Fwd: Switching to paid license model for add-ons for TB78
I sent the email below to the addons list earlier today, but it occurs
to me that it might also be of interest to the folks here, so here you go.
TL;DR I'm probably going to have to switch to a subscription model for
my add-ons to justify the time required to convert them to
MailExtensions for TB78, and I'm probably going to use a Kickstarter
campaign to gauge if there's enough willingness among my users to pay to
make that effort worthwhile. If you have any thoughts, questions, or
concerns about this, now would be a great time to express them.
jik
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Switching to paid license model for add-ons for TB78
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2020 15:29:31 -0500
From: Jonathan Kamens jik@kamens.us
To: Add-on Developers addons@thunderbird.topicbox.com
Hi,
I wanted to give the folks on this list a heads-up about this and give
y'all an opportunity to weigh in with any thoughts you might have.
I've been maintaining TB add-ons for nearly a decade. I started with
Send Later, which I took over because the original author disappeared
and the add-on was no longer working, and since then I've written or
adopted eleven other add-ons, nine of which are still active.
Getting my ten still-active add-ons working in TB68 was a chore, but it
was nothing compared to the amount of work it'll take to port them all
to MailExtensions for TB78. Frankly, I'm exhausted just to contemplate
learning an entirely new add-on framework, inventorying all of the TB
core functionality that my add-ons use that isn't yet supported by
MailExtension APIs, writing experiments for all of the missing
functionality, trying to convince the core TB devs to make those
experiments part of core, and rewriting all of my add-ons for the new
framework and APIs.
Ideally I'd find someone else to volunteer to take over my add-ons, but
so far I've been unable to do that, and I believe that the ROI for
porting my add-ons to TB78 myself would be negative. I.e., the cost
(time, energy, distraction from the rest of my life) exceeds the value
(the continued use of the add-ons I maintain which I use myself, plus a
few thousand $ in voluntary contributions each year).
I've therefore decided that unless I can significantly (like, by an
order of magnitude) increase the annual revenue I earn from my add-ons,
I am not going to try porting them to TB78.
The only way I see to significantly increase the annual revenue is to
convert my add-ons, as of TB78, from free to licensed at a rate of $5
per user per year per add-on, and to get a significant number of users
to commit to licensing the add-ons once TB78 is released.
To find out if that's achievable, I'm doing two things:
- I'm creating a Kickstarter project in which I am going to attempt to
raise $50,000 in 60 days by offering supporters heavily discounted
licenses. - I'm adding a pop-up to all of my add-ons telling people they're
going away in TB78 unless enough people commit to paying for
licenses by supporting the Kickstarter project, with a link to the
project in the pop-up.
If the Kickstarter project succeeds, I will still be 100% open to the
idea of other developers stepping up and agreeing to take over
maintaining one or more of my add-ons, including porting them to TB78,
and keeping them free. If that happens, then I will share the proceeds
of the Kickstarter project with the developer(s) based on which add-ons
they take over and which add-ons people requested discounted licenses for.
Alternatively, if the Kickstarter project succeeds, then I will have
funds at my disposal to /pay/ other developers to do the porting to
TB78, so perhaps there will be developers who aren't interested in
taking over maintaining the add-ons long-term but /are/ interested in
earning a large chunk of cash for a one-time job doing the porting.
Frankly, I'd prefer either of those outcomes, because honestly, I'm a
bit tired of maintaining TB add-ons and would rather not be doing the
coding myself. The only reason I'm even willing to try this licensing
thing, as opposed to just declaring that my add-ons are going away in
TB78 unless someone takes them over, is because of how bad I would feel
about leaving all of my users in the lurch.
I'd love to hear any thoughts people have about this. I'd also love to
hear from anyone who has any interest in taking over maintenance of any
of my add-ons (Send Later
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/,Folder
Pane View Switcher
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/folder-pane-view-switcher/,Show
All Body Parts
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/show-all-body-parts/,IMAP
Received Date
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/imap-received-date/,Enhanced
Priority Display
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/enhanced-priority-display/,Reply
to Multiple Messages
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/reply-to-multiple-messages/,Toggle
Replied
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/togglereplied-2/,userChromeJS
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/userchromejs-2/,Undigestify
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/,
andRemote Content By Folder
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/remote-content-by-folder/)
for TB78. ;-)
jik
Jonathan,
I waited to see if anyone else shared their feedback. But I think a
subscription model for add-ons is a good idea. I would be curious to
hear how many of your users are willing to pay and what you learn in
doing this.
Ryan Sipes
Community and Business Development Manager
Thunderbird https://thunderbird.net
On 1/1/20 5:37 PM, Jonathan Kamens via Maildev wrote:
I sent the email below to the addons list earlier today, but it occurs
to me that it might also be of interest to the folks here, so here you go.
