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Comment by shimonamit | Hacker News Reader

I want to migrate, but...

> Basecamp Classic and the new Basecamp don't offer the same features, so some data in Classic won't make it into the new Basecamp.

So maybe I'll stay. But wait...

> Will you continue to improve Classic? The majority of our design and development efforts moving forward will be focused on the all new Basecamp, but we'll continue to support Classic as long as customers continue using it. We expect that to be for many many years.

Maybe. Maybe not. The web moves very quickly you know. New browsers, standards, security risks etc. I can think of a million and one reasons Classic will get EOL'd sooner rather than later.

This is certainly faithful to their backwards compatibility intolerance. The new product couldn't be bound by the "burden" of the old. Now I the customer am left with a very distasteful choice to make.

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For a company that goes on about transparency and clear speaking etc., the answer to the second question you've quoted is appalling. It doesn't answer the question at all. It should be:

Will you continue to improve Classic? No. We will fix any bugs or other problems that stop our customers using Basecamp Classic but we will not be developing new features. Our focus now is on improving Basecamp Next so that Classic customers are happy to transition.

Their response is completely disingenuous.

What's appalling about it? It's not necessarily true that we won't add new features. This is day one right now. We don't know how things will pan out. It's disingenuous to say we won't do something that we might do.

As stated, the majority of our resources will go towards the new Basecamp. That's honest and as clear we can be without misleading anyone.

It's unfortunate then that in this case the honest and clear answer sounds like glossy PR-speak.

I just felt that the answer dodged the question. Your response to me answers the question i.e. you don't know if you will improve Classic. By saying the majority of design and development efforts will be focused on Next and then saying that you'll continue to support Classic implies by omission that no further improvements will be made.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not criticising the position of you not knowing - it's a fair position given this is launch day. I'm criticising the fact that the answer to the question didn't say we don't know.

Sorry, but this is exactly what continue supporting in context of software means for everyone. This is a standard term, there's nothing disingenuous. You don't expect new features in your old Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation without upgrading to a new version, do you? But you can expect bug fixes as long as it's supported.

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