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Comment by magduf | Hacker News Reader

The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need for this?

This is a product for businesses. The dynamics are different: businesses can easily be convinced to pay for software, since they do so already. If it solves a business need, this is an easy sell.

The way to make money with Linux software has always been to focus on the business market, because you're just not going to get any significant number of home Linux users or enthusiasts to pay for your software. And then, ignore the home/enthusiast users. No, I wouldn't pay for an email client either, but I don't need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server at home. If my workplace were trying to switch to Linux, however, I'd readily recommend such a product to management.

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Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this.

We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy Hiri, it wasn't enough. IT departments don't want to support more than one email client. 100% adoption is simply not an option.

So we pivoted to the current model. A bottom up strategy that has made the company viable. I would say about 50% of our customers are paying with the department credit card, and the other 50% buy it using their personal card.

Another interesting find - the growth stage of any given company has a role to play too. Younger companies (both the age of the company and the age of the staff) seem to be more open to trying new software. I guess they don't bring any legacy issues to the table. The problem is that a lot of these young companies choose Gmail. This is why we have chosen to support Gmail.

The decision to choose a "mail client" (really a "groupware system") is a complex process in most cases. MS Office is the default because it does everything, and it works on the top two platforms. Google is sort of competing in this space, but it's nowhere near MS's feature set, customer/business service, and compatibility.

The people buying your product are not integrating it into their business case because your product can't compete, it can only fill a niche. In this sense you should definitely find niches, such as users willing to pay money to have a working client on Linux. But this can be a dangerous game. If, for example, Evolution suddenly stopped sucking balls at Exchange compatibility and became a half-decent mail client, you could lose your niche, and your cash flow.

If I were you, I would make your product be as different as it can be while still being compatible. One way would be tightly integrating with an OS or product. Another way would be providing custom integration that competitors don't even come close to. Another would be to provide utility functions that nobody else has. Getting to the point where people use your product not because they like it, but because they have to have it. Kind of like the iPhone. Nobody ever needed a giant glass touch screen, but once people started using it, they couldn't give it up.

Once you have that kind of core functionality, you could give away a stripped down product and ask for payment for premium features. This would net you additional users that would otherwise go to a free competitor, and be a potential entry to sales once they feel they need the extra features.

(apologies if you're already doing any/all of this)

A Linux niche I have had success selling is "privacy". The Linux crowd, especially decision makers in businesses that run Linux somewhere, are very privacy aware. It's a good differentiator. And people will pay for better privacy, especially considering the options.

Could you tell a bit more? I am currently evaluating opportunities to address the need of privacy. Maybe our offers could be complementary? I am also reachable at my user name @gmail.com.

We use Domino/Notes at work and it’s a nightmare. IT have been working for over a year to untangle it and get us over to Exchange/Outlook but from what I hear it’s been headache after headache for them.

> We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work.

How was that focus manifested? What is your focus now?

I ask because I would love to pay for an email client that has the single feature I most need. But the Hiri website only lets me know that the software:

* Helps me conquer my inbox. How? I have no idea.

* Removes unnecessary clutter from my inbox. I actually don't want anything removed from my inbox.

* Accesses Office 365 and Exchange calendars, and a bunch of other Active Directory integration features. I already have that with Lightning.

I'm currently using Thunderbird with an extension that provides the feature that I need, and I've donated to both the Mozilla foundation and the developer of said extension. What unique features does Hiri provide that Thunderbird does not? What can I do with Hiri that I cannot do with Thunderbird and Lightning?

Lastly, why is it $120? I'll pay $10 without a second thought. I'll pay $20-$40 if it really scratches an itch. But I won't even consider $50 for an email client at all. $120 is absolutely ridiculous. I won't consider the one-year plan, nor is it even clear what is a one-year plan that includes indefinite access to updates and new features. What happens after one year?

$120 ridiculous, oh the prices we use to pay in the 80's and 70's even for basic stuff like having access to a compiler.

Pick your monthly salary, then imagine how many units of work you would need to sell to achieve the same value at what given price.

Naturally $120 means one sale equals several at $20-$40, thus easier to achieve sustainability, given the ratio of marketing and sales team efforts to effective sales.

What well-known and perfectly adequate open source competition did your compiler have in the 70's and 80's?

We're talking about a mail client here. A $120 mail client whose website mentions not a single advantage over the leading open source solution in its market.

