| > Well in this case he offers the binary app for free anyway (he only asks for voluntary contributions), so I don't really see how making it closed-source would affect this. Building the thing that one can sell takes time you know. > I often support open-source projects financially and I would be a lot less likely to support this now that it's not. Do you think honestly that you would spend more on software if everything you depend on was closed source or less? It's not a matter of being greedy, it's just human nature, if one can get something for free it's way less likely that one's going to pay for it, or pay fairly for it. > It's about continity: That someone else can carry on with the app (and the data I've put in it!) if he decides to give up on it. I'm not sure I agree with that, if I decide to abandon Notable because it doesn't make financial sense to me, how do you think is going to continue its development? Like if something is not financially sustainable it's probably dead int he first place. Plus this argument for an app like Notable where notes are written in Markdown and they really truly _are_ the database of the app doesn't make a lot of sense, I don't think you can get less "no vendor lock-in" than this. > So in other words, there will be monetisation coming later, but no indication on what kind of price or payment model (think monthly, lifetime etc) he will go for. I haven't figured out the pricing yet, it's probably going to be something around 5 bucks a month. Lifetime licenses are unsustainable, like how much do you think you should pay Notable for hosting all your notes and attachments forever? |
I know, but open-source does not mean free (as in beer), and closed-source does not mean paid. They are essentially unrelated things. You can publish the source but not license it.
> I'm not sure I agree with that, if I decide to abandon Notable because it doesn't make financial sense to me, how do you think is going to continue its development? Like if something is not financially sustainable it's probably dead int he first place.
This disregards the many great free apps that are around :)
But anyway this point came from having the bad experinece of having all my notes in a system that pretty much got abandoned, and it really helped that it was open source to export my notes from its XML format. That's the main reason for that point from my side.
> I haven't figured out the pricing yet, it's probably going to be something around 5 bucks a month. Lifetime licenses are unsustainable, like how much do you think you should pay Notable for hosting all your notes and attachments forever?
Ah, like I said I didn't use the app but I wouldn't really want a note system that uses third-party servers anyway. I'd want to self-host it. With Tomboy I used to just sync its files with OwnCloud (because the built-in sync server was not great).
However that pricing comes very close to other commercial options that are highly regarded, like EverNote (7 euro/month) or OneNote (you can get OneNote on a 5 euro per month O365 subscription that also includes email hosting and 1TB OneDrive). The 'hosted' notetaking market is very competitive. I'm not looking for a hosted option myself but I do know the market (and I use OneNote in work as it's the only thing I'm allowed to use there :( )