TL;DR I'm probably going to have to switch to a subscription model for
my add-ons to justify the time required to convert them to
MailExtensions for TB78, and I'm probably going to use a Kickstarter
campaign to gauge if there's enough willingness among my users to pay
to make that effort worthwhile. If you have any thoughts, questions,
or concerns about this, now would be a great time to express them.
jik
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Switching to paid license model for add-ons for TB78
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2020 15:29:31 -0500
From: Jonathan Kamens jik@kamens.us
To: Add-on Developers addons@thunderbird.topicbox.com
Hi,
I wanted to give the folks on this list a heads-up about this and give
y'all an opportunity to weigh in with any thoughts you might have.
I've been maintaining TB add-ons for nearly a decade. I started with
Send Later, which I took over because the original author disappeared
and the add-on was no longer working, and since then I've written or
adopted eleven other add-ons, nine of which are still active.
Getting my ten still-active add-ons working in TB68 was a chore, but
it was nothing compared to the amount of work it'll take to port them
all to MailExtensions for TB78. Frankly, I'm exhausted just to
contemplate learning an entirely new add-on framework, inventorying
all of the TB core functionality that my add-ons use that isn't yet
supported by MailExtension APIs, writing experiments for all of the
missing functionality, trying to convince the core TB devs to make
those experiments part of core, and rewriting all of my add-ons for
the new framework and APIs.
Ideally I'd find someone else to volunteer to take over my add-ons,
but so far I've been unable to do that, and I believe that the ROI for
porting my add-ons to TB78 myself would be negative. I.e., the cost
(time, energy, distraction from the rest of my life) exceeds the value
(the continued use of the add-ons I maintain which I use myself, plus
a few thousand $ in voluntary contributions each year).
I've therefore decided that unless I can significantly (like, by an
order of magnitude) increase the annual revenue I earn from my
add-ons, I am not going to try porting them to TB78.
The only way I see to significantly increase the annual revenue is to
convert my add-ons, as of TB78, from free to licensed at a rate of $5
per user per year per add-on, and to get a significant number of users
to commit to licensing the add-ons once TB78 is released.
To find out if that's achievable, I'm doing two things:
- I'm creating a Kickstarter project in which I am going to attempt
to raise $50,000 in 60 days by offering supporters heavily
discounted licenses. - I'm adding a pop-up to all of my add-ons telling people they're
going away in TB78 unless enough people commit to paying for
licenses by supporting the Kickstarter project, with a link to the
project in the pop-up.
If the Kickstarter project succeeds, I will still be 100% open to the
idea of other developers stepping up and agreeing to take over
maintaining one or more of my add-ons, including porting them to TB78,
and keeping them free. If that happens, then I will share the proceeds
of the Kickstarter project with the developer(s) based on which
add-ons they take over and which add-ons people requested discounted
licenses for.
Alternatively, if the Kickstarter project succeeds, then I will have
funds at my disposal to /pay/ other developers to do the porting to
TB78, so perhaps there will be developers who aren't interested in
taking over maintaining the add-ons long-term but /are/ interested in
earning a large chunk of cash for a one-time job doing the porting.
Frankly, I'd prefer either of those outcomes, because honestly, I'm a
bit tired of maintaining TB add-ons and would rather not be doing the
coding myself. The only reason I'm even willing to try this licensing
thing, as opposed to just declaring that my add-ons are going away in
TB78 unless someone takes them over, is because of how bad I would
feel about leaving all of my users in the lurch.
I'd love to hear any thoughts people have about this. I'd also love to
hear from anyone who has any interest in taking over maintenance of
any of my add-ons (Send Later
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/,Folder
Pane View Switcher
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/folder-pane-view-switcher/, Show
All Body Parts
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/show-all-body-parts/, IMAP
Received Date
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/imap-received-date/, Enhanced
Priority Display
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/enhanced-priority-display/, Reply
to Multiple Messages
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/reply-to-multiple-messages/, Toggle
Replied
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/togglereplied-2/, userChromeJS
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/userchromejs-2/, Undigestify
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/,
and Remote Content By Folder
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/remote-content-by-folder/)
for TB78. ;-)
jik
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
Hey Jonathan,
if the Kickstarter generates enough money, and you want to hand the
proceeds over, we might be able to do the development of porting.
Condition is that it makes enough money. But I doubt you'd want to part
from it in this case and probably would rather cash it in yourself in
this case :).
Please keep this between us. Please don't mention to anyway even that I
expressed interest.