I assume you are talking about Thunderbird? I used it professionally for two years before deciding it was much, much worse than the alternative (Outlook webmail + a gross CLI tool for other misc email). It's slow, it uses a lot of disk space for bad reasons and just generally operating on a lot of email is a massive pain.

Compared to that, I'd have difficulty believing there are many email clients out there that are actually worse. Even emacs as an email client was better (and it still wasn't great as you can imagine).

A few, for those willing to type them in from university, magazines and hobby club listings.

I guess sendmail and p̵i̵n̵e̵̵ mutt are good enough™.

We tried a few price points/models. This one is what seems to work for us. Every business is different and it's a matter of experimenting until you find what works.

Perfectly, that is the point I was kind of trying to make.

It is easier to ask for a random price, without taking the time to understand that there are a set of variables associated with production cost and keeping it sustainable.

All the best to your business.

> I would say about 50% of our customers are paying with the department credit card, and the other 50% buy it using their personal card.

Is this your way to determine if it is for business or personal use? Often in small companies and startups people use their personal credit cards for business purchases. Even in some bigger companies they do that, they just invoice it later separately.

At my old company of 200k+ people, purchases for things like software licenses or other misc tools would be paid using a card that was in the employee's name, but with the bill going to the employer. I know it's the same method with at least 3 other 150k+ companies that are in my industry. I have a feeling this would confound those results quite significantly.

We use domains more than anything. It's not the easiest thing to determine, but I'd be pretty confident in the 50/50 scenario. But I should have said that many of the people buying with their own credit card are actually purchasing for work.

Right. I mean, how many people have personal Exchange accounts?

That is true but at a lot of people do use outlook.com / hotmail.com for their personal email.

Those are effectively Exchange accounts (MS finished migrating them to Exchange last year). So Hiri works with those too.

Oh. I had no clue.

What's the advantage vs IPMI or POP?

Any business that is part Linux and part windows, exchange infrastructure, will need an exchange client for all their Linux client machines?

Assuming web based won’t cut it for those users, then it would seem Hiri is a good fit for that business?

I can’t see in what way you are competing or displacing Outlook if you are makinhg a product for Linux. The reason it’s a viable product would be 1) because there is no Linux outlook, and 2) because a business has users that have to run Linux while others run Outlook on windows, against the same Exchange infrastructure?

Linux is not our USP. In fact, we mostly sell to Windows users. We've been around for 5 years. We released Hiri for Linux a year ago.

Our USP is increased productivity. Check out the Skills Center: https://www.hiri.com/skills/

Also, we're not really trying to compete with Outlook per se. We will never match it feature for feature - not necessary or desirable.

Web does cut it apparently. Not for the users but enough for management to not expense a separate product for the entire company.

If that’s the case then the app in the article isn’t displacing Outlook but instead a tiny web based fraction of it - something that should be a lot easier.

>there is no Linux outlook

With the GH aquisition I'll be shocked if we don't see most of MS's desktop stuff, including Office, move to Electron/WebAssembly in the next few years.

Outlook is already a bloated beast. Moving it to Electron would be a disaster. I can't see it happening. Maybe a 'lite' version of outlook, but not the version enterprises use.

Yes, but https://twitter.com/thelarkinn/status/1006746626617008128?s=...

That guy was forced to comment on Reddit that he was joking about it.

What about linking to that instead?

https://amp.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8qqhlz/office_...

From the same author, but longer:

https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1006907969760473093/ph...

Don't worry, by then we'll have more ram and faster processors and it'll run nearly as quick!

Then prepare to be shocked

1) Do you have a mailing list to let me know when you do support Gmail?

2) I notice you've chosen 7 days as the length of the free trial. Why that rather than the 21ish days it takes to form a habit?

3) For your annual subscription plan, how do you avoid the user's credit card being expired by the 4th time you try to charge it?

> This is why we have chosen to support Gmail.

Your website and this discussion suggests Hiri does not support gmail.

Which is it?

Whoops just re-read TFA, you are working on it, good luck!

Good. I know it might sound awful, but I feel relieved by the fact you're seeing strong resistance/reluctance towards a paid, proprietary product. Don't get me wrong though- I'm a pragmatist, and I'll gladly use any closed source solution if it's really the best to adapt to my needs and there's no open source solution I can't readily tweak for what I need.

When working on Linux, I find myself pining for Visual Studio at times, and for art Krita does have a hard time beating Clip Studio, but they've both earned their spot rightly.

I do think many people are like this though: they will use your software if they truly believe it's the best at what it does.

