Comment by aaronsw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaronsw | Hacker News Reader

For the record, here's the letter I wrote to Allan that this post is responding to:

Subject: what happened to TextMate?

When TextMate came out, it was the most fun application I had ever used -- to this day, have ever used, in fact. I subscribed to the cutting edge updates and it seemed like every day I'd sit down to my computer to work and my editor would be filled with brilliant new features that I hadn't even considered were possible from a text editor. Indeed, who would have ever thought that one's text editor could be a source of joy or entertainment?

But since TextMate 2 started, there hasn't been a single change. Why not let people use TextMate 2 the same way? Why not let them experience the joy of watching the day-to-day morphs of new features and changes and rethinking. You could declare it was only for those who wanted to live on the edge with breakage and the rest, that TextMate 1 was always available for those who just wanted to work. But don't we deserve the option?

But don't we deserve the option?

No. It might be nice to have, you might want it, you might even need it desperately, but you don't deserve it.

If you start thinking like that, then you don't deserve your customer's money.

This isn't an open source project where obligations are low - and even in open source projects there are _some_ obligations - this is a business that has obligations both contractual and implied, and if you fail to honor or modify them then you can expect customers to go elsewhere.

From Allan's post: I feel I should stress that I am not posting these “status posts” in an attempt of painting some picture of TM 2.0 being around the corner to increase sales or avoid having people jump ship. Please make your decisions about what software to use/buy/support based on released software, not what I or someone else writes about “the future” (which none of us can predict).

Which is an attempt to modify the implied obligations that have arisen from:

- Previous announcements that there would be a text mate 2.

- General expectations about what normal software companies do.

The point I was hoping to make is that people have expectations based on what they believe has/will/should happen, no matter what you believe you have promised, and you either need to deliver on those or change those expectations. If you don't then you might be surprised at their disappointment, but it's pretty inevitable should you fail to manage expectations well enough.

If that sounds stupid or unreasonable to you, then I mostly agree, but these are people you are dealing with and they don't always operate in a logical fashion.

(Incidentally implied obligations are also recognized in law. They don't have to be written into the contract to exist. One example from the UK is employer supplied perks that aren't in your contract. I'm not suggesting that there is any legal obligation in this case (as opposed to an expectation), but they do arise - there's some more information at http://www.gillhams.com/articles/141.cfm )

Actually, I don't deserve my customer's money, unless we specifically enter into an agreement where I agree to provide some service or product in exchange for that money. And to my knowledge, buying TM 1.0 in no way included an agreement that v2.0 would be released at a specific time or in specific intervals. Ergo, the creator of TM owes his customers absolutely nothing. He can go crawl under a rock and die, or he can build the greatest text editor the world has ever seen and never release any of it to anyone. It would be a great waste but that's his right.

Wanting something does not give you the right to it.

> Indeed, who would have ever thought that one's text editor could be a source of joy or entertainment?

Emacs users, of course:-)

I'm always discovering new, cool useful, and at times just weird things in emacs.

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