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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Looks promising. I used to use Little Snitch, but last year they decided to charge for the new version, and I uninstalled it.

Little Snitch was effective, but overly complex for the average user. I'm sure it's great for someone who configures networks on a regular basis, but as a Mac user, I just want to use my Mac. If I wanted to twiddle with security settings all day long, I'd still be on Windows.

This looks like it might be a good, simple, replacement. Hopefully as it evolves it doesn't get swamped by feature bloat.

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That comment makes me chuckle. These days, I have close to zero faith in commercial software that is "free", assuming that the business model is selling my data.

I happily paid for Little Snitch and was comforted by the fact that I was the customer.

Nothing prevents companies that sell you proprietary software from also selling your data.

Well I'm assuming things like this helps:

  We do not share nor sell your data.

https://www.obdev.at/privacy-policy.html

However you may be referring to the same notion that nothing stops someone from murdering someone else.

Until the company is acquired. And then the disclaimer disappears silently.

Which... has never happened with the company behind Little Snitch.

And it never happened to every other company that has been acquired...

Outcomes from such clauses also hinge on whether metadata describing the operation of their system - such as logs showing who communicated with who - is your data, or their data.

Following recent changes to law here in Australia, for example, metadata is essentially the property of the state.

True. But in practice, a software company that's making money from users has a lot of incentive not to harm their brand, or open themselves up to competition, by being shady.

It does happen but users are waking up to the problem and companies are learning.

This comment makes me chuckle. The idea that since you pay for something means that the company won't sell your data.

https://www.obdev.at/privacy-policy.html

It doesn’t guarantee it, no. But it does mean that there are fewer incentives in place to do so.

I didn't mean to mock the sentiment and you're absolutely right to take a very cynical approach these days to any privacy promises.

Indeed. I'm especially suspicious of "security" software. Releasing free high quality security seems to be a popular attack vector for advertisers, spammers, hackers, and nation states.

>I happily paid for Little Snitch and was comforted by the fact that I was the customer.

I paid for it, too. But then the upgrades went from complimentary to paid, and I bailed.

The new major version offers a lot more functionality. I looked into it and decided I wanted it, so I upgraded. I assume that I could have stayed with the old major version but I'm not sure.

With High Sierra you couldn't, the previous version doesn't work on it.

3.8.2 works with High Sierra

That is the traditional business model of software

I've gladly paid for Little Snitch twice. OS X attempts so many random connections now I don't know what I'd do without it.

oh dear, LittleSnitch wanted to charge money for creating a really handy tool, how terrible.

It’s the charge for upgrades that I don’t like. I bought it once, upgrades should be free. Or so significant that I want to pay.

Considering Apple's constant shifting of goalposts with macOS, what counts as "significant" in your book, even disregarding user-facing features? And how significant is the ~$50 they want for it?

It's just $25 for an upgrade.

I have to roll my eyes at someone who scoffs at a $25 upgrade every few years.

If they're not cool with funding any future development on the product, then they must be cool with not upgrading. But of course they instead entitle themselves to all of your future labor because they once threw some shekels your way.

Now we just need to figure out who pays for those upgrades. I think we could try a scheme where we keep growing the user base so more recent customers pay for the prior customers' upgrades.

Hmm, wait a minute...

sounds nice, i'm in, now i'm get some people under this not-a-pyramid

you only need to pay every 3-5 years aaaaand only if you want to upgrade, aaaaaaand you can keep using your last updated version, aaaand only 50% of the full price

You can't, if you also want to upgrade your OS. v3 doesn't work on High Sierra.

It does: https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/releasenotes3.htm...

yep, they even did some fixes for Yosemite

Show me this universe where programmers don’t have to eat after their 1.0!

It depends... If I'm paying for an update that fixes bugs/issues released in a prior version then I don't expect to pay for that.

If the new version has a lot of new features I would be OK paying for that.

I paid for the old version. I like it.

I think they only charge for the new microphone / camera portions of the new version.

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