Honestly while it might sounds like I’m speaking out of my ass that’s a bad business model.

Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that.

The Office 365 web client is nearly identical these days and it runs in the browser.

You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand.

You can maybe focus on better mail clients for the desktop but there are quite a few good ones already yes they don’t work with Exchange out of the box but with IMAP and exchange connectors many of them do.

Also by essentially building a client for Exchange you are putting your product at the mercy of Microsoft that can change their APIs and protocol on a whim and even block 3rd party clients with their EULA all together.

> Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that.

Outlook may be a fine program for some types of office work but its MUA is one of the absolute worst mail programs in existence, surpassed only by certain webmailers and a collection of weird mobile apps handset manufacturers are probably paid serious money for shipping pre-installed on their (low-end) devices.

I have never seen a mailer being so actively destructive to email. The only times I receive mail that is more garbled and/or broken than that from Outlook users are the creepy web and mobile apps described above.

I have no idea whether all of this is the result of configuration errors on the user side. Maybe it's actually possible to configure the Exchange/Outlook combination to behave in a sane way. If so, this knowledge appears to be awfully rare among the Outlook- and Exchange-using population.

> Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that.

> You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand.

Having used Outlook for a while, even on Windows, I'm shocked that people describe Outlook as good.

It may be the least worst, but Outlook is, being generous, a very mediocre piece of software. That's Microsoft's strategy in a nutshell: be Good Enough for a very large audience.

> Also by essentially building a client for Exchange you are putting your product at the mercy of Microsoft that can change their APIs and protocol on a whim and even block 3rd party clients with their EULA all together.

That used to be true, but they're far more constrained by their installed base these days.

> That's Microsoft's strategy in a nutshell: be Good Enough for a very large captive audience.

Outlook is wonderful when compared against the competition, specially when you are unlucky enough to use Lotus Notes as alternative.

They probably shouldn't try to compete so generally. "Better business email than outlook" is a very very difficult challenge. "Better tools to help developers who prefer Linux on the desktop function in a company committed to Microsoft" seems like a real market, but one far too small for a big company. That's the type of market that might be a great starting point for a startup.

I would say it is one of the most _feature complete_ email client, but I don't think it is a good email software. I've seen it crash too many times at the worst possible timings, and, latest updates have rendered almost unusable without patching on Mac for Exchange enterprise users (I even had to make a script to disable Outlook autodiscover on all our corporate macs because from 16.12 version and up it started trying to go to office 365 to authenticate a local exchange account...) Opensource or not, I thank every company who thinks of linux as a target where it can invest. Let's face it, proprietary software needs to be in linux too if linux can eventually gain marketshare in the client landscape, and given the state of Windows 10 and its spyware, and all the big problems with MacOS since 10.10, any help to increase linux adoption out of server and embedded platforms is welcome. I will give this a try tomorrow, using linux at work and having no choice but to use evolution to get access to Exchange I think my use case is exactly the target client:)

Office for Mac has been a shitshow for years, either use 365 online or use the windows one through parallels et al.

Outlook was designed and built in an era were just a few emails were ever sent/received in a day. It does not cope well with the deluge of mails common to today's corporate world. I think there now is an opportunity for other players here, as Google have shown.

> Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that.

Are we talking about the client that sent the plaintext for encrypted emails along for half a year?

> Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well.

This is incredibly rude. You may not like it, but GNU/Linux was built by people for user freedom, not for proprietary email clients.

Instead of using words like “fundamentalist” please instead consider that you are doing something that is not welcomed by the creators of the operating system and a large number of the long-term users.

A little understanding would go a long way.

How is telling people what is good for them, like you just did, not fundamentalism? Almost every server and smart phone install of Linux uses proprietary software, that is clearly part of how people wants to use it. You yourself are communicating through many layers of proprietary software right now. This is exactly why people don't want to do open source. Because increasingly it isn't about culture, doing it better or making things happen. It is about telling people what to do and for people to enforce all sort of informal moral codes to protect their own position.

I’m not telling people what is good for them. I’m describing the reasons for the creation of the GNU/Linux operating system.

What proprietary software is being used on servers? I believe most Android users don’t know about user freedom, and those that do would greatly prefer a more generic, “pure” Android experience vs the poor quality applications installed by default on most non-Google phones.

You’re confusing the initial ideas that were attributed to open source — seperating the software from the campaign for user freedom — with the free software community. Open source and free software are different movements with common results. The GNU/Linux operating system was built long before open source was a thing, and those founding principles of user freedom are attacked by proprietary software.

