<p><pre><code> Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product,
build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company
and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your
particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success.
</code></pre>
From an end-user perspective, having software you use and rely on on a daily basis completely abandoned is not a successful outcome. The Sparrow devs may have won, but Sparrow users have lost.
The whole of the author's argument, and its weakness, in four words:<p>> It’s fine. It’s business.<p>Why is this inadequate? Because whether something is 'business' is not the beginning and the end of whether it is a good thing to do. It is merely one aspect.<p>The market is not a perfectly accurate and complete representation for all of human wishes and behaviour. So we cannot delegate to it as the final arbiter on questions of what should or should not be done.<p>No, the whole issue is really the other way around. What currently happen to be the rules of the business game are not grounds for telling people what they should or should not want. What people want is grounds for examining how the market and business are failing to work well -- and then pondering how that could be improved. That seems the more reasonable, just, and interesting avenue to pursue.
"Cue predictable squawking on the internet."<p>And cue predictable anti-squawking squawking on the internet. The internet is a place for communication and people are allowed to express themselves. It's not entitlement. The entire goal of a software company is to make software people love so much they will complain when you take it away.<p>Congrats to Google for a smart talent buy, and the Sparrow team for catching the notice of Google and building something people will miss.<p>Now there is a clear market gap for someone else to reinvent email clients. Again.
He's got a point, but it feels like nutpicking to me, and a bit of attacking a straw man.<p>I don't think sensible people are arguing that the Sparrow team don't have a <i>legal right</i> to shut down or sell their company as they please. The discussion is over something subtler.<p>When I'm building something for my users, I see myself as in collaboration with them. And it feels the same to me on the user side. I'm not legally obligated to take an hour to write up a good bug report for a product I like. And I'm certainly not entitled to my usual hourly rate when I file the bug report. I do it because we're up to something together; capitalism is just the mechanism by which we make that sustainable and equitable.<p>I'm not a Mac user, so I've never even seen Sparrow, much less used it. But in their shoes, I wouldn't have just left my users in the lurch. I would have tried to find somebody to take over the product, or open-sourced it. Not because I was obligated, but because service to the users was the spirit in which I would have started the project.
I don't really like the tone of this article.<p>I think the sparrow team did what was best for them, and congratulations to them for a successful exit. Goodness knows I'd do the same if I were in there position.<p>I think what's most disheartening about these types of situations is that as a consumer they make me less and less likely to support startups. Sure, a team like this doesn't "owe" you anything -- you purchase their software and that's the end of the transaction... but if you're going to invest your time and energy into learning, adopting, and loving their product/ecosystem you want to believe that it's got a future. It's a shame that the frequency of these acquisitions (and subsequent shutdowns) erodes consumer confidence in small companies that make great products. Why bother getting yourself hooked on a new product if there's a decent chance it won't be around in another year?<p>To be fair, Google's current culling of its products shows that this isn't just a small company problem. But I have confidence that GMail will still be around for the foreseeable future. Same for Apple Mail. Same for Outlook. They might not be as good, but at least you can be confident that if you learn their ins and outs it they'll probably still be around in two years.
I think people are frustrated about this and feel betrayed because they were a great indie dev team that made a great product and the users loved them and their product and supported them by purchasing and recommending their product from the beginning, despite the lack of features. Customers trusted them because they thought that the indie dev team will continue to be focused on improving the app and creating versions for other platforms (iPad, Windows etc) and now, boom, it's over.<p>The author of the blog post focuses too much on the money. It's not really about the 10 or 3 bucks. I was an early adopter of Sparrow and I literally jumped out of my chair when I read that the iPhone Sparrow app was released, because that almost completed my email workflow. Now Sparrow plays a big part in my workflow and I KNOW that the iPad app will never come out and that they won't release any new features or improvements for new iOS and OSX versions. I'm not frustrated about paying those 13 bucks or so but because I will have to stop using an app that fits so well in my workflow and start looking again for alternatives. Which is not a tragedy in the end and as a developer and startup enthusiast I'm actually pretty happy for the Sparrow team.<p>We tend to get too attached to these startups and it's painful to see them get acquired by the big players but it looks like it's a trend. It's getting harder and harder to be an early-adopter, to support a product/startup with money, data and feedback, to see it be awesome and then to watch it die.
Quick survey: Who paid for TextMate? Who also feels indignant about TextMate 2’s as-yet non-existence?<p>It’s intriguing to see the difference in reaction between Sparrow’s decisive EoL and the drawn-out, <i>de facto</i> EoL that TextMate experienced.<p>I'd just like to remind you all: Sublime Text 2 came along, and most of you who were using TextMate switched to that, right? You’ll survive. Just stop claiming a non-existent right to the productive output of another human, because once upon a time you bought something from them. You still have the version of Sparrow that you bought, and that’s what you paid for, whether you thought that’s what you were buying or not.<p>N.B.: I was tele-raised by Judge Judy, I don’t take kindly to irrational sentiment or feelings of indignation.
