On the business of e-mail clients / Sparrow

The "it is working right now, you didn't lose anything" line keeps popping up.<p>What if I'm not completely happy, it doesn't work as expected, there are bugs to be fixed, performance to improve? And what happens when there is a major change in the OS that requires significant updates to continue working?<p>Is bringing the SaaS model to the desktop a solution? It's only going to make things worse for users, now you don't even own a copy of what you bought; if it's gone, it's <i>really gone</i> and you're never going to see that software again. Companies have thrived on "one-off" sales for decades. Want more money? Develop something new, the work is already paid off.

As a user of the software, I don't much care about the successes of the developers if they come at the cost of the tools I've invested time into switching to.<p>Sure, this may be a great deal for the developers, and that's fine and good. But that doesn't change the fact that it still harms everyone they convinced to switch to their product. They could have done like Sofa and transferred ownership of the existing products to another developer, or open sourced it to allow others to pick up where they left off. If they had done that, I would've still had a bit of respect for them. Killing development entirely on a product used and loved by many is stupid and, while within their moral rights, a bit of a dick move.

Offtopic: made me proud to see gist.io on a submission domain.

I think Matt Gemmell put it really well: <a href="http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/" rel="nofollow">http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisitio...</a><p>"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. I’m really happy for them."<p>I personally think that you need to give it a shot and try to monetize your product but if after some time you find out that this is a harder and thougher nut to crack than you thought - you better rally some bigger force behind you, pivot, sell or just give up.<p>The guy at sparrow decided to sell and this is a very legitimate exit strategy.

Why not just charge for upgrades? People keep talking about one-time payments as if that's the only choice.