> The GNU/Linux operating system was built long before open source was a thing.

Please find someone that worked in the field during the 70s. They hopefully will kindly re-educate you on this BS.

Also if you’re talking about the OSI of the late 90s I’d argue that gnu/Linux was not long before that. Those initiatives pretty much grew together.

I’m not talking about a community of sharing and improving software. That existed and is the reason Stallman started the free software movement and GNU.

I’m talking about the creation of the Open Source Initiative in 1998 and their initial distancing of software freedom from any practical benefits of the software created by the free software movement.

If you consider "fundamentalist" a rude adjective to descibe the said behaviour, what would be a better adjective then?

I don't have anything against that kind of attitude, it's great and I approve those guys though I myself also like to buy software. "Fundamentalism" IMO describes it pretty well and I don't see the negative connotation.

"fundamentalist" is used as a slur by some people (c.f. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fundamentali...). The slur assumes things that don't exist in the word itself, so it's not obvious the word incorporates them.

I think the difference between the slurred fundamentalist (connoting a terrorist-like figure) and a tech fundamentalist is objectively clear.

Fundamentalism implies a religion-like devotion to your principles, it's definitely pejorative used outside of this context. FLOSS is not a religion.

From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fundamentalism :

> The tendency to reduce a religion to its most fundamental tenets, based on strict interpretation of core texts.

Using such a strong word to define your adversary's position is a way to discredit them.

Perhaps "purist" is a better word here?

I think the original usage was fine, it just doesn't mean what some are trying to add on.

"principled"? I really try to avoid closed source proprietary software as much as possible both for ideological reasons but also because it's a pain in the ass if you like to hack your OS, you need to step around it all the time.

I can understand thinking it's a "fundamentalist" mindset if you're used to Windows or Mac and software being proprietary by default but if you're a un*x poweruser who doesn't hesitate to hack the source code of the software to customize it it's a very pragmatical approach I think.

> If you consider "fundamentalist" a rude adjective

How about no adjective?

> Linux was built by people for user freedom

> not welcomed by the creators of the operating system

No, it wasn't. Linux was created because Linus Torvalds was in love with the OS running on the VAX at his university and wanted something just like it that he can run on his desktop at home.

> you are doing something that is not welcomed by the creators of the operating system

The DFSG and the OSD both prohibit discriminating against fields of endeavor, so the ability to run proprietary software on open-source operating systems is essential to the OS actually being open-source.

Linux is a kernel. GNU is an operating system, and so GNU/Linux is what most people are actually using.

The DFSG and OSD are criteria for evaluating free and open source software and more specifically their licensing terms. The discrimination against fields of endeavor means you can’t make a license that says “the government can’t use my software” or “no military use” and call it free software or open source software. It has absolutely nothing to do with being able to run non-free software.

My field of endeavor involves running non-free software. So which is it? Is it non-discrimatory or am I doing something against the creators wishes?

Your field of endeavor has nothing to do with a free software license. A piece of free software cannot say nobody using proprietary software cannot use it, however proprietary software is against the wishes of the original developers of what is best described as GNU/Linux.

I welcome it

It's just impractical to have high quality software for every niche be built by the FOSS community. Even non-niche products (like, let's say email) leave a lot to be desired

If I could pay companies for these products I would. But I don't because they don't make products for Linux because they think we only want FOSS programs

Also, yes the creators probably don't condone proprietary software but who cares. They're not the market. The users of the OS are the market. And I want high quality software, free or not, source be dammed!

> Also, yes the creators probably don't condone proprietary software but who cares.

Linus Torvalds was pretty widely quoted as saying If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won. I'm pretty sure he was being sincere. The guy has praised PowerPoint, of all things.

The GNU fundamentalists are a noisy minority. That's not intended as a commentary on their usefulness or the correctness of their position, it's just a statement of fact.

There’s no reason free software can’t be paid for either.

I agree that not every type of software will be built by community efforts alone, which is why many companies are contributing to free software.

Out of interest, what free software would you like to see?

Oh man where do I begin?

So I can't confidently say I've tried it all but when I booted up Ubuntu within the last year it was hard to find...

