dunbarx wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:24 pm
Really? Just because something miraculous that was once free no longer is?
It’s not about the fact that the company have made this a paid - only product after milking opensource backers for as much as it would go.
It’s about
how this was done.
Why wasn’t there an advance announcement so that people like @Richmond could manage their businesses that were based on the promise of ongoing support for openSource?
The website and software redesign clearly are extensive and haven’t happened overnight - likely these took months. Yet it was all kept under a tight veil of secrecy. Was there really a serious reason for this?
We can all appreciate the financial realities that face the company must be facing, and understand they have a duty to ensure they don’t go under which means paid only software.
But equally no other community has given back so much financial support in form of donations and even now still doing their marketing for them.
Just one current example: even though the company in its various guises has been cross platform for many years, their excellent marketing team still hadn’t added this to a list of cross platform IDEs on Wikipedia, relying on a user to think of this and do it. (
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=36256)
This is the insanity of the situation encapsulated right there. Instead of being mega pro-active in advertising this “miraculous” platform, increasing awareness and trying to bring in more users with deals etc, what they’ve done is basically decided to cannibalise their existing market, yet again asking their loyal users to dish out more $$$ instead of actually making any serious attempt to increase their userbase. When it comes to new users, there seems to be an attitude of “built it and they will come” which just won’t cut it.
Will trying to squeeze loyal users for more cash be enough to keep them afloat?
I truly hope so, because we all love the platforms and would hate to see it go.
To be on the safe side I’m brushing up on Flutter.