Ask HN: Selling IDEs for proprietary platforms?
The current state is that you have to use Eclipse with a plugin provided by the vendor. There are some problems with the plugin:
- sometimes it's quite buggy (occasionally you have to wipe the workspace it has crashed in to start up Eclipse again)
- there are some UX problems
- the integration with the platform itself could be improved
My plan is to build an Atom (some of my peers already use it when they can avoid the Eclipse plugin) package that improves on that.
The way I would go about that is to offer the package for free while in development. The users would have to register and will get a time-limited license for free. As soon as the package is mature enough I would start charging. That's similar to the way Cursive (https://cursive-ide.com/) was built.
Before I'll jump into it I have a few questions that some of you maybe could help me with:
- Atom is MIT licensed. That means I can bundle the package with Atom and sell it as a stand-alone app, right?
- what are the concerns regarding the brand of the platforms vendor? Say the vendors name is X, can I call my package "X Integration" or something similar without getting into trouble? Would a simple disclaimer that I'm not associated with X do it?
- what is the best way to reach out to such small niches? There are hardly any development resources for the platform on the internet, so maybe that is an opportunity?
- probably a bit too early to ask, but how would you charge for it. One-off payment for a year of updates (like Cursive) or recurring subscription (like Jetbrain)?
Thank you for any help you can provide.