    - simple email client with good html template support and conversation threading (thunderbird was meh)
    - simple pdf viewer
    - pdf editor
    - an oscilliscope app that works with those usb oscilliscopes
    - image editor (gimp is a slow nightmare to use)
    - Microsoft Office suite replacement (Open/Libre Office is also a UI nightmare)
    - A diagram app ala draw.io (Admittedly I haven't looked too hard for this one)
    - Music library organizer (Also didn't look too hard)

I guess now would also be a good time to mention apps that are great

    - Desktops shells (Gnome/KDE/Xfce)
    - VLC 
    - Firefox/Chrome
    - Package managers
    - Music players (generally bearable)

> fundamentalist

> relating to or advocating the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

I think it's fair to say that the gospel of saint ignucius is interpreted strictly in some circles.

The fact that this comment was flagged is deeply troubling to me.

This isn't rude at all. He was describing a situation in the Linux community where a large number of users have an aversion to paid software.

It's a real problem and one of the main reason osx was able to eclipse desktop software usage on linux in such a short amount of time.

Responses like yours are the real problem.

If you want linux desktop software to grow, there needs to be room for proprietary software.

Also, please don’t conflate paid software with proprietary software. You can pay for either, but only proprietary software is the issue.

A company can't survive on paid oss (gnu/gpl). The license allows anyone to purchase it and then go ahead and give it out for free, which would happen in short order.

Support doesn't work for many small companies, because you just don't have the manpower, so proprietary software is necessary.

I don’t think a business would actually do that, if they purchased something they would likely not put it up on GitHub immediately, but I think the key to selling free software is customization. Red Hat makes a good deal of money from free software, but as you say, much of that is from support.

It's almost like 2.9 billion dollars of annual revenue incentivises RedHat to make worse software, to encourage people to buy support.

Hah, what am I saying, ignoring incentives like that is easy and commonplace, I'm sure they pay it no mind at all.

Also, many "small" programs don't require support because they are very simple to use.

You can probably make money by selling Windows binaries of OSS software. See ntopng, where compiling on Windows is not that straight forward as compared to Linux.

Most companies don't survive on selling software anymore either. Look at Adobe. You can't buy their products, you just rent them.

That and the giant clusterfuck that the Linux desktop is. Gnome 3 has no desktop icons anymore per default, not even minimize, maximize buttons. It does not end there.

A major hassle is that sometimes the GUI is showing something different then what is configured. Especially in networking. I configure an IP address, I want it to show in the GUI. I don't care if it's configured via the shell.

>He was describing a situation in the Linux community where a large number of users have an aversion to paid software.

So "having an aversion" means that you're a fundamentalism? That's a bit extreme, no?

>If you want linux desktop software to grow, there needs to be room for proprietary software.

Judging by how I feel more miserable and less in control every year with the dumbification of the Linux desktop I genuinely don't want that. People keep adding abstraction layers in order to lure the mythical "average joe" to Linux, except that he doesn't care anyway so I'm the one who ends up having to deal with that bloat that doesn't offer anything to me. I'd use FreeBSD instead of Linux if I could because I prefer the way it works but I can't because of... proprietary drivers that are not available on the BSDs.

If people like to eat crap that's their problem, I don't see why I should force my self to get a taste for it just so that we can eat at the same table.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software.

The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

Harmful is wanting to be paid for their work while expecting others to give their work for free.

It is plain impossible to live from selling desktop software with source code available, without having others in the first week come around and re-bundle it, Sourceforge style.

Most of the GNU/Linux desktop stuff is GNOME, and a lot of GNOME developers work at Red Hat, but not exclusively. If you want to work on free software desktop applications, I would consider working at a company like that.

A lot of desktop software is commodity stuff — mail clients, office suites, browsers, photo editing and the like. But there are some areas where we need to be better, such as video editing.

I gave up on that dream long time ago, I rather have paying customers.

This is essentially a byproduct of Red Hat selling stuff. Just take Filezilla, people don't donate, so the author used some shady stuff. Or look at gnupg.

Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it?

I love FOSS, but people like you (yes, "fundamentalists") can't deal with the idea that some forms of software are probably better as paid transactions between well-informed parties. The laughable state of open source office suites and any serious competitor to most of Adobe's products suggests that this model has its limits.

> Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it?

The thing I zero in on here is that I have literally zero problems paying for software. But I am wary of purchasing software that I don't get the rights to build, modify, and contribute to.

My worry with software like this is that vendors come and go, and people get their workflows destroyed because the software can't be "saved" when the business is gone (yes, when, not if! always plan for that "exit" that ruins people because the products are gone).

