5 ms·

“Git Tower” revokes licenses when discussing bugs/feedback on Reddit

68 points by ValentineC 8y ago

dopamean 8y ago
Pretty slimy. Even if the user had said something really nasty on reddit about the product revoking their license is a pretty ridiculous and petty thing to do.
- mosselman 8y ago
  If we really have all the facts here it seems like it is reason enough not to ever bother with Git Tower.
  - rubbingalcohol 8y ago
    That seems like a pretty big "if" to be fair.
amingilani 8y ago
Off topic: but is there anything for life-long git CLI user to gain from by going GUI?
- latencyloser 8y ago
  As someone who made the opposite transition: no. My colleagues that are still GUI bound are generally slower at accomplishing most day to day tasks. Committing, rebasing, merging, pushing tags, etc.
  - rimliu 8y ago
    I wonder, how is that even possible. Like committing you have the same or less amount of work to do. Merging is just drag-and-drop. Rebasing is two clicks.
    - takeda 8y ago
      You really underestimate how fast CLI is.
- sempron64 8y ago
  I've found graph views and cherry picking to be better experiences in various guis, but generally for graphs I use tig or gitk and for cherry pick I suffer and copy paste commit hashes. The weight of the various guis and the obscurity of internals is usually enough to stop me from using it.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago
  If you're comfortable where you are, then no. Personally, I use a mixture of both. For browsing through commit history or viewing diffs before committing / pushing, I find the GUI to be much more convenient. For most other things, I use the command line.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SenHeng 8y ago
  - easier to pick partial commits - easy visualisation of where branches split and merge - same easy visualisation of stashes I use both the CLI and GUI. They both have their merits and demerits. While a CLI may have faster commands, a GUI helps a lot when trying to make sense of relationships between commits branches and visualisation in general.
- kh_hk 8y ago
  The only use I have found for a GUI is partial commits, and for that I use gitk which is already distributed with git.
- ThorinJacobs 8y ago
  The main benefit for me is the ability to quickly and conveniently see the commit history and diff as well as branches' current position. If you're already comfortable with doing the same in CLI, then you're probably not going to gain a ton. I like Sourcetree for this particularly because its buttons map fairly well to the actual CLI commands that it will be executing, and makes it painless to open a CLI terminal for instances where I want more fine-tuned control.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  For me the value is in diffing, merging and browsing the commit graph. Piecemeal staging can be improved looking at the whole file instead of the window `add -p` shows. But... I'm still primarily a CLI user. I've just configured difftool and mergetool to call up Beyond Compare. git gui and gitk make designers weep, but I've never felt hindered or slowed down in what I want to accomplish with them. I'll try a new GUI tool every now and then, and I haven't found any that make me feel more productive than the CLI augmented by the tools above.
xyk8jic0 8y ago
I was asking myself, given how petty this is, it was probably done by a woman... guess the gender of the support engineer... https://www.fournova.com/company https://www.fournova.com/company
- roywiggins 8y ago
  What?
  - xyk8jic0 8y ago
    What part of the comment haven't you understood?
    - bairrd 8y ago
      .
      - dang 8y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105935
      - xyk8jlc0 8y ago
        No, the assumption is that when someone is petty, that person is most likely a woman. The fact that she's a support engineer says she's most likely the person who cancelled the licence.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't make the thread worse by feeding trolls. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Instead, please flag egregious comments as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Moderators review the flags and ban such accounts.
futureastronaut 8y ago
I don't see anything giving them that right in https://www.git-tower.com/legal/eula https://www.git-tower.com/legal/eula, not a lawyer at all but I think OP has a case?
- wl 8y ago
  From the user in question: > I tried to lookup my old license and realized I was given 1 free license this annual period (around ~October) after purchasing 2 seats the previous year for contributing significantly to bug reports with full screencasts, etc. > So it looks like I received it for free (well, more or less - after roughly a combined 20 hours worth of bug report effort for the year). Revoking a free license seems a little less shady than revoking a paid one.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  "fournova reserves all rights not expressly granted to you within this Agreement" plausibly includes "revoking it because we don't like you" but you'd need to be a German contract lawyer to know what they'd make of it, since apparently it's governed by German law...
alexgaribay 8y ago
I used to love Git Tower until the most recent version came out with the annual-renewing license. I used to promote Git Tower all the time because the one-time-purchase license was such a good deal for the tool and I truly believed it was worth the cost. However, this is another strike against the tool. I already abandoned Git Tower and switched to using Magit in Emacs. I don't regret my decision.
- rubbingalcohol 8y ago
  A big part of the problem (why a lot of apps are doing this) is Apple disallows software vendors from charging for major release upgrades on the Mac App Store. Ideally Apple would provide a pathway for upgrade pricing as a one-time purchase but of course they have a perverse incentive to sell subscriptions, and developers take the blame for it.
  - alexgaribay 8y ago
    I have no issue with paying for subscriptions or paying for major releases. For example, JetBrains products are subscription-based but after a year of paying, you gain a perpetual license and can continue using the product without continuing to pay for updates. The problem with Git Tower now is that you always have to have a subscription going to use the product. For me, the value of the product does not outweigh the cost. Edit: grammar
  - CodeWriter23 8y ago
    One can implement the pricing model used by Sketch, and do it via In-App purchases. Pay and get updates for a year. After that no new features work in your copy or any updates to your copy, unless you pay again. https://www.sketchapp.com/pricing/ https://www.sketchapp.com/pricing/
- vemv 8y ago
  As a software developer you should be more empathetic towards the author. Doesn't he, like you, deserve a paycheck every month?
JeremyBanks 8y ago
> Hi, Julian from Tower here! We were just made aware of this post via email. We would never revoke a license unless a user requests a refund. We highly value each form of feedback to our app, especially critical feedback. Thanks to that feedback, we have been able to improve Tower over the years and continue to do so! > It would be great if OP could reach out to us, so we can find the corresponding license and check why it seems to be no longer working. Thank you! https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_revokes_licenses_when_discussing/efy8bc3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_...
- kbenson 8y ago
  Yay, another case where people assume the worst possible interpretation of a situation, posts about it on the internet like it's fact, and an angry mob forms. What a wondrous time we're living in! /s Seriously, I view this as horrible behavior on the reddit OP's part. Whether it turns out to be Git Tower blocking them or some other problem, not taking the time to try to figure out what happened before publicly asserting something is inexcusable.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    So just to clarify: It is horrible behaviour on the OP's part to make assumptions about other people's motives, but you're going to go ahead and make assumptions about the OP's motives just the same? Seems a little hypocritical.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I'm making a statement about what the OP posted and provided, which did not include any indication of contacting the company in question to find out what hapoened, did not include any info on how that company would have known what license to revoke, and in a reply to a company spokesman on reddit also did not note any of this info. If the OP did have any of this info, not including it is also bad. My problem is with the OPs observable actions.
  - Mc_Big_G 8y ago
berbec 8y ago
Git tower speaks: https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_revokes_licenses_when_discussing/efy8bc3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_...
kevindong 8y ago
Even if revoking the license was intentional retaliation, how would the developers of Git Tower know who posted on Reddit (and therefore know who's license to revoke)?
myself248 8y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161220/12411836320/software-company-shows-how-not-to-handle-negative-review.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161220/12411836320/softw... You'd think they'd take a page...
mcphage 8y ago
Honestly, this doesn't seem very likely—if the Tower folks were assholes, I could see them try it after a very nasty review, but it wasn't a nasty review at all, so it seems unlikely Tower would try to retaliate for it.

