Hacker News Reader

Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

"If they could fix that"

The question also is how long will they continue to fix and offer a service which has no revenue? And who is to say the service won't get acquired (in addition to just being outright cancelled). Saying "always be free" doesn't create a legal obligation given a change of circumstances.

(I have a workflow which depends greatly on free Thunderbird and the (paid version) of the quicktext pro extension. I was pretty upset to even see stories that TB was not going to be maintained as well going forward.)

View on HN

"Saying "always be free" doesn't create a legal obligation given a change of circumstances."

Neither does charging. Most SAAS products charge on a monthly basis, so the most any vendor owes you is 30 days of usage. Even so, they could always just shut down today and refund you your money.

Not to toot our own horn, but Fog Creek has been around for 12 years, we've been profitable every year along with having dozens of employees. There's little chance that we're about to disappear (or get acquired). We've invested a lot into Trello, and we're not going to change our minds on a whim.

We realize people are running their businesses and adapting their workflows around Trello, and we're encouraging that. Our plan is to give you even more security and more reasons to integrate our product into your business in the future.

So while I can see some merit in arguing that "saying always be free" is just a promise, it's backed by a company that's over a decade old. I don't see any evidence to suggest the scenarios you are describing.

Just a plea - remember that there is a tier between "freeloaders" and "companies willing to pay $$" - it's what you would call the "supporter" level. This is the level that dropbox, for example, lacks - some ability to give, say, $3 a month not in order to get premium features, but to feel good, and support a product you like.

I use Trello every day for a whole bunch of things and it really does make my life easier. It would make me happy to give Trello a bit of money for services that I already use for free.

[Edit to comment below: I don't think it is such a strange suggestion - it's the NPR model: everybody gets to listen to the radio station for free, some get to feel good about supporting it in exchange for something nominal like a bumper sticker. Sure there is a difference between accepting money and never having to deal with money, but I assume Trello has some plan to accept money eventually for something]

"$3 a month not in order to get premium features, but to feel good,"

Not speaking for Trello here but keep in mind that taking money (or charging a nominal amount) creates an obligation on the part of the recipient (reciprocity principle). So if the amount to be gained is nominal in some cases people or companies would rather get nothing. There are also additional legal circumstances that taking money for a service would also possibly create that would far exceed the benefit from the revenue).

> it's the NPR model

So for one week every six months, you'd go to your Trello projects and instead of being able to use them normally, you could use them for five minutes at a time before you had to listen to a 10 minute plea for money that wouldn't stop even if you donated right away?

Sure, if I got a designer tote bag.

"Neither does charging."

As we saw almost happened with Sortfolio.

"little chance that we're about to disappear (or get acquired)"

Have you seen The Godfather?

"Not to toot our own horn, but Fog Creek has been around for 12 years"

I do get your point and I know of the reputation of Fog Creek obviously. I'm not comparing you to Apple cancelling Newton, rack servers, or clones (to name only a few examples at that company). And while you are correct about saas companies each situation is different and from experience I am weary of profitability of a product or a company. Fogcreeks financial circumstances can change (as can googles or any companies obviously) and in that case the best intentions go out the window. It's every man for ...

I remember a time when it was close to unthinkable for someone to walk away from their mortgage for all but in the most extreme cases. Obviously the mentality with that has changed (as well as with bankruptcy) and jobs for life. In the end companies and people do what they need to do to survive and make hard choices. To me the fact that a service is paid makes it more likely to survive (once again the outlier being the Sortfolio threat to close if no buyer found at 480k.) than one that is free and generates no revenue but has operating costs.

As a general rule.

Each situation is different.

Otoh, I do believe that a paid product from certain companies (Apple just shut down Mobile Me) is not always better than a free product from another company (Fog Creek) as one example.

Perhaps you could add a commitment somewhere that should the product be discontinued for any reason the source code would be made freely available.

https://trello.com/card/let-me-pay-you-for-trello/4d5ea62fd7...

To be fair, they have been charging from day one, through other offerings. Although Trello is a free product, it's maintained by a VERY profitable bootstrapped company. They have a brand to protect. Killing a product used by half a million people seems like a terrible idea. It seems like they should integrate their paid products into Trello and cross-promote with paid services.

I'm usually right there with you on the "free vs paid" bandwagon. In this case, there does seem to be a clear disincentive to kill a product that would probably destroy the reputation of a profitable brand. I do think it's a dumb idea to count out ever charging for a product. If people are willing to pay, that should always be an option. Also, as a free service for business users they should definitely find ways to make users data completely portable. I'm much more comfortable using a free service if there's a data portability option.

UPDATE: There is already a data portability option.

"Portability

Your data is yours. If you ever want to stop using Trello, you should be able to download your data. All Fog Creek products feature data portability where applicable. We strongly believe in it. To export your data, simply open a card or click the board title, then Profile. click the 'Share, Print, and Export' button, and you'll find export options. Currently, we allow export to JSON which is a format that lends itself well to technical usages and cannot be loaded into programs like Microsoft Excel. It is, however, complete, and so does suffice as a backup."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com