Would I prefer the software to be FOSS? Absolutely. I am also absolutely willing to pay for FOSS, and a good number of Linux users are too.

I'm even willing to take open-core style models if it means there's some FOSS code release, as much as I don't like the model.

I use a mixture of FOSS and proprietary software all the time, not because I want to, but because I _must_.

And in my workplace, FOSS solutions (even ones we pay for) are infinitely preferred over proprietary ones. Desktop Linux support is a must, as well.

Agreed on most of these points. But I've been on both sides of this transaction, on both sides of the proprietary/FOSS fence (to oversimplify and abstract the difference between Free and Open Source). From experience it is hard to get people to pay for FOSS; my hat is off to those who can manage it.

I do think that vendors should have to put things into some form of shared-source or open-source escrow (possibly shared as they might not have IP rights to open source everything they've done) with a kind of 'dead mans switch' arrangement (i.e. you walk away without updating or responding to bug fix requests, you trigger escrow).

I'm perennially concerned that the fundamentalist attitude to proprietary software is suppressing innovation in some areas: especially complex desktop software where there is (a) a heavy requirement for the kind of tedious UI work that FOSS projects clearly don't bother to do and (b) where most or all of the product is "right there in the code" (i.e. once you have Photoshop, you can go to town and edit stuff, and you're not really all that dependent on having access to some other product or service which can be monetized).

The attitude reaches its most extreme in software tools. Best expressed by Andy Gocke with his great tweet: https://twitter.com/andygocke/status/1017509689695715328

'Developer tools seemed like a good industry to be in, "sell shovels in the gold rush" and all, but it turns out developers prefer to dig for gold with their teeth.'

You assume I’m for open source. That’s the problem.

This isn't really germane to any point I made, but I presume this is the standard point in the discussion where you lob this particular bombshell ("I did so NOT see it coming that the guy who writes 'GNU/Linux' everywhere is a Free Software purist").

Whatever I wrote about the limits of "FOSS" software can be multiplied by a solid order of magnitude for "free only".

oh, the consenting adults argument, my ass. As if there aren't enough things consenting adults are banned from choosing like drugs or gambling. Some proprietary crap can be compared to both.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

I don't think you have to be a foaming-at-the-mouth legalize everything libertarian to possibly accept the scandalous idea of someone, say, buying a closed-source office suite for money, but thanks for your input!

Good luck to that, reality doesn't seem to agree with you. The future seems firmly in the camp of a mix of FOSS with proprietary.

The most popular OSes are proprietary:

* Android (almost useless without the Google stuff, plus 99% of Android apps are unfortunately proprietary)

* Windows

* MacOS (I know about Darwin, everyone uses MacOS for the proprietary integration bits)

> Android (almost useless without the Google stuff, plus 99% of Android apps are unfortunately proprietary)

An open source GMS implementation exists, and might gain traction with the recent Android/Google antitrust lawsuit in EU. Have you tried LOS + microG recently? Have you seen the utter garbage frolicking around on Play Store? Quality, not quantity. At least with F-Droid, you know what you're getting. Same with Aurora, as it has Exodus support.

I feel similarly but not quite 100%.

For the core things the basic, inter-operable, standard should be fully open and free. This includes protocols, data formats, reference applications/servers/clients and anything similar.

A user should not need to pay to communicate. This is a natural right and one of the cornerstones of a free society.

However I don't mind proprietary products as OPTIONS that allow someone to do the above better or more effectively (while still following open standards for external APIs!), or for 'toy' tasks like games or fun. That's a premium feature or recreational extra.

For the logical retort about who should be funding the development and maintenance of the core items? In some cases (hardware APIs) manufacturers might want to form standards bodies (E.G. Khronos maintains OpenGL and Vulkan) and provide open standards. In other (most) cases governments maintaining civil infrastructure should contribute. I would love if every university had a course where existing code repos were examined by students for completeness and safety and the students actually signed off on their reviews and maybe even submitted patches (or at least bugs if the answer isn't obvious/requires architectural changes) for flaws.

I think combining it with some sort of code escrow could work. Keep it secret while you support it, if you go bust or stop support the source enters public domain.

So who do you expect to write all of this non proprietary software without any means of making money?

The same people who have been writing it in the past. And who said there are no means of making money? You're just assuming something which isn't true just because you can't come up with an explanation.

Who are those people? Most are paid or sponsored by corporations.

Well just let them continue to do so, then?