68 points by ValentineC 8y ago

Pretty slimy. Even if the user had said something really nasty on reddit about the product revoking their license is a pretty ridiculous and petty thing to do.

mosselman 8y ago
If we really have all the facts here it seems like it is reason enough not to ever bother with Git Tower.
- rubbingalcohol 8y ago
  That seems like a pretty big "if" to be fair.

amingilani 8y ago

Off topic: but is there anything for life-long git CLI user to gain from by going GUI?

latencyloser 8y ago
As someone who made the opposite transition: no. My colleagues that are still GUI bound are generally slower at accomplishing most day to day tasks. Committing, rebasing, merging, pushing tags, etc.
- rimliu 8y ago
  I wonder, how is that even possible. Like committing you have the same or less amount of work to do. Merging is just drag-and-drop. Rebasing is two clicks.
  - takeda 8y ago
    You really underestimate how fast CLI is.
sempron64 8y ago
I've found graph views and cherry picking to be better experiences in various guis, but generally for graphs I use tig or gitk and for cherry pick I suffer and copy paste commit hashes. The weight of the various guis and the obscurity of internals is usually enough to stop me from using it.
ThrowawayR2 8y ago
If you're comfortable where you are, then no. Personally, I use a mixture of both. For browsing through commit history or viewing diffs before committing / pushing, I find the GUI to be much more convenient. For most other things, I use the command line.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SenHeng 8y ago
- easier to pick partial commits - easy visualisation of where branches split and merge - same easy visualisation of stashes I use both the CLI and GUI. They both have their merits and demerits. While a CLI may have faster commands, a GUI helps a lot when trying to make sense of relationships between commits branches and visualisation in general.
kh_hk 8y ago
The only use I have found for a GUI is partial commits, and for that I use gitk which is already distributed with git.
ThorinJacobs 8y ago
The main benefit for me is the ability to quickly and conveniently see the commit history and diff as well as branches' current position. If you're already comfortable with doing the same in CLI, then you're probably not going to gain a ton. I like Sourcetree for this particularly because its buttons map fairly well to the actual CLI commands that it will be executing, and makes it painless to open a CLI terminal for instances where I want more fine-tuned control.
forgottenpass 8y ago
For me the value is in diffing, merging and browsing the commit graph. Piecemeal staging can be improved looking at the whole file instead of the window `add -p` shows. But... I'm still primarily a CLI user. I've just configured difftool and mergetool to call up Beyond Compare. git gui and gitk make designers weep, but I've never felt hindered or slowed down in what I want to accomplish with them. I'll try a new GUI tool every now and then, and I haven't found any that make me feel more productive than the CLI augmented by the tools above.