Ben
On 02.01.20 01:37, Jonathan Kamens via Maildev wrote:
I sent the email below to the addons list earlier today, but it occurs
to me that it might also be of interest to the folks here, so here you go.
TL;DR I'm probably going to have to switch to a subscription model for
my add-ons to justify the time required to convert them to
MailExtensions for TB78, and I'm probably going to use a Kickstarter
campaign to gauge if there's enough willingness among my users to pay
to make that effort worthwhile. If you have any thoughts, questions,
or concerns about this, now would be a great time to express them.
jik
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Switching to paid license model for add-ons for TB78
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2020 15:29:31 -0500
From: Jonathan Kamens jik@kamens.us
To: Add-on Developers addons@thunderbird.topicbox.com
Hi,
I wanted to give the folks on this list a heads-up about this and give
y'all an opportunity to weigh in with any thoughts you might have.
I've been maintaining TB add-ons for nearly a decade. I started with
Send Later, which I took over because the original author disappeared
and the add-on was no longer working, and since then I've written or
adopted eleven other add-ons, nine of which are still active.
Getting my ten still-active add-ons working in TB68 was a chore, but
it was nothing compared to the amount of work it'll take to port them
all to MailExtensions for TB78. Frankly, I'm exhausted just to
contemplate learning an entirely new add-on framework, inventorying
all of the TB core functionality that my add-ons use that isn't yet
supported by MailExtension APIs, writing experiments for all of the
missing functionality, trying to convince the core TB devs to make
those experiments part of core, and rewriting all of my add-ons for
the new framework and APIs.
Ideally I'd find someone else to volunteer to take over my add-ons,
but so far I've been unable to do that, and I believe that the ROI for
porting my add-ons to TB78 myself would be negative. I.e., the cost
(time, energy, distraction from the rest of my life) exceeds the value
(the continued use of the add-ons I maintain which I use myself, plus
a few thousand $ in voluntary contributions each year).
I've therefore decided that unless I can significantly (like, by an
order of magnitude) increase the annual revenue I earn from my
add-ons, I am not going to try porting them to TB78.
The only way I see to significantly increase the annual revenue is to
convert my add-ons, as of TB78, from free to licensed at a rate of $5
per user per year per add-on, and to get a significant number of users
to commit to licensing the add-ons once TB78 is released.
To find out if that's achievable, I'm doing two things:
- I'm creating a Kickstarter project in which I am going to attempt
to raise $50,000 in 60 days by offering supporters heavily
discounted licenses. - I'm adding a pop-up to all of my add-ons telling people they're
going away in TB78 unless enough people commit to paying for
licenses by supporting the Kickstarter project, with a link to the
project in the pop-up.
If the Kickstarter project succeeds, I will still be 100% open to the
idea of other developers stepping up and agreeing to take over
maintaining one or more of my add-ons, including porting them to TB78,
and keeping them free. If that happens, then I will share the proceeds
of the Kickstarter project with the developer(s) based on which
add-ons they take over and which add-ons people requested discounted
licenses for.
Alternatively, if the Kickstarter project succeeds, then I will have
funds at my disposal to /pay/ other developers to do the porting to
TB78, so perhaps there will be developers who aren't interested in
taking over maintaining the add-ons long-term but /are/ interested in
earning a large chunk of cash for a one-time job doing the porting.
Frankly, I'd prefer either of those outcomes, because honestly, I'm a
bit tired of maintaining TB add-ons and would rather not be doing the
coding myself. The only reason I'm even willing to try this licensing
thing, as opposed to just declaring that my add-ons are going away in
TB78 unless someone takes them over, is because of how bad I would
feel about leaving all of my users in the lurch.
I'd love to hear any thoughts people have about this. I'd also love to
hear from anyone who has any interest in taking over maintenance of
any of my add-ons (Send Later
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/,Folder
Pane View Switcher
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/folder-pane-view-switcher/,Show
All Body Parts
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/show-all-body-parts/,IMAP
Received Date
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/imap-received-date/,Enhanced
Priority Display
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/enhanced-priority-display/,Reply
to Multiple Messages
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/reply-to-multiple-messages/,Toggle
Replied
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/togglereplied-2/,userChromeJS
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/userchromejs-2/,Undigestify
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/,
andRemote Content By Folder
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/remote-content-by-folder/)
for TB78. ;-)
jik
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net
LOL! Wrong recipient. hahaha. Very smart of me. Very secretive I am.
Can't even press the right [Reply] button! :-)
http://static.skaip.org/img/emoticons/180x180/f6fcff/headbang.gif
On 09.01.20 02:11, Ben Bucksch wrote:
Hey Jonathan,
if the Kickstarter generates enough money, and you want to hand the
proceeds over, we might be able to do the development of porting.
