[WoodenChair]

> So I know we're supposed to be angry about the 4 days thing. It's not good, obviously. However, I don't think it actually changes the situation at all if he wasn't going to sign up anyway.

As I said in the post and comments here if it made financial sense and they gave me a more reasonable deadline with a less threatening email I would be willing to pay for the API. In this case it didn't make financial sense, so you're right at the current API prices it wouldn't make sense even with 6 months-notice.

That said, 6-months (your suggested time period) is a much better grace period for our shared users (users of Restaurants who use it as a frontend and continue to read more reviews at Yelp.com) and much more likely to make me convert to a paid API customer if it had made financial sense.

[Aurornis]

> and much more likely to make me convert to a paid API customer if it had made financial sense

I don't understand. Are you saying that even if it did make financial sense, you would have voluntarily shut the app down in protest of the 4-day notice period? Even though the sales rep pointed you toward the free trial option to continue using the API beyond the 4 days while you decided?

I know you're angry and want us all to be angry at Yelp too, but I have a difficult time believing that anyone would choose to destroy a profitable application out of protest just to stick it to the company about a short notice period.

[WoodenChair]

> I don't understand. Are you saying that even if it did make financial sense, you would have voluntarily shut the app down in protest of the 4-day notice period? Even though the sales rep pointed you toward the free trial option to continue using the API beyond the 4 days while you decided?

An app that sold 467 copies over 10 years at less than $5 a copy is not worth the trouble of dealing with a company that gives you Friday->Monday ultimatums. Obviously, if it were a big source of my income I would have to seriously consider it. But luckily, it's not. I discussed this in the "Development Ends" section of the post. Here is the pricing deck they sent me: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cb_8laDpxZdfwJPtYBmibZgvLZ8...

It seems to indicate a $229 base monthly price on the third slide for my use case.

> I know you're angry and want us all to be angry at Yelp too, but I have a difficult time believing that anyone would choose to destroy a profitable application out of protest just to stick it to the company.

I'm sorry you're reading so much anger in my post. I thought my blog post was pretty balanced. The worst I called them is "quite rude" (I think it's hard to read their emails otherwise) and spent the first half of it describing my app. I never expressed much emotion in my post, and frankly as mentioned above it really doesn't matter in the scheme of things for my life. What I do want is Yelp to change the way it treats developers. Perhaps if someone there reads this it will cause a tiny reflection on their part. I also hope the experience here expressed in the "Lessons Learned" section of the post is useful to other indie developers.

[sadcodemonkey]

Both your neutral tone and the fact that you want Yelp and other big companies to treat developers better were very clear!

That's what's crazy to me about all these comments. What does it say that so many developers have glossed over this simple ask for more considerate and respectful treatment for THEMSELVES? What does it say that the knee jerk response is fatalism to whatever big tech does?

[WoodenChair]

Thank you. It's actually just a couple users who have posted multiple negative comments in this thread like gp. Not sure what nerve my blog post hit with them but they are free to not like it! It seems like they're more upset about my blog post than I am about the actual situation.