xyk8jic0 8y ago

I was asking myself, given how petty this is, it was probably done by a woman... guess the gender of the support engineer... https://www.fournova.com/company https://www.fournova.com/company

roywiggins 8y ago
What?
- xyk8jic0 8y ago
  What part of the comment haven't you understood?
  - bairrd 8y ago
    .
    - dang 8y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105935
    - xyk8jlc0 8y ago
      No, the assumption is that when someone is petty, that person is most likely a woman. The fact that she's a support engineer says she's most likely the person who cancelled the licence.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't make the thread worse by feeding trolls. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Instead, please flag egregious comments as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Moderators review the flags and ban such accounts.

futureastronaut 8y ago

I don't see anything giving them that right in https://www.git-tower.com/legal/eula https://www.git-tower.com/legal/eula, not a lawyer at all but I think OP has a case?

wl 8y ago
From the user in question: > I tried to lookup my old license and realized I was given 1 free license this annual period (around ~October) after purchasing 2 seats the previous year for contributing significantly to bug reports with full screencasts, etc. > So it looks like I received it for free (well, more or less - after roughly a combined 20 hours worth of bug report effort for the year). Revoking a free license seems a little less shady than revoking a paid one.
roywiggins 8y ago
"fournova reserves all rights not expressly granted to you within this Agreement" plausibly includes "revoking it because we don't like you" but you'd need to be a German contract lawyer to know what they'd make of it, since apparently it's governed by German law...

alexgaribay 8y ago

I used to love Git Tower until the most recent version came out with the annual-renewing license. I used to promote Git Tower all the time because the one-time-purchase license was such a good deal for the tool and I truly believed it was worth the cost. However, this is another strike against the tool. I already abandoned Git Tower and switched to using Magit in Emacs. I don't regret my decision.

rubbingalcohol 8y ago
A big part of the problem (why a lot of apps are doing this) is Apple disallows software vendors from charging for major release upgrades on the Mac App Store. Ideally Apple would provide a pathway for upgrade pricing as a one-time purchase but of course they have a perverse incentive to sell subscriptions, and developers take the blame for it.
- alexgaribay 8y ago
  I have no issue with paying for subscriptions or paying for major releases. For example, JetBrains products are subscription-based but after a year of paying, you gain a perpetual license and can continue using the product without continuing to pay for updates. The problem with Git Tower now is that you always have to have a subscription going to use the product. For me, the value of the product does not outweigh the cost. Edit: grammar
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  One can implement the pricing model used by Sketch, and do it via In-App purchases. Pay and get updates for a year. After that no new features work in your copy or any updates to your copy, unless you pay again. https://www.sketchapp.com/pricing/ https://www.sketchapp.com/pricing/
vemv 8y ago
As a software developer you should be more empathetic towards the author. Doesn't he, like you, deserve a paycheck every month?

JeremyBanks 8y ago

> Hi, Julian from Tower here! We were just made aware of this post via email. We would never revoke a license unless a user requests a refund. We highly value each form of feedback to our app, especially critical feedback. Thanks to that feedback, we have been able to improve Tower over the years and continue to do so! > It would be great if OP could reach out to us, so we can find the corresponding license and check why it seems to be no longer working. Thank you! https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_revokes_licenses_when_discussing/efy8bc3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_...

kbenson 8y ago
Yay, another case where people assume the worst possible interpretation of a situation, posts about it on the internet like it's fact, and an angry mob forms. What a wondrous time we're living in! /s Seriously, I view this as horrible behavior on the reddit OP's part. Whether it turns out to be Git Tower blocking them or some other problem, not taking the time to try to figure out what happened before publicly asserting something is inexcusable.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  So just to clarify: It is horrible behaviour on the OP's part to make assumptions about other people's motives, but you're going to go ahead and make assumptions about the OP's motives just the same? Seems a little hypocritical.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I'm making a statement about what the OP posted and provided, which did not include any indication of contacting the company in question to find out what hapoened, did not include any info on how that company would have known what license to revoke, and in a reply to a company spokesman on reddit also did not note any of this info. If the OP did have any of this info, not including it is also bad. My problem is with the OPs observable actions.
- Mc_Big_G 8y ago

berbec 8y ago

Git tower speaks: https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_revokes_licenses_when_discussing/efy8bc3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/git/comments/ao1q7t/care_git_tower_...

kevindong 8y ago

Even if revoking the license was intentional retaliation, how would the developers of Git Tower know who posted on Reddit (and therefore know who's license to revoke)?

myself248 8y ago

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161220/12411836320/software-company-shows-how-not-to-handle-negative-review.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161220/12411836320/softw... You'd think they'd take a page...

mcphage 8y ago

Honestly, this doesn't seem very likely—if the Tower folks were assholes, I could see them try it after a very nasty review, but it wasn't a nasty review at all, so it seems unlikely Tower would try to retaliate for it.