Comment by a-ve
10 hours ago
Since this is the top comment as of now - hijacking this to introduce a change to pricing:
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OP here - based on the feedback, I’ve switched boringBar to a perpetual license for personal use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47743992
We went through the exact same dilemma with our product [1]. For desktop apps, one-off with a defined support window just feels right.
Users get certainty, and you still have a clear path to future revenue when that window expires.
Subscription makes a lot more sense once you’re in cloud/collaborative territory which we've just entered. Sounds like you landed in a good place with this split.
[1] https://dbpro.app/pricing
C'mon, why not just open source it? Do you really expect to gain a sizeable following to get substantial cash flow? Most shareware went the way of oblivion.
If you'd open source it then there is at least the chance of gaining a community. And you'd be giving back to the community that you have benefitted from for decades.
Awesome that you were receptive to feedback. I hope most of the people who commented find out and don't just memory-hole the project.
I personally prefer the monthly payments of a nominal amount where $2-8/month is my usual small app tolerance. It feels like I’m supporting the development of useful tools while having the option to discontinue my patronage when the tool is no longer relevant or useful to my workflow. This gives products a natural lifespan and aligns the developer incentives to keep the product functional and continue developing new features.
Old guard will say what they will about software licensing but at the end of the day it’s all the same.
I get it now that folks absolutely loathe the idea of subscriptions - that too for a taskbar. In hindsight I too find it hideous but I wanted the pricing to reflect the effort that went into this - wrestling with the Window Server and Xcode for multiple weekends over the past months.
But hey, the masses have spoken - and a perpetual license it is. Vox populi, vox dei.
I don't think the notion of subscription is off-putting. It's just not a very natural fit for something that isn't a function of time or resources. This is just a better model for upgrades. If you make improvements later on, people will pay again.
For this particular situation, your risk probably isn't that people will stop paying. It's more likely that people like it enough that a free alternative pops up (it's not so different from rectangle and alttab.) You're probably better off taking the money up front.
What was your justification for the monthly fee in the first place?
There is a model that worked for decades: If you spent a _significant_ amount of work enhancing an existing tool you'd release a new major version. The would be a discount for license holders of the old version. Why reinvent the world over and over again?
Simple answer right? It makes more money.
Not saying that was OPs motivation but that's obviously why the shift happened.
To me it seems like small businesses like this get squeezed by these demands to make everything cheaper while the big corporations ignore it and stick to their pricing.
I’m not sure OP should have capitulated. Someone who loves this tool will probably gladly pay more.
2 replies →
Given how many developers here use LLMs daily, how do you think about defensibility? Tools like this seem relatively easy to reverse-engineer and replicate with enough time and LLM assistance. Did that influence your decision to charge a subscription or the change to a personal license?
That's the reason why I added a subscription in the first place - you would pay a dirt-cheap price for a "boring" product with an added insurance that someone will be there to support it.
People will replicate it, sure, but supporting it regularly is another thing. I guess the majority wanted a perpetual license - so it's a win for the masses.
I cannot agree with you more.
Personally, I dare not replace the Dock with Windows-style task bar for fear that my OLED display might have burn-in on it. Yet, when I need an alternative, I would rather make an APP for my own.
>> how do you think about defensibility?
defensibility nowadays is app support and development. the more work you pour into it the more defensible it will be.
I personally would gladly pay to have app constantly polished and improved. What I would not use is some vibe-coded alternative that was slopped with AI in a day and pushed to github with a tweet "i made a free X alternative" and then abandoned.
how much is there to improve and polish for a taskbar? at most it will be keeping up with macOS throwing breaking changes at you and maybe one or the other weird bug.
but isn't that it?
I would not.
I'm not paying $40 for a taskbar replacement. And not for two years of updates and a two device limit on top.
Maybe if it was $10, I could consider it. Prices for macOS apps are insane in my opinion. Everyone wants to charge yearly or every two years now too.
3 replies →
Feedback from a potential customer: I despise 2-device limits. I used DEVONthink for a decade but dropped it because of that exact thing.
At home, I have a Mac Studio[0] set up in my office with my music stuff, and I'm writing this on my MacBoor Air[1] here on my lap in the living room. I also have a work laptop, although it's safely tucked away in my backback right now. My wife has an MBA, too, but that's hers and I don't mess with it. So I'm elbow-deep in Macs that are used solely by me, and I bounce between them regularly.
The 2-device limit is a dealbreaker for me. It's where I stop reading. I don't care if it cures cancer: I won't buy an app that makes me pick and choose which of the devices in my care I can use it on. I'm sympathetic to why vendors pick that limit. I get that you don't want me to buy a single license and spread it around my friends and work circles. That's completely reasonable and understandable. And yet, it completely breaks my use case. I bet I'm far from alone in this.
[0]A previous job let me keep it when I left.
[1]I bought to hack on personal projects instead of using [0], which was work-owned at the time.
You can purchase multiple licenses. If you can afford a dozen computers, you can afford a couple more licenses.
Very true! Completely irrelant here, because I only purchased one of those computers as you correctly noted, but true!
What's the alternative?
Trust and respect, which is a 2-way street. I've bought some relatively expensive apps (the pro version of nearly everything Omni Group makes, Things, etc. etc. etc.) and all of them let you install and use the apps on all of your computers. They're licensed per person, not per device. I despise technical controls on this for the same reason I despise DRM on physical media: it's an inconvenience to rightful owners and a temporary speed bump to pirates.
I'm not about to abuse my OmniFocus licenses, even though I could. They sold me a great product at a reasonable price, with permission to throw a copy on everything I own so I can use it no matter which chair I'm sitting at. They trust and respect me, and I trust and respect them.
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