Software breaks, sometimes very easily. Who knows if the next OS update or 3rd party add-on will screw something up? Maintenance is important, and unlike some other products you can't just look around your city and choose from 10 or 20 businesses to do a repair. With a lot of software you're screwed unless <i>one person</i>, the author, can keep it working.<p>I'm not sure this is entirely clear to the average person buying software. The problems that software can solve may not "stay solved"; they depend on their entire ecosystem to be stable solutions. <i>You aren't paying $10 to obtain something.</i> You are paying $10 to <i>temporarily solve a problem</i>.<p>That's a little unusual among products that are sold. For instance, if you buy a toaster, the infrastructure dependencies are pretty low; there isn't much risk that the voltage in your wall will change and prevent the toaster from behaving the way it was designed. Not only that but there are many regulations governing how such a product can be made, minimizing the chance that people buying toasters will have to replace them every 4 days. If you buy an appliance, it tends to last. But the reasons for appliances lasting don't really apply to software. It's bad for consumers to pretend that it's the same type of purchase.
He fails to address the point, which I have mentioned on HN before, that <i>aqui-hires gradually erode the confidence of future customers</i>.<p>True, there will be no shortage of indie developers. True, Sparrow didn't owe anyone updates for life.<p>The problem is that each acquisition reduces trust in the minds of potential customers. It's more the fault of Google and Facebook but I still believe its the core problem.
Some incredibly valid points in here, but I think there's a middle ground.<p>While Matt is perfectly correct that when you pay for an app, you get the app you paid for. But there's a very well known unwritten suggestion that you'll get updates for 1-2 years. At which point probably they'll release a new version, and you'll pay the upgrade fee. It's how most software seems to work. So, people technically don't have the right to complain - there is a lot of sense in why people are upset. And there's no real explanation from the developers that buying their software wasn't going to lead down that route.<p>I think the biggest issue about the acquisition for me is the fact Sparrow bled the product dry a week ago by having a sale and then doing this. It seems underhanded.<p>And for the record, I also find it a shame that they've been acquired. I'm happy for them to be given big wads of cash, but in a selfish way I would have wished to seen them tackle more problems in their way - producing quality results. I have a bad feeling as we've seen again and again, we won't be seeing anything from Google with the calibre that they did with Sparrow.
I don't think most people are outright antagonising Sparrow (except perhaps for the fire sale last weekend, which seems a bit scummy.)<p>Most of the posts regarding this issue seem more to bemoan the landscape of the software industry at this point, where even if you have a well-selling, consumer-facing, high-quality app with critical phrase, it's still a rational decision to take a buyout from a tech giant even if it means shuttering your app.
Google beat us, the users, and Sparrow let them. Google is better at aggregating wealth than either we or Sparrow was.<p>That's the problem. Now, a solution.<p>What I think would have been interesting was an auction. Us against Google. Google bids first. $25MM. Then, in a Kickstarter fashion, we could bid against that, within a certain timeframe. I think this kind of "end user buy-out protection clause" should be a standard for startups like Sparrow, looking to both assure the userbase that they will not be pulled out from under them, and their own team that they'll get a comfortable payout no matter what.<p>Granted, a weakness of this plan is that if the consumers win the auction, what is to prevent someone else from making another offer immediately? The auction becomes something like an extortion scheme at that point. To deal with this the consumer side of the auction is time-limited - if the consumers win the auction, then product improvements are assured for, oh, 3 years.<p>The fact is that there are still rather obvious error modes. What if the developers sit on their hands? What recourse would the consumer bidders have? The simple answer to this, of course, is "very little." The burden will be on the team to show that they would like to continue to work on the project if the consumer side makes it make financial sense.
The one by Cole Peters is the most ridiculous. People work to make money, among other reasons. There is nothing wrong with that. We don't begrudge the accountant, lawyer, or other people in other fields for making money. There is this group of people in our world that looks down on the notion of making money or have no desire to make anymore money than is required to live very modestly in a third world country. Once I was on a thread on HN debating wheher like $75K a year was "FU money."<p>It's fine to have these views but it is very much out of the mainstream and I think it makes technical people in our field look silly to the public or technical people in other fields.<p>Now yes there are good and bad ways to conduct business, perhaps it's not good for Google to essentially abandon the software but I don't feel anyone should begrudge the Sparrow team for going for a payday they thought was worthwhile. Someone says there was a "firesale" last weekend, I would say if they knew they were about to strike a deal and made an aggressive marketing strategy, there probably is something a bit wrong about that but I don't know any of the facts regarding that issue.
The reason we are angry is that the Sparrow founders (and investors and board) failed to give enough of a damn about their customers, placing shareholders before customers.<p>They have damaged their personal reputations forever with this decision.<p>They placed money over karma, dollars over doing awesomeness, cash over changing the world.<p>I feel they just missed an opportunity to grow Sparrow to dominate email across all platforms - an opportunity worth a lot more in both karma and dollars, and an amazing journey as well.<p>In short a poor decision made for the wrong reasons.<p>They may help Googke change the world of email. But they have messed up a beautiful opportunity to do so themselves and will now disappear into the anonymous Borg.
