paid linux applications is a challenge. And that that challenge becomes more difficult because we need to operate in an environment where many of the biggest publications do not want to know anything about non-FOSS apps.
- hitekker 8y ago
  You did right by your customers, you made a solid product and you’re not hurting anyone with your business. Better just to ignore the religious radicals sneering on the sidelines.
- antt 8y ago
  Then why kick a hornets nests? As others have noted Linux for home and Linux for work are two completely different things. At work I use RHEL 7, packages 5 years out of date, don't have access to build tools to incorporate patches myself and a million and one other things I would never tolerate at home. Throwing some more money after a program that lets me not touch outlook sounds like a great idea. At home I do none of the above things I can't think of a reason why I would ever touch a binary blob. There are plenty of people who feel the same. Don't come into a hobbyist environment selling corporate solutions expecting a warm welcome. Instead of /r/linux go to /r/sysadmin or some such.

TuringTest 8y ago

"Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day. This is not a problem with the mainstream tech blogs and is a problem unique to Linux." It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base. While not all Linux users have a problem with using proprietary source (and those would be their natural clients), most got attracted to the platform for the advantages of its open and freely usable code. IMHO it would do him good to understand and respect the reasons why his potential users value free-libre-open source software, and learn to communicate without disparaging them.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
My intention with this comment isn't to promote a culture of weaponized offense-taking. And I'm not even sure if the OP meant the term "fundamentalist" as an insult. But if so ... I think this would be insulting to persons who self-identify as Fundamentalist Christians [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism
- TuringTest 8y ago
  Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English. Fundamentalist Christians may decide to identify themselves with that word, but I've never heard of a FLOSS group calling themselves "Fundamentalist Open-Sourcers". Besides, the insult was not merely in that term, but also considering a "problem" (for him, maybe!) that some Linux users may want to keep their systems pure in terms of no-proprietary software (thus maintaining the Four Freedoms for their whole system), and complaining that popular venues in the community won't advertise his product for being closed-source, which is entirely their prerogative.
  - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
    > Oh please, don't act as if "fundamentalist" didn't have negative connotations in English. You may have misunderstood my point. Based on the assumption that the OP wants to avoid unintended insults, I was pointing out the issues one could associate with using "fundamentalist" as a term of derision. I'm not trying to play PC-police. I was just raising the point in case the OP would want to know. tl;dr There are many English words that basically indicate membership in a particular group. Using those words as a term of derision is a slight against the target of those words and the original group. E.g., "vandal", "gyp", or "hysterical". Or to whit, treating "fundamentalist" as synonymous with blind dogmatism.

magduf 8y ago

The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need for this? This is a product for businesses. The dynamics are different: businesses can easily be convinced to pay for software, since they do so already. If it solves a business need, this is an easy sell. The way to make money with Linux software has always been to focus on the business market, because you're just not going to get any significant number of home Linux users or enthusiasts to pay for your software. And then, ignore the home/enthusiast users. No, I wouldn't pay for an email client either, but I don't need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server at home. If my workplace were trying to switch to Linux, however, I'd readily recommend such a product to management.

ssdd 8y ago
I completely agree. There are very few paid software for which we don't already have a FLOSS software that can compete with it. Linux users are normally good at finding FLOSS alternatives to paid softwares. Another thing that author can do is to compare Linux home users sales results with Windows home users for any of their product that is available for both platforms. Sales would be similar as long as Linux and Windows software marketplace for that area is same.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- shkkmo 8y ago
  I tried and failed to find a quality git gui for linux, (coming from SourceTree on OSX). I tried a number and they either had awful UI, lacked functionality, or were too buggy. In the end I ended up paying for a license to GitKraken and am quite happy.
  - merb 8y ago

pytyper2 8y ago

The authors thought "..tracking exactly where those Snap installs are coming from isn’t possible at the moment.." was interesting. My opinion is that this is a good thing and I don't ever want it to be possible to see where those installs are coming from.

zerr 8y ago

What about suse, rhel and other distros?

sv12l 8y ago
Install snap and off you go.

afarrell 8y ago

> And before you cry “support model!” — it isn’t going to work for us — our product simply doesn’t require that much support. Indeed, a well-designed product aimed at people who would balk at putting the product’s name on their CV shouldn’t.

siscia 8y ago

I am trying to make a living with a software product, a database in particular. RediSQL, SQL steroids for Redis: http://redbeardlab.tech/rediSQL/ http://redbeardlab.tech/rediSQL/ So let me share a different point of view. I find it extremely, extremely difficult. As far as I know, if you need a solution for in memory SQL as cache layer or also as main persistent layer it is the only available solution, on top of that it works on top of existing, widely deployed solution. But still I haven't received a single request for support or I have been able to make a single sale. Of course, I believe is mostly my fault, because similar businesses models (sidekiq) seems to work but, if you ask me, it is definitely not worthed to enter this market. I will try to focus more on marketing for the following months but if it doesn't work neither I am just going to remove the open source part and use it as an internal advantage for my consulting business. I found it just too convenient respect to Pg or MySQL or Mongo. I really believe it is a pity, but I believe that if this product, by the end of the year, doesn't work I will just stop developing product for software developers. It is just not worthed.