So either open source developers have to work for and enrich corporations or work on the side for free?

Why should software development be any different than any other profession where people get paid for their work?

Yep, totally agree with you there.

After reading the article that was my first thought when he mentioned adding support for Google IMAP.

Full stop. Don't do it. You have a product that is doing well as the solution for something with a clear business case that's not well addressed elsewhere. Own that market and focus your development attention on that Exchange ecosystem.

As soon as you branch to IMAP/Gmail/General purpose you're going to be in the sea of tons of other email clients, most of which are free. It's going to dilute the value proposition for Hiri because Hiri is going to become "another email client" that also supports exchange. The taste for email clients that add exchange support is not generally a good experience. It also means that you have to ensure all of your UI elements work equally with both, bringing you to more of a lowest-common-denominator experience.

When I see Linux Exchange Email Client and that's all you do, I see specialty software that I can rely on to solve that problem correctly. When I worked at a company that used Exchange, I would have bought it IMMEDIATELY and convinced my boss to reimburse me later.

As soon as you become a general purpose email client, everything about what you offer to solve that problem starts getting lost in the shuffle.

This would sound like wisdom, except that all of the other email clients for Linux are garbage.

I bought Mailbird because it looked amazing and had the feature set I wanted. It has done its job extremely well, and I'm very happy with it. But it doesn't have a Linux client; it's only for Windows.

I have six active email addresses spread across multiple providers - Office365, Exchange, Gmail, GSuite, and Zoho. I need a central place to read it all.

I've seen Hiri mentioned before, but dismissed it because it doesn't support Google/IMAP. Once it adds that support, it has my attention, and potentially my dollars.

That is exactly the reason for Gmail support.

It's not moving focus away from Linux/Office365 but it accommodates people that want to have their Gmail accounts in the same client as their Office 365 / Exchange accounts.

I'm a consultant. My clients often use Outlook/Exchange. My consulting company uses Google Apps. I also tend to create a per-client GMail persona, so that I can work around issues with corporate Exchange servers (aggressive content filtering, misguided attachment quarantines, or just to keep work-related-but-social stuff out of the corporate inbox), and have a convenient OAuth login option. I would welcome anything that allows me to use a single client.

Another reason for wanting a client that works with Exchange and Google is simply wanting to use the same app both at work and at home, even if you never cross the streams and access them both from the same instance.

And as others have mentioned, Linux email clients suck. I'm a huge proponent of open-source software, and prefer free clients wherever possible. No one has made a free email client that I can tolerate. They're so bad that I tend to stick to web clients. Hiri's client reminds me of Polymail on MacOS, which is the only non-game, non-cloud application I've paid for in the past decade.

The prime use case there would seem to be intermingling your work and personal email.

That doesn't seem like a great idea, on many levels.

Yup, from a personal perspective I agree. I don't like to cross the streams either but a lot of people do.

Keep in mind that Google IMAP could mean Google Apps compatibility. And a good number of orgs use Google Apps.

Oh I know, there's just so many existing IMAP clients that I can't imagine paying for a desktop email/calendar client to work with Google Apps. Not to mention all the web based bits like Google Inbox, etc.

The value proposition just isn't there with all of the free options already out there.

....not on linux there aren’t.

Doesn’t Google Apps support MS Exchange on the server? The paid one, that is? I remember there was a lot of hue and cry over Google dropping MS Exchange option for free Gmail around the same time when Windows Phone 8 launched. But at the same time, Google said they would continue to offer Exchange for paid accounts. Has that changed?

It supports ActiveSync, to my knowledge.

Isn't that also a matter of how you word / market it? If its marketed as an Exchange client also able to do IMAP/Gmail that's something different than an email client with IMAP/Gmail support oh and it has an Exchange plugin.

There's only a handful of Exchange clients for *NIX though, that I agree with.

An email client without IMAP support is not going to get much traction. No one wants to have multiple email clients open at the same time.

> An email client without IMAP support is not going to get much traction. No one wants to have multiple email clients open at the same time.

I don’t understand the link between your second sentence and the first one. How not having IMAP support forces you to have multiple email clients open at the same time?

At work I switched from Outlook 2013 to Thunderbird, we only have linux mail servers although we run Windows on clients, but I needed to access an Exchange email. I solved it by installing Davmail locally, which translates exchange commands in IMAP commands. Otherwise I would have been forced to use Outlook only for that exchange mailbox.

