That sums it up perfectly!
New marketing campaign for Discord:
Discord
Stuff to keep hidden from dad
Or:
Discord
Talks you’ll never have with dad
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I certainly cannot agree to this.
This is not business like usual.
Good that customers will be able (hopefully sooner than later) decide for themselves which application to use.
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Business partners don’t steal each other’s business. Isaiah had been begged for years by his user base to break away on his own, yet he remained loyal and never did so. That is, until Dan committed to taking away Isaiah’s source of income, without even attempting to open up the API to RW to enhance the UI experience or capabilities. In fact, Dan outright refused to open the API. Let’s not attempt to propagate revisionist history and portray Dan as the victim. What occurred was not simply a matter of “just” business.
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I’m not suggesting Dan is the victim, or what he did last year was acceptable. But we’re all still using his product, and some are making an income from it. Stacks breathed some life into Rapidweaver when template-based web creation apps (iWeb, Frontpage etc.) had pretty much reached the end of the road. But Isaiah was taking a risk building a business around someone else’s product, and Dan was taking a risk letting Stacks become so critical to his product. This wasn’t a formal partnership (it might have been better if it had been) and partnerships are particularly vulnerable in this age where nobody can get along with anyone else for more than a few months. Business partners do also frequently steal each others’ business — Microsoft and Apple did it all the time, shafting partners small and large. They even tried to do it with each other. Yet we’re still using their stuff, too. It’s not nice, and there might be a better way, but it’s how it is —and there is a lot of it.
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Next time I speak to Isaiah I’ll let him know. He certainly will understand…
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What is it with Realmac using Mastadon and Isaiah using Discuss?
I get that stuff isn’t broken at present, but I feel so sorry for developers. Their income must be affected and if that’s the case, there’s no incentive to keep stuff up to date.
I can’t be the only one looking at where else to take my money, because I’m really not confident in spending anymore on this platform at present. Such a shame as I love using the product and have learned so much from this community.
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But where else is there to go? It’s not just the RW/Stacks community that is affected, but the whole of the software industry. The combination of stagnant earnings, spiralling inflation, rising interest rates and uncertainty about the future means that everywhere people are cutting back on expenditure: individuals, small businesses, big businesses, government agencies, everyone. Even Apple, Facebook and Google are laying people off. Not only does this mean that someone is less likely to be spending money on a web application, it means that they are questioning whether to spend money on websites, whether they should just let domains go. The brutal truth is that if consumers are tightening their belts and cutting back on everything but basics, they’re not browsing the web looking for new things to spend money on.
We’re likely to see this go on for several years (and in the worst cases, it could result in a decades-long ‘Japanification’ of some economies). There isn’t going to be exciting new software development — except around AI, which is where the investment if going. But even that isn’t immune to the broader economic picture. The platforms that are going to be most reliable are those that are most mature and ‘hunkered down’, which is exactly what RW/Stacks is right now. Nobody wants to fork out hundreds of dollars for a new set up, but $20 for a new stack every now and then is something we console ourselves with: people are eating less in restaurants, but we’re buying street food more.
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Typically, during times like this, in the US economy anyway, many new small businesses are formed. This creates a whole new market. Information, training, and publishing websites explode. So all is not lost.
And never does two wrongs make a right. It doesn’t matter if “everyone” is doing it because not everyone is. Personally, I won’t get into business with anyone who operates this way. I’ve been there, done that, and obviously, it didn’t end well.
I seek the high path the best I can and ask my Lord for forgiveness where I fall short. I brush myself off and go again. Such is the cycle of life.
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And twice as many go bust…
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Entrepreneurship has its risk. Doesn’t mean there won’t be websites to build. Just be smart about how you collect your fees.
Maybe do it the GoDaddy way?
You could be talking about any number of business sectors. I am working full-time on my book publishing, which used to bring in a small but useful income. In the 2021–2 tax year it made about £1,200 before tax (of course, I only have to pay tax because I have a pension). In the 2022–3, I’ll have made a substantial loss due to having to buy a new Mac, and I very much doubt I’ll break even in the current tax year. Print costs have rocketed. If I didn’t enjoy it so much, I’d find a more profitable way to spend my time – in fact, I’ll almost certainly have to do just that.
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One Little Designer’s latest newsletter said they would support both stacks and elements, with existing purchases of stacks available for free as elements, so no need to repurchase.
Haven’t looked at the Elements beta info video but it does look like some actual progress as opposed to the “imminent” beta that were due last year.
StacksPro…still very quiet. Hopefully something more will be announced soon.
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From what I can tell on the video, there’s a few nice pieces of UI functionality started… But it looks like the vast majority of what was envisioned in Elements is not ready. At the very minimum not stable enough to be shown in a video demo.
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Stuff that AT LEAST should have made it to Classic (anything after version 8.9.3) imo. And… they have a post about their new…. icon!! (Though reading about the process compares dead pale to watching the Abstract video with Ian Spalter).
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There is a demo video now available. https://youtu.be/VZJ_Nv9QuEs
What I didn’t understand until today is stacks developers who agree to develop Elements, those stacks can be automatically converted to Elements.
This means the foundation underpinning Elements has to be built upon Yourhead Software’s Stacks plug-in.
How is this not theft?
Seems to me RMS should at least change their name, as the concept for Windows OS was the original Macintosh OS, an original; thus RealMacSoftware cannot be made from stealing somebody else’s (@Isaiah)'s ideas.
Otherwise it’s not Real Mac Software.
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This has been the problem all along.
I had no issues with RM building elements, tailwind is good with strong possibilities.
However they decided to also reverse engineer Stacks and recompile them into their own language. This is the reason the Rapidweaver community has blown up.
Who knows what will happen from the fragments. Many have jumped ship to other apps. Some are hoping for the best from one or the other.
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Just my two cents on the reverse engineering topic. To be unbiased one has to see, that both RMS and Isaiah have to do reverse engineering. RMS to build the elements part to be compatible with Stacks. Isaiah the RW Themes engine to make StacksPro work standalone. In the end both parties need functioning software that supports both Themes and Stacks (Elements = recompiled Stacks). So I would recommend to calm down on topics like theft of intellectual property. I personally feel sadness, that both couldn’t find a joint solution und at the same time understand both, why they made their moves. RMS needed to do something about RW, it was more and more an app that depends on the 3rd party plugin Stacks. Isaiah was forced by RMS announcement to drop plugin support for Stacks. The market for RMS/Stacks is rather small and the fragmentation that will happen now, doesn’t help.
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It’s a clear defined action by one party and a reaction by another one.
Exactly. It’s always about the how.
I don’t comment on that one…
Whatever you interpret there:
Building a “competitive product” is one thing.
“Reverse engineer” a partners product and make it obsolete by copying its functionality is something different.
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