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Comment by andy800 | Hacker News Reader

ModernCSV is a good tool. However, from the viewpoint of a paying customer, it feels too much like a side/hobby project and that you aren't taking it all that seriously as a business. The v2 beta was announced in May 2022 with indications that the final v2 was just a few weeks/months away, as you announced the beta expiring June 25, 2022. Obviously v2 was not close to ready and paying users had to revert to v1 or to repeatedly request updated betas, each of which expired after a brief period. Your web site was not regularly updated with news or progress reports and the project appeared to be abandoned.

This is all fine for an open source project but once people are paying for a tool, using it daily, and are promised certain updates coming soon, it's not great to have that update delayed by a full year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31576554

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I agree with your general sentiment, and it's important for businesses to have good communication.

At the same time, the "Premium Personal" price is a one-time payment of $29. My basic chicken sandwich meal at Whataburger was $11 dollars.

Point being, it's obvious to me that this is 1 dude who is developing this, so I'm not going to expect flawless communication for the price of 2.5 Whataburger meals. I'd much prefer to deal with that than have something like a monthly subscription SaaS charge.

That's your opinion, and it's ok, but my employer bought the business version (4.5 whataburgers), and it bought multiple licenses (about 20 or 25 whataburgers, where's the tipping point?), plus I personally spent a lot of time (based on my compensation, likely 50+ whataburgers) vouching for a new vendor and then all the corporate b.s. like establishing purchase orders, creating new budget line items, etc, as well as justifying the purchase to IT dept which believes that Excel handles CSV files just fine.

Doesn't have to be flawless but a full year delay is a little much. I'm not even with that employer anymore.

The real dropped ball isn't the delay, but the communication (or lack there of) of same.

~$1000 USD based on the quoted Whatsburger/USD cross rate.

> At the same time, the "Premium Personal" price is a one-time payment of $29. My basic chicken sandwich meal at Whataburger was $11 dollars.

These coffee/meal prices differ a lot between countries. Similarly, there are huge differences how often people living in different countries can easily afford to eat out or buy a coffee at some café.

HN: Subscriptions are evil, one time payment is the only way software should be sold

Also HN: Why is the one developper that work on my software when he can because he can't make a living out of my one time 30$ payment doesn't ship all the features and versions I expect in a timely manner

Support contracts start at 500-1000$ a month these days, if you depend on it for your day job maybe invest in your tooling correctly...

- we spent at least 6x of your estimate

- we would have been fine continuing to use a non-expiring v2 beta, but the developer set it up differently (eventually, a non-expiring version was provided)

- we never asked for support, just to not have the software expire without a replacement available

> maybe invest in your tooling correctly...

So your suggestion is that businesses should avoid independent developers altogether? That's a great way to be supportive of the little guy.

I disagree with you there. For organisations that expect support for software over a longer period a recurring support contract is better. Otherwise you can end up supporting their never ending requests for free. Or worse they just choose something else.

You should differ between license fees (right to use the software) and support contract (your support question won't be ignored by the developer).

Almost seems like HN doesn’t have a single unified opinion on things huh!

That's a fair critique. While the app last year was mostly ready to go (aside from a few features I later decided to add), most of the issues I've had to deal with since have been related to other things (sales form, website, etc.). The license keys I gave you should work on this latest version.

Are you saying you are upset that you couldn’t use an unreleased new version, and that you had to resort to using the version you had actually purchased? Or did you purchase V2 before it was released as a sort of pre-purchase?

Our initial purchase was made while v2 was in beta and with a promise of a free upgrade to the final v2, which was expected soon. Except it was never released, until now.

Just to clarify, I did give you version 2 license keys that worked on those beta releases and this version 2 release at no extra charge, as I promised. I also changed the beta releases to not have a time limit and accept license keys instead. The beta releases I provided had nearly the same capability and quality as this one.

There was a gap between the beta expiring and me reaching out and requesting an update, which you supplied. I think the first replacement also expired and we had to make another request but I could be wrong, I'm no longer at that company and have no way to verify. Maybe not.

I am not claiming you ripped us off or that your product is no good. Pretty sure we eventually purchased 4 licenses, because it is a good product. But better communication, taking the whole thing a bit more seriously, would go a long way. You knew what day the betas were expiring, instead of leaving all the customers hanging, you could have proactively sent everyone license keys or a longer-expiring version. You could have posted a quick status update on your web site. As I mentioned in another comment, I vouched for you internally and when asked about it months later (budget reviews, etc) with still just a beta version, I didn't have any answers.

You certainly did the right thing, it sounds like you could've been more responsive though. Learning experience!

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