This is probably the smuggest smug piece of smug literature that ever smugged. Like I couldn't read through this properly; the smug was hurting my brain and making me forget how to read. The whole blogpost read like he just got in an imaginary argument in the shower and won it by being as condescending as possible and throwing down those putdowns as he did just then.<p>The only way that this could have been better if it was a facebook screenshot of him replying to someone who's upset with acquisition by writing a large essay about how "GPL will literally kill your family" and other ad-hominems, and then top it off by liking his own comment.
"Sparrow’s acquisition is a success story. Indie devs make a great product, build a customer-base, and are rewarded with a buy-out from a big company and they get new jobs with that company. It might not be what your particular goal or end-game is, but it is a success."<p>So when you boil it down "mak[ing] a great product, build a customer-base, ... are rewarded" with a job at google.<p>Therefore building the product was, essentially, like a job interview.
Using your vast and deep pockets to terminate a threat vs. competing against it simply doesn't sit right for many HN readers. There are some parallels here to the outcry against patents-as-business-strategy.
Definitely some odd responses to this acquisition.<p>1. The sparrow developers decided to accept a buyout offer. That's their business (literally). Should they accept less money to keep their users happy?<p>2. Yes, Google bought them and is killing off their product because of strategic reasons. That's how huge corporations work, if Google/Microsoft/Facebook/etc. didn't do that they would be at higher risk.
Sorry if this is a considered a highjacking but I'm curious as to why this post is racing to the top and the post of an active HN member(cpercva) did not get enough attention to make the front page. Colin's post is also from the perspective of an independent developer.<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4274016" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4274016</a>
I have a pretty strong reason to be pissed off by the abandonment: there is an <i>incredibly annoying</i> bug[1] in Sparrow, that has been there since launch, and now I'm sure will never be fixed. Am I "feeling entitled" to have the software I bought work correctly?<p>I really don't see the point in this article. He is mad at everyone because they don't share his lax attitude? What is he trying to prove? Gist of the article: <i>they're winners, we are losers</i>.<p>[1] when you switch inboxes/labels the email list starts at a position seemingly relative to the previous' inbox size. That means almost every time I switch to my main inbox I'm sent back to 2009, and have to scroll all the way back up.
Just a few points:<p>1. The cost is NOT $10, it was $10, a couple of hours of setup, including filtering my backups, working around two bugs and filing them with Sparrow, following up with more details.<p>2. I was more annoyed with the whole "Woo hoo, we got ours! Oh, and we're killing that product that's become an integral part of your life. But aren't you happy for us!" announcement, than the actual sale. Well that and the last minute sales push. That was just shitty.<p>3. According to RescueTime, I spend about 6 hours a week using Sparrow. I don't think it makes me a "jealous, confused teenager" to be a little pissed that it just dumped me :-)
I'm happy for the Sparrow devs and that they have been able to exit for a (presumably) attractive enough sum. What I do feel sad about is that I think they sold too early. It feels like the Sparrow team stopped on first base, when the ball is sailing out of the park.
To me, it boils down to this: Sparrow is a success story because its acquisition will make tens of teams try to imitate it and innovate further and we'll end up with some even more amazing email clients. (hopefully some of them open source :)
>Sparrow worked, in part, because it wasn’t open source. No, Firefox isn’t a counterexample - it’s funded by a huge corporation.<p>Google? Isn't that more of a mutually beneficial business relationship than funding? It was my understanding that Google pays Firefox to be its default search engine, which drives traffic to Google.<p>Similar business models might be possible for other open source projects. For example, I've contemplated open source forum software which would display ads benefiting the person running the forum 80% of the time, and ads benefiting the author of the software 20% of the time (or whatever).
We are told that if you don't pay for a product than you are the product.<p>So when we pay for a product and then get sold (Google wouldn't have bought the team if they didn't have any customers), it does feel disappointing.
Matt Gemmell has always insulted people and this is no difference. It's okay that Sparrow was acquired but his blog posts, along with Benjamin Brooks, is why I never pay attention to it. It may be intelligent but it's riddled with hate. Most times it is directed at the customer or theists.<p>He never places the blame on devs like Culture Code who promised Things sync but were quicker to release an iPad app to make more money.
I could not possibly agree more. This bunch of butthurt is just the latest in a long, LONG history of self-entitled Apple fanboys whining that someone found their super secret clubhouse.<p>There is no grand conspiracy. They weren't hired because Google was "AFRAID" that their software was "TOO GOOD" and was somehow a "THREAT" to their bottom line. That argument reeks of that tired old "there's a technology that lets cars run on water, but THE GOVERNMENT covered it up BECAUSE OF OIL!!!1"<p>Google makes popular mail service.
People want a better UI.
Third-party team develops a client with a better UI.
Everyone loves the new client.
Google hires the team that made the new client.<p>If your first reaction wasn't "Oh neat, now they're going to make the core gmail webapp more like Sparrow!", and was instead more along the lines of "OH NO, now EVERYONE will get to use what I've been enjoying!", then you are a fanboy. There is literally no other meaning.