That, and the fact that people who would subscribe to /r/linux may be more ideological. I use Linux because I want a decent OS that doesn't spy on me. I've had no qualms with buying dozens of Linux games off Steam so far.

Yeah, it’s a very self selecting crowd.

About 95% of the work that I do is on Linux. But I run a Windows laptop. Why? Because of the Outlook Calendar. It's kind of amazing that so many tech companies run on Linux, but the Outlook Calendar just won't go away.

Nearly everything else in Windows I can replicate in Linux; Excel Spreadsheets, Microsoft Word, they all have Linux equivalents. But Calendar? Nope.

I've seen solutions online, and I tried them, but none of them worked seamlessly. In particular, there's a plugin for Thunderbird. But it wouldn't connect with Office 365's calendar. (Email worked perfectly fine.)

The relevant add-ons are Lightning and Exchange Calendar

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/lightning/

https://github.com/ExchangeCalendar/exchangecalendar/

Is there mail client integration now, too?

That was the big missing link the last time I tried them... the inability to accept and/or reply on meeting invites and handle both the email and the calendar part. I was always able to view my calendar from linux, and could even edit/update personal calendar events, but I always had to fall back to windows or web to handle meeting invites. Pretty much everyone who uses O365 calendar is going to be using emailed invites and they need to work to make this a solution, but I never saw much traction on addressing that issue.

Only works if your Exchange exposes the web interface.

That's a very good point. This tool is purely focused at people who use Linux at work, the dynamics are very different. The article should probably mention something about that.

I do. I work with Linux and on my company we use exchange..

A part for that I pay for: - Skype credit - gitkraken (thanks electron!)

And i would pay and pay and pay for a design software like sketch.. I have a lot of hope on figma.. Let see..

I'm a developer on Linux who wants to migrate into design. I want sketch on Linux so bad :-(

I realize though I probably need to Shell out for a Mac though. (Besides for a few brief moments in middle school, I have never used iOS believe it or not)

Sorry, forgot to mention sublime!

I completely agree. There are very few paid software for which we don't already have a FLOSS software that can compete with it. Linux users are normally good at finding FLOSS alternatives to paid softwares.

Another thing that author can do is to compare Linux home users sales results with Windows home users for any of their product that is available for both platforms. Sales would be similar as long as Linux and Windows software marketplace for that area is same.

I tried and failed to find a quality git gui for linux, (coming from SourceTree on OSX). I tried a number and they either had awful UI, lacked functionality, or were too buggy.

In the end I ended up paying for a license to GitKraken and am quite happy.

basically using a gui for git is not a good practice. most stuff is cluttered together and hard to find. even in sourcetree, stuff that is important is just not good. (I used sourcetree heavily in the past) I moved on from graphical git clients and I'm now way more happy and more productive on the cli. the only thing which I would miss on linux is a graphical merge tool, that is as good as kaleidoscope even on windows it's hard to find an equally well tool for the same price (there are good ones, but are way pricier)

I use both gui and command line. Which one varies depending on the task. Quickly checking the working directory state and committing a couple of changes is much easier for me in a GUI. Complicated resets, checkouts, rebases and queries are much easier with the command line.

Edit: I find using a GUI to view the state of a git repo reduces the amount of mental space and energy I need to devote to this information.

"basically using a gui for git is not a good practice. "

That is absolutely silly and completely false. I use SourceTree every day and have no issues whatsoever. I'm just as productive as anyone on the CLI, as 95% of actions are the basic pull/commit/push type stuff.

The one thing I miss on linux is a good mail client.

Currently using Mailspring, but honestly the paid mail clients for OSX leave anything on Linux in the dust. Airmail is my personal favorite and it's $9.99.. a couple of cups of coffee for a great experience in an area that touches your life a dozen times a day? Absolutely I'd pay for a GOOD mail client on Linux.

In that case, why does it need to be closed-source? If a business is paying for something like this, they probably would rather pay for a support contract than hire a guy to try and keep it running.

>you're just not going to get any significant number of home Linux users or enthusiasts to pay for your software.

More like no significant number of home users are using Exchange.

If every software that runs on Windows ran on Linux without restrictions, that would be the end of Windows right now and it's exactly what Microsoft are currently preparing for.

They are shifting profits from Windows licenses to the app store and user data/ads to compete with free operating systems and they're trying hard to appeal to Linux users.

"If every software that runs on Windows ran on Linux without restrictions"

Except to many of those users, "Paying for a license to software" is seen as a restriction.

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