Condition is that it makes enough money. But I doubt you'd want to
part from it in this case and probably would rather cash it in
yourself in this case :).
Please keep this between us. Please don't mention to anyway even that
I expressed interest.
Ben
On 02.01.20 01:37, Jonathan Kamens via Maildev wrote:
I sent the email below to the addons list earlier today, but it
occurs to me that it might also be of interest to the folks here, so
here you go.
TL;DR I'm probably going to have to switch to a subscription model
for my add-ons to justify the time required to convert them to
MailExtensions for TB78, and I'm probably going to use a Kickstarter
campaign to gauge if there's enough willingness among my users to pay
to make that effort worthwhile. If you have any thoughts, questions,
or concerns about this, now would be a great time to express them.
jik
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Switching to paid license model for add-ons for TB78
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2020 15:29:31 -0500
From: Jonathan Kamens jik@kamens.us
To: Add-on Developers addons@thunderbird.topicbox.com
Hi,
I wanted to give the folks on this list a heads-up about this and
give y'all an opportunity to weigh in with any thoughts you might have.
I've been maintaining TB add-ons for nearly a decade. I started with
Send Later, which I took over because the original author disappeared
and the add-on was no longer working, and since then I've written or
adopted eleven other add-ons, nine of which are still active.
Getting my ten still-active add-ons working in TB68 was a chore, but
it was nothing compared to the amount of work it'll take to port them
all to MailExtensions for TB78. Frankly, I'm exhausted just to
contemplate learning an entirely new add-on framework, inventorying
all of the TB core functionality that my add-ons use that isn't yet
supported by MailExtension APIs, writing experiments for all of the
missing functionality, trying to convince the core TB devs to make
those experiments part of core, and rewriting all of my add-ons for
the new framework and APIs.
Ideally I'd find someone else to volunteer to take over my add-ons,
but so far I've been unable to do that, and I believe that the ROI
for porting my add-ons to TB78 myself would be negative. I.e., the
cost (time, energy, distraction from the rest of my life) exceeds the
value (the continued use of the add-ons I maintain which I use
myself, plus a few thousand $ in voluntary contributions each year).
I've therefore decided that unless I can significantly (like, by an
order of magnitude) increase the annual revenue I earn from my
add-ons, I am not going to try porting them to TB78.
The only way I see to significantly increase the annual revenue is to
convert my add-ons, as of TB78, from free to licensed at a rate of $5
per user per year per add-on, and to get a significant number of
users to commit to licensing the add-ons once TB78 is released.
To find out if that's achievable, I'm doing two things:
- I'm creating a Kickstarter project in which I am going to attempt
to raise $50,000 in 60 days by offering supporters heavily
discounted licenses. - I'm adding a pop-up to all of my add-ons telling people they're
going away in TB78 unless enough people commit to paying for
licenses by supporting the Kickstarter project, with a link to
the project in the pop-up.
If the Kickstarter project succeeds, I will still be 100% open to the
idea of other developers stepping up and agreeing to take over
maintaining one or more of my add-ons, including porting them to
TB78, and keeping them free. If that happens, then I will share the
proceeds of the Kickstarter project with the developer(s) based on
which add-ons they take over and which add-ons people requested
discounted licenses for.
Alternatively, if the Kickstarter project succeeds, then I will have
funds at my disposal to /pay/ other developers to do the porting to
TB78, so perhaps there will be developers who aren't interested in
taking over maintaining the add-ons long-term but /are/ interested in
earning a large chunk of cash for a one-time job doing the porting.
Frankly, I'd prefer either of those outcomes, because honestly, I'm a
bit tired of maintaining TB add-ons and would rather not be doing the
coding myself. The only reason I'm even willing to try this licensing
thing, as opposed to just declaring that my add-ons are going away in
TB78 unless someone takes them over, is because of how bad I would
feel about leaving all of my users in the lurch.
I'd love to hear any thoughts people have about this. I'd also love
to hear from anyone who has any interest in taking over maintenance
of any of my add-ons (Send Later
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/,Folder
Pane View Switcher
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/folder-pane-view-switcher/,Show
All Body Parts
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/show-all-body-parts/,IMAP
Received Date
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/imap-received-date/,Enhanced
Priority Display
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/enhanced-priority-display/,Reply
to Multiple Messages
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/reply-to-multiple-messages/,Toggle
Replied
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/togglereplied-2/,userChromeJS
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/userchromejs-2/,Undigestify
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/,
andRemote Content By Folder
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/remote-content-by-folder/)
for TB78. ;-)
jik
Maildev mailing list
Maildev@lists.thunderbird.net
http://lists.thunderbird.net/mailman/listinfo/maildev_lists.thunderbird.net