This article really bothered me. Sparrow made a ton of money with only a small handful of people working on the product. It was extremely profitable and popular. I don't think any developers working there would have problems with Ramen noodle salaries with all the money that they were making.
When Google comes knocking on your door with eight figures, what do you expect them to say? How altruistic do you expect someone in that position to really be? They developed and designed a hit app that everyone loved and the team was snapped up. They don't owe anyone anything, it was their own decision, and although they were profitable and could have continued working on their products into the future, they chose to take a huge payday. This has nothing to do with Apple, a 30% cut, or them not making enough profit because they definitely were.
These developers worked hard to ship the best Gmail client on iOS or OS X. Why is everyone angry about their comeuppance?
Software is a business, just like any other. Every project -- even open source projects!! -- needs money to operate, and many times these projects -- yes, even open source projects!! -- organize around businesses or foundations. See Enthought and Continuum for two examples: they exist, among other things, to support development of scientific computing libraries for Python.
Does this hurt for people who bought Sparrow? Not really. You paid them $10 for their app. Google offered them up to $25 million. You still have a functioning Sparrow app, and once that stops working you'll return to Mail.app until a new amazing mail app comes along.
Perspective, people. This is a website focused on tech entrepreneurship, and you guys are flipping out over a company sale?
Because, as of now, a tool they've come to rely on is essentially done. It won't get updated, and should future versions of an OS that it runs on changes something, there is no promise of a fix.
This could be solved if the code base was released publicly, but that hasn't happened yet.
> Does this hurt for people who bought Sparrow? Not really. You paid them $10 for their app.
The people behind Sparrow were very public about features they were working on that will never get implemented. I know I almost bought Sparrow because of those public statement. There is also the expectation that buying into an app, it will continue to get updates so it will continue to work. Now, time invested into Sparrow is essentially a time bomb. Eventually it will stop working, and the user will have to switch.
Sparrow is free to take the money. However, how they handled this was a slap in the face to it's paying customers.
Because, as of now, a tool they've come to rely on is essentially done.
I relied on Spool. They got bought, I was bummed, then I moved on. This isn't the end of mail apps as we know it.
Eventually it will stop working, and the user will have to switch.
To Mail.app. Or Gmail. Or any other number of email clients out there.
I'm sure some customers are disappointed. But at some point it's not about the customers--it's about you. If you want to sell your company, you're going to do it no matter what customers want. Customers can't know whether a company is the "sell now" type a priori, and that sucks, but it's also the nature of business.
Yep, this is the reason open source tools are the best to "rely" on. I prefer open-source code editors, because if I'm gonna take the effort to master their more advanced features, I want them to stay available. I'm thinking of switching back to mutt for email.
> I'm sure some customers are disappointed. But at some point it's not about the customers--it's about you. If you want to sell your company, you're going to do it no matter what customers want. Customers can't know whether a company is the "sell now" type a priori, and that sucks, but it's also the nature of business.
That's fine. And I'm not expecting companies to come out and say that. I'm also not against them selling out. What I am against is software companies not providing an upgrade path.
An easy solution would be to open source Sparrow. There. Done.
And don't think this is all about Sparrow. It's about indie developers in general. It's a warning. Sell your products! We'll buy! But understand that if we come to rely on your products that we've paid for, when you effectively stop development on it, you are doing your customers harm.
It's why I prefer open source tools (and yes, I've taken advantage of this fact). And the tools I do buy are from companies that have proven they will continue to invest in their products.
Hopefully that explains it more clearly. I'm not against them selling themselves. However, I feel like they slighted their customers. Especially since I know some of those customers had expectations based upon comments they'd made.
True, but you are proving the OPs point about having subscription-based pricing. I remember when I first bought Things when it cost $50 and they still haven't even shipped proper syncing. I felt like my money was stolen from me. If they had subscription pricing, they'd actually have to care about their customers post purchase. We'd have the power to stop their income stream much more directly.
So you mean the game (or on a more serious note-CAD software used to make a living) I bought for Windows 3.1 should keep getting updates that make it work with every version of Windows that is released in the future? Sorry people, and app is a piece of software, plain and simple. It was a one time payment, and I'm not sure I should 'expect' anything after that.
Actually, I don't think it is that simple. Customers have the reasonable expectation that they should be able to use a product for a certain amount of time. In fact some countries have pretty strong customer protection laws, that require that products work for a reasonable time.
Of course, Sparrow will continue to work with Lion and iOS 5. But how reasonable is it to expect that people continue to run iOS 5 if Sparrow breaks on iOS6, missing on all security updates, to get the expected lifetime of their purchase? Or what if it turns out that there is a grave security vulnerability in Sparrow tomorrow?
Suppose that you spend five Euro on a knife. Sure, you should not complain if it breaks after ten years. But if it breaks after six months during normal use, you take it back to the store.
> or on a more serious note-CAD software used to make a living
Yes. Updates should be provided. Paid updates, of course. And the updates don't need to work on older versions. The issue isn't providing the same version working forever for free. It's providing an upgrade path. Adobe doesn't just release new software for a money grab. Professionals rely on Adobe to keep up to date, and Adobe does this.
> It was a one time payment, and I'm not sure I should 'expect' anything after that.
I'd hope for any tool you invest time in you would expect continued support for the product.
But, if a company doesn't want to release updates for this, there is a solution (which happens to solve your game problem).
Open sourcing the code is always a solution, and if Sparrow did that, it would, in effect, silence all the people with an issue.
I hope that better explains my point of view. I'm not expecting anything free. I'm not expecting long term support for old software. What I am expecting is an upgrade path. New version coming out that keep up with the times. That's software I'd pay for (and I do).
Note: I didn't purchase Sparrow. I just understand the issues.
Charging your customers, promising features, and then selling your business and going back on those promises is not good business. It's usually great to see startups get bought and winning but in this case they had a profitable business and they screwed their customers. Not to mention the half price sale they had days before the acquisition. If they knew the acquisition was happening this week and they did that sale to have a few big days before shutting down it was a really scummy move.
>> "Software is a business"
It is, but selling an app for 18 months and then selling your company is not. It seems to be ingrained in tech culture that you should sell your business. Why are so few companies aiming to become profitable and build a sustainable business? I understand companies like Instagram with no revenue stream selling, but Sparrow had a solid revenue stream.
I think the general source of frustration with Sparrow's acquisition is the feeling that something beautiful just got end-of-lifed. And of course that this is just the latest in a line of could-have-beens like PushPopPress, Tweetie, etc.
And I had a similar train of thought as the OP: "I wish Apple could make the App Store even more profitable, so we can have more great independent developers like Marco and TapTapTap that continue to make great apps without being gobbled up by large companies eager to put talent into unrelated areas."
I don't know if it's possible, and of course no one can fault Sparrow for cashing out. But there it is.
How do you know Sparrow made a "ton of money?". I haven't seen any references to that effect. Given that they aimed to get people to buy something given away by both Apple and Google, I'd expect the opposite.
I am definitely happy for them. Because, after all, we all work for making impacts. While sparrow is already making an impact on people using Mac and iOS devices. It is only a subset of people that can be benefit from their effort. But joining Google, maybe they get to improve the Gmail experience for everybody. I think this is the most logical thing to do.
When Google comes knocking on your door with eight figures, what do you expect them to say? How altruistic do you expect someone in that position to really be? They developed and designed a hit app that everyone loved and the team was snapped up. They don't owe anyone anything, it was their own decision, and although they were profitable and could have continued working on their products into the future, they chose to take a huge payday. This has nothing to do with Apple, a 30% cut, or them not making enough profit because they definitely were.