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Comment by antihero | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps we should only pay for development of open-source software, so we actually own what we're paying for.

I don't believe that changes the situation at all.

An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards.

My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the developer. A community can't always make up for that hole.

> An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards.

I don't use a Mac, and don't even know what Quicksilver was until I checked, but this was posted 17 hours ago:

http://blog.qsapp.com/post/27644282840/ss69-release-quicksil...

Maybe development didn't follow at the same pace as before, but to say it "fell apart" when they are very close to releasing 1.0 seems not very accurate to this outside observer.

Much of what is left of Quicksilver today is about fixing bugs and keeping it on life support which is why I used the term "fell apart" instead of "dead". This was an app that the developer stopped programming for in 2006 and the bug fixing didn't really start until last year. Th plug-ins to other apps are part of what made Quicksilver great and most still don't work and haven't been updated since that time.

Sounds like a great idea for a kickstarter.

I'd still take "basic bugfixing and maintenance" over "gone completely" however.

I suppose in some sense it's a bit like owning a classic car, the warranty and support from the manufacturer is long since gone but there exists a community of owners and refurb businesses keeping it alive.

The difference with your car analogy is that the car doesn't stop working because other cars are adopting new technology or that the roads became worse. Quicksilver broke once Leopard was released.

After a long hiatus Quicksilver was taken over by a dedicated team of contributors who resumed active development[1]. Open-source worked after all, as this wouldn't be possible otherwise.

[1] http://blog.qsapp.com/

I realize that many Quicksilver fans will be upset with my comments but I can't rely on something that was essentially broken for five years and count on it being something I can use a couple of hundred times everyday.

What happens the next time something gets broken after a major OS update? I can't wait for a few months to get it working again.

I'm not saying that open source software is lousy. I use it all the time. It's just that in certain situations you need the person there who created it.

TextMate could act as a counterexample showing that the original author being fully in charge doesn't guarantee anything.

Another example was VisualHub, a Mac front-end for ffmpeg video conversion. The author, Techspansion, EOL'd it in 2008 and released a "code dump" as open source. Someone tried to pick up the pieces and form an open-source version called FilmRedux, but it was last updated in 2009.

Techspansion, however, was a good citizen and when a Mac OS X Lion broke VisualHub, he released a patched binary, so I'm still able to use VisualHub four years after it was EOL'd! :)

http://www.isquint.org/

Actually - Quicksilver development is alive and well. And I still use it in preference to Alfred et al.

To be fair in 2007 leopard's spotlight implemented the 20% of quicksilver's features that most users used 80% of the time.

You probably were a quicksilver poweruser, but I don't think there were many of you.

I don't think any Quicksilver user was anything other than a power user.

I currently use it, and I am not a power user. (But I'm just one datapoint)

Or at the very least , a promise from the developers that the product will become open source if one of a number of conditions are met.

As a British person who voted Lib Dem, I'd need a lot more than a "promise" to quell my worries.

If it was part of the license agreement? I don't know how enforceable this would be in practice though.

Perhaps a neutral third party gets code access and a contract with the developer and users as to when/if it will be released?

Perhaps something à la the KDE Free Qt Foundation? (http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...)

The agreement between the Free Qt Foundation and Nokia gives them right to release the latest Qt version under a BSD-style licence if Nokia stop releasing Qt versions (GPL+LGPL).

It can just be a simple contract, like this http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...

Agree; in fact every single proprietary software or technology I have ever paid for was abandoned or turned into a pile of junk.

I don't use Sparrow so please correct me if I am wrong.

The applications are still fully functional and are working perfectly fine until Apple changes anything they heavily depend on or something replaces imap.

You own your copy of Sparrow and it still works.

Imagine you buy a BMW and in 10 years you cannot get the required fuel anymore. Does this mean you only pay for a new car when you get all plans for the engine and the whole construction or do you just buy another car? (I know that the comparison doesn't work 100%)

Obvious thing: Some security vulnerability is found which gives attackers access to your system or so.

Or: There is some bug which gets active let's say after year 2013 or after 10k mails or so.

Or: (I don't know Sparrow so not sure if this applies.) You have created/build some app-specific content/database (like have done all your mail tagging with Sparrow) so you want to re-use it on future Apple hardware. Now assume that Apple introduces some new architecture (like an ARM MacBook) or makes some incompatible API changes in future MacOSX versions. Either you can't upgrade your hardware/OS or you will loose the app-specific work.

Etc.

Everything valid - but as time passes there is sometimes just no way around upgrading your software. The fact that there could be an immediate problem was ignored by me, that's true.

Since they want to keep it alive (in its current state) I believe they'd fix something critical.

The first two are valid, but in the specific case of Sparrow, all the "state" is held in the mail provider(GMail via IMAP) or FB, which is nice.

For something as critical as email, "fine until Apple changes anything" is not good enough, given that Apple has a habit of changing things.

Yes but worst case scenario is you are forced to switch to a different client not that you lose any data. So actually not that critical.

"given that Apple has a habit of changing things."

Apple doesn't have a habit of changing things. If anything, I feel that Apple is too conservative when it comes to making changes.

If Sparrow would be your only option to access your mails this would be true.

I think the broader point that doesn't analogise so well with cars is network effects and compatibility.

Even cars from the 1950s are compatible with modern roads, also they can have a lead additive put into the fuel, or the owner can convert the car to run on unleaded petrol.

If your program is old and closed source (in this context , old cars are basically open source since they can be repaired by anyone with relatively standard knowledge and tools).

I never used Sparrow, but I'll assume that at least they worked with standard email protocols like IMAP and POP3 making a switch to another mail client feasible. Imagine instead that they had used some proprietary (and possible patented) web service API. Then their users would really be in trouble, and this is a sort of model many startups seem to be going for.

A lot of the complaints are about the fact that the Sparrow team had promised push notifications for the iOS client "with or without Apple". Now we get nothing.

I know, I know, don't buy an application based on promises, buy it based on what the application currently offers. Wise words, I have learned.

One worry is since iOS is so dependent/tied to the app store for updates or reinstalls, if the developer pulls the app from the store, you can never redownload it, and you are then stuck trying to maintain a copy that you backed up and hoping you don't lose the file. And if you don't plug in to a PC you wont be able to reinstall the app. This happened to me with smule and "Magic Fiddle".

This makes me wonder if you could open source a project like this and still sell it through the App Store. Then there would be a paid version (that's easy to acquire and pay for) as well as the code being shared with the community. Anyone could still get the app for free, but I'd be willing to bet most people would financially support the project if given such an easy and integrated means to do so.

You can, I am on my phone right now so i can't give specifc examples, but there are apps I paid for through the OS X App Store that are open-source. It was easier to get it through the app store and I got to support the developers. I prefer this model because anyone can contribute back to the collective whole and abandonware is less of a problem.

Isnt GPL banned on iOS AppStore?

There are other licenses.

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