<story><title>Vesper, Adieu</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2016/08/vesper_adieu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>archagon</author><text>This latest shutdown inspired me to write a blog post in response[1] when I first heard about it. Although the reaction is understandable, it&amp;#x27;s a shame that developers feel compelled to adopt a scorched earth policy when they no longer wish to (or are no longer able to) support their products. These indie apps are often marketed as beautiful, wholesome alternatives to grimy corporate or open source software, but how could I possibly rely on these products for essential tasks like note-taking if they&amp;#x27;re just going to disappear out from under me in a few years? The idea that software has a lifespan controlled by the developer is, in my opinion, toxic to the market. It&amp;#x27;s just one of the many things pulling the App Store down, and one of the many downsides of living in a walled garden.&lt;p&gt;As time goes on, and as I see more and more apps simply disappear off the face of the Earth when developers deem them no longer worthy of their time, I find myself switching over to software that&amp;#x27;s either backed by large corporations or open sourced, regardless of how clunky it might be compared to &amp;quot;designer&amp;quot; alternatives. My hope is that we soon find a way to collectively monetize the latter. It&amp;#x27;s simply awful that an app can just &amp;quot;pop&amp;quot; and take so many years of developer and user time with it.&lt;p&gt;(None of the above is meant to blame Vesper or even comment on the sustainability of the app economy. It&amp;#x27;s just my sad reaction as a user and, um, app enthusiast. And props to Gruber for the introspective and humble post-mortem.)&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;beta-blog.archagon.net&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;tool-reliance&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;beta-blog.archagon.net&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;tool-reliance&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elsurudo</author><text>They should open-source the backend (and hell, the front-end, too). That way you could self-host, or someone else can provide hosting.</text></comment>
<story><title>Vesper, Adieu</title><url>http://daringfireball.net/2016/08/vesper_adieu</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>archagon</author><text>This latest shutdown inspired me to write a blog post in response[1] when I first heard about it. Although the reaction is understandable, it&amp;#x27;s a shame that developers feel compelled to adopt a scorched earth policy when they no longer wish to (or are no longer able to) support their products. These indie apps are often marketed as beautiful, wholesome alternatives to grimy corporate or open source software, but how could I possibly rely on these products for essential tasks like note-taking if they&amp;#x27;re just going to disappear out from under me in a few years? The idea that software has a lifespan controlled by the developer is, in my opinion, toxic to the market. It&amp;#x27;s just one of the many things pulling the App Store down, and one of the many downsides of living in a walled garden.&lt;p&gt;As time goes on, and as I see more and more apps simply disappear off the face of the Earth when developers deem them no longer worthy of their time, I find myself switching over to software that&amp;#x27;s either backed by large corporations or open sourced, regardless of how clunky it might be compared to &amp;quot;designer&amp;quot; alternatives. My hope is that we soon find a way to collectively monetize the latter. It&amp;#x27;s simply awful that an app can just &amp;quot;pop&amp;quot; and take so many years of developer and user time with it.&lt;p&gt;(None of the above is meant to blame Vesper or even comment on the sustainability of the app economy. It&amp;#x27;s just my sad reaction as a user and, um, app enthusiast. And props to Gruber for the introspective and humble post-mortem.)&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;beta-blog.archagon.net&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;tool-reliance&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;beta-blog.archagon.net&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;21&amp;#x2F;tool-reliance&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>api</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s largely an artifact of the cloud dependency of mobile apps in particular. Every app has a bill someone must pay and a server or other cloud presence someone must maintain, patch, etc.&lt;p&gt;App stores also contribute in that an app without a dev account ceases to exist and can&amp;#x27;t be easily installed by anyone. So if the maintainer goes away so does the app.&lt;p&gt;In the PC era software could live forever. Even closed source PC apps can still easily be run today on emulators.</text></comment>