jsty 8y ago
A small amount of hopefully useful feedback from someone who purchases business software: 1/ Your website gives a 'open source hobby app' vibe over 'professional, dependable software business'. Selling support contracts in particular requires some expectation that there's a solid business standing behind it that won't just be gone tomorrow. 2/ The 'redirect to an external store to download / purchase' will probably be making any sales funnel leak like a sieve. There's a complete discontinuity between the design of the two sites, and along with trusting you with their information / card details, they now have to trust a random third party. 3/ For a ~€1000 piece of software, I'd expect at least some period of eg. email support, rather than just supporting through Github issues. 4/ I'd remove the option of having the open source edition available through sign-up and just link clearly to the latest release. If you're struggling to even get any interest on the commercial side, getting it out in front of as many people as possible would be my priority. A clear and unambiguous 'Get started' section that doesn't worry about open vs. Pro is probably a good idea too. Worry about converting those to paid users later.
- 8y ago

bumholio 8y ago

I don't understand, why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source? Why can't most commercial software ship with sources, with a sane license that allows a license holder to study, recompile and modify, but not publish derivative work? 90% of the people who want the source would not pirate the software, and 100% the pirates are satisfied with a binary copy. And don't tell me about copy protection, in practice it's just as effective as a line in the EULA: for any worthwhile software, those who don't care about the license don't care about copy protection either. I have no problem paying for software, but I don't want to surrender all control of my hardware for a 3rd party to run secret code on it.

LarryL 8y ago
> why is there such a hard dichotomy between "commercial - binary blob" and open source? I see at least 2 reasons. 1) Mindset (and ignorance) I've worked in big telecom companies, in their technical teams, which means people who know about programming in big (BIG/HUGE) projects. Even there, many of their -very- experienced tech people were AFRAID of anything open-source. They were terrified that using anything that had the words "open" or "free" (as in free software) would mean that they would have to "give" their code "gratis" and lose their customers. The irony? Those programs were BIG projects that were only useable with their hardware (think stuff like devices' OSs & supervision UIs for telecom equipments), it would not have worked with other devices and any attempt at an adaptation would have cost more than developing from scratch. Add to that that they only sold to a handful of companies (those hardware + software solution are expensive) so they would immediately have noticed that something was wrong, and you see how INSANE it was that they were afraid. They had completely bought the FUD from Microsoft and the like. And thoss were TECHNICAL people, I leave to your imagination the attitude of managers... :-((( 2) Quality (or lack thereof) A lot (if not most) of code done for "enterprise software" is of pretty bad quality (and I'm being nice). I've seen such horrors that you are left to wonder how anything AT ALL could work. The incompetence was staggering, comments and tests inexistant, no source management, no documentation, "if" conditions spread over hundreds of lines, 10 thousand lines of SQL in a single file, config files thousands of lines long maintained by hand (which I showed contained hundreds of errors), etc. Showing how "sausages are made" (an horrifying view) would be bad, maybe even suicide (once their ineptitude would be proven) for those companies. On the other hand, the bad quality would have quaranteed that nobody used their projects (LOL). Even compiling them was a HARD task. Real example: I had just arrived on a project where the most experienced guy was unable to install on my computer the tools needed for development... I had to write code "blind": without linking & testing nor documentation. Am I surprising you when I tell you it did not go well? (And they had the nerve of blaming me for their incompetence!)

Ocha 8y ago

FYI website is unreachable through https://hiri.com/ https://hiri.com/

kevkav 8y ago
Aww man :( Thanks for pointing that out. Please use https://www.hiri.com https://www.hiri.com instead.

Separo 8y ago

If Sketch was available on Ubuntu I'd switch.

kevkav 8y ago
I would absolutely love a linux version of Sketch. Can't see it happening though.
thepumpkin1979 8y ago
There’s a bigger chance Figma comes to Linux faster than Sketch, Figma since is based on Electron. Sketch is heavily dependent on Cocoa and Mac.

yAnonymous 8y ago

It's good to have a working Exchange client for Linux, proprietary or not. I'd hope that they polish Hiri a bit before they implement Gmail and IMAP support though, because it does have some rough edges, mostly with the UI. As for the FOSS enthusiasts, I'd recommend ignoring them.

