Sparrow's acquisition highlights the dangers of closed source
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 21st Jul 2012 23:06 UTC
In the News Okay, so this is entirely new to me. Sparrow is was an email client for Mac OS X and iOS (and Windows), which brought a decent Gmail experience to these platforms - as opposed to Apple's own not-so-good Gmail support and Google's Gmail iOS application which, well, is just a webpage. Google has now acquired Sparrow, and basically all hell has broken loose, to the point of Rian van der Merwe writing that 'we' lost "faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens".
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RE[2]: Open Source email clients
by Nth_Man on Sun 22nd Jul 2012 13:20 UTC in reply to "RE: Open Source email clients"
Nth_Man
Member since:
2010-05-16

Most of the Sparrow's users are probably non-programmers. [...] As such Sparrow's user base aren't equipped to continue development even if they had the source code.

You know, people that can't do plumbing at their home... contract plumbers. If a user can't program, he can contract programmers.

If people has the source code, it leaves an open door.

Reply Parent Score: 3

arpan Member since:
2006-07-30

Examples of this happening in the past. It takes a lot of effort, although something like kickstarter may be useful.

In the past I've seen stats from open source projects which mentioned that less than 1% of users donate to the project. That's not a lot.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Nth_Man Member since:
2010-05-16

something like kickstarter may be useful.
In the past I've seen stats from open source projects which mentioned that less than 1% of users donate to the project. That's not a lot.

There are a lot of stats, a lot of projects and a lot of percentages. For example, we could talk about Humble Indie Bundle 'V', getting more than 5.000.000$ from people who liked it. A better product is more likely to get money than another. But this discussion that I started was not about it.

The key is that if someone (*1) has the possibility of doing themselves the improvements (*2) or contracting someone (*3), it's better than not having this possibility. That's the key of that discussion that I started.

(*1) A user, a community of users, a company, a country, etc.
(*2) It can be a minor one, a medium one, a big one, etc. The bigger the improvement, the bigger will be the benefit for people.
(*3) It can be the original authors or some developer/s to negotiate the work with.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Read more of this thread... >
westlake Member since:
2010-01-07

You know, people that can't do plumbing at their home... contract plumbers. If a user can't program, he can contract programmers.


At what cost per billable hour?

Mozilla's only significant source of revenue is the add-click.

The mother lode.

But not enough to keep Thunderbird from being retired to maintenance mode.

Google abandons projects at a dizzying pace and it has money to burn.

It is one thing to call in a plumber for a routine installation or repair.

If you have an ambitious custom job mind, say construction of a garden pool and waterfall, you'll need a contractor, maybe an architect or engineer, who specializes in these things and can see the problem as a whole.

Which means that the bill is likely to skyrocket.

Reply Parent Score: 2

Nth_Man Member since:
2010-05-16

> > people that can't do plumbing at their home... contract
> > plumbers. If a user can't program, he can contract
> > programmers.

> At what cost per billable hour?
This would have to be negotiated. As you have the source code and can improve it, you (a company, a user, a group of users, etc.) have available a lot of developers to negotiate it with, and see if the improvement is worth the money. Anyway if there are better alternatives, people are not going to pay a lot...

> But not enough to keep Thunderbird from being retired to
> maintenance mode.
> Which means that the bill is likely to skyrocket.
You have more developers available than Mozilla. Other people may develop or contract someone to improve Thunderbird, though... I'm not going to pay Mozilla or another developer to improve Thunderbird because I don't use Thunderbird but another program. So I understand if they simply start using another program or keep using Thunderbird if it fits their needs.

For not repeating myself, I wrote about this in http://www.osnews.com/thread?527710

Reply Parent Score: 3