wink 8y ago

Step 1: excited. An email client I've never heard of? Step 2: interested: read article, read webpage Step 3: meh. They call it email client, but it's only for Exchange/Office365 Some additional notes on the website: it's nice that there's a 50% discount, it usually helps to show the before/after prices ;)

archi42 8y ago

I believe having more proprietary software available on all platforms (including Mac) improves the situation - especially something "basic" like a mail client. Yes, FOSS and Linux are "a more natural" match than proprietary and Linux, but the truth is: You can't get everything you might want/need for free at an acceptable quality . Working for a company which sells niche-software for both Windows (most customers) and Linux (some big $$$ customers), I am happy to see more mainstream developers doing the same. If you're a making consumer software: Please try to follow suit! Internally, we develop on and for Linux, but our code is cross platform enough (thanks Qt) to easily build on Linux and Windows. The biggest issue for me is remembering which C++ constructs work with GCC/clang but not with the MS compiler (which improved a lot in the last years - and which our CI usually notifies me about).

craigsmansion 8y ago

> There is a lot to be said for products that have been shaped by free market forces. So, not only are Linux users "fundamentalists", they are communists as well? > If Linux as a platform is going to succeed, Linux users [..] So adopting proprietary software is going to make Linux "a success"? > think about the richness of the entire ecosystem rather than seek to limit it. FOSS "limiting the richness of the entire ecosystem"? That's rich, indeed.

green7ea 8y ago

The app looks very nice. Which UI toolkit does it use?

dopeboy 8y ago

This was a great read. I've been using Linux since 2005 and I've always wondered what selling paid-for software is like on Linux. Thank you for taking the time to build a venture for Linux users, I really appreciate it.

bachmeier 8y ago

Nice: half price offer Not so nice: expires in about three hours so you give up the ability to try the software first

turbinerneiter 8y ago

Did anyone in here actually try? I installed the snap, from there on it went downhill: * after start, I get "Nouveau is known to cause crashes" -> restart for fixed rendering * after I login, there are no mails showing up, but there is also no "Something went wrong with your login" * when I click on the calendar, there is a "Sorry. We are unable to load your calendar" * when I try to send mail: "Yikes, something went wrong."

calcifer 8y ago
Any particular reason you are using Nouveau? Nvidia users on Linux overwhelmingly [1] prefer the official binary blob. [1] https://i.imgur.com/mL98GZA.png https://i.imgur.com/mL98GZA.png
- turbinerneiter 8y ago
  It's an experimental Fedora Atomic Workstation install - GPU drivers are the least of the problems on this system ;)

eberkund 8y ago

I am optimistic about snaps even though after using them I found a lot of kinks that still need to be ironed out. But for the users downloading free software which is the main use case they are targeting first it works great. I say "for users" because wrestling with snapcraft (the command used to build snap packages) can be pretty frustrating for non-trivial programs. Cross compiling for arm was one thing that I was struggling with and ended up just doing my arm builds on a Raspberry Pi. A think many issues could be resolved by having snapcraft use it's own repo sources rather than whatever the host OS is using. Also for proprietary apps there is currently no way to have a private "store" so you are limited to installing from a .snap package using --dangerous --devmode flags and lose a lot of the benefits of using snaps in the first place (mainly automated updates).

tiatia123 8y ago

Well, I would be more than happy to buy a decent Linux IMAP client. 1. I never heard about your product 2. Can I use it as a regular IMAP client? I am waiting for a linux version of this: https://www.ivelope.com/invite/RunItUpTheFlagpoleHackerSeaChange https://www.ivelope.com/invite/RunItUpTheFlagpoleHackerSeaCh... (shitty invitation link that gets me ahead in the queue)

seba_dos1 8y ago

I would happily pay and already did in some cases, as long as it's not proprietary. (initial title was: "Will Linux users pay for apps?")

alexnewman 8y ago

I just don't buy it. I'd pay you if you opened your komono and had a github. I just can't trust a tiny startup like you with my email.

CMCDragonkai 8y ago

I've wondered how proprietary software vendors distribute their software on the myriad of Linux distros and their package managers. That is if you want to keep the workflow of using the package manager to automate the installation and uninstallation. Unlike app stores, there's no linux package manager that allows payments before delivery of software.

oblio 8y ago
It depends on the application. Many either deliver a generic binary of a DEB + RPM. Or more recently a Docker container or one of the other containers (Snap, etc). Then that has a proprietary license checker based on either a license file or a license service, basically the service phones home to check the license.

shmerl 8y ago

> This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users I agree. Closed source communication tools are not a good proposition in general and especially for Linux users. That said, Exchange itself is a closed mess and existing FOSS tools are trying to working around a problem of MS lock-in.

RaleyField 8y ago

People that use Linux and people who frequent Linux related websites don't necessarily have a lot in common. I use Ubuntu daily, couldn't care less for what some zealots have to say on Reddit. I use it because it's the least wrong platform, not because it's FOSS.

spicyusername 8y ago

Definitely interested in a Gmail web client alternative

poelzi 8y ago

I just recently payed 300 euros for bitwig studio, because it's really good software and works nicely on Linux. I looked at the OSS DAWs out there and found them all unusable or just no fun to use.

gytdev 8y ago

I hope some people from Adobe are reading this. Me personally and my friends are holding back on Linux as a daily driver only because it does not support Photoshop and You have to learn GIMP

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