Phil hasn't fallen off the face of the earth

[phildow]

I short update amid what might seem like a falling off the face of the earth.

Behind
I am behind. That means I'm behind my own deadlines, I'm behind answering emails and I'm behind responding to the forum. Catch up happens but is never complete.

Selling Journler?
I have begun entertaining the idea of selling Journler. It is ever more apparent that I am having a tough time of keeping up with the manifold facets of running this bad boy. It's difficult to say what the right thing to do here is, but if other developers could offer more to Journler and Journler's users than I am currently capable of, then I would consider it.

[Synth01]

You have an AWESOME program.

It seems your only choices for such a powerful and in-demand application are:

Find partners and incorporate yourself (which I would vote for since you seem to have such a good creative ability with the program; I'd trust you with it. I mean, you created it!)

OR

Sell it.

It would be nice to see more development. If it were sold, I would want it to be sure to be kept up well, though, and I'm afraid if it got sold that might not happen.

I guess it just depends on your ideal working life and what you want to spend your time doing.

Thanks for all the great work up until now!

[skromta]

My point of view: if you can't give Journler the attention you think it deserve and you feel bad about it - then sell. You will probably find that this makes your life less stressful.

That said, if you do decide to sell please make sure that the buyer is a "responsible" developer ... don't just sell it to anyone, make sure that the buyer is someone who actually care about Journler and has a clear plan of how Journler should be developed in the future.

An excellent example of such a "transition" is when Red Sweater bought MarsEdit.

[NovaScotian]

Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software started with an app called FastScripts that I used extensively for quite a while (now using Scriptlight). He bought MarsEdit (mentioned above) and Black Ink (for doing on line crossword puzzles) and I use both of them. Judging by my experience with his apps and with his excellent followup to problems with FastScritpts, MarsEdit (which Gruber uses to publish Daring Fireball, for example), he'd be an excellent potential partner or buyer.

There are a couple of things to consider, however, Phil. If you're finding yourself bored with Journler (understandable since you've slogged on alone for several years now starting in Europe) then selling makes perfect sense -- you can get on with something else. Although we'd all prefer that the transition lead to more development, that's not really your responsibility to determine.

Another option is to partner with someone like Jalkut continuing Journler and Lex development but bypassing all the business and support functions in return for a salary and a share in the action. Salaries are nice for the sense of security.

As an aside (a model in a way) I ran an engineering consultancy for about 10 years; for the first several as a one-man show. Then one of my major clients who wanted guaranteed access offered a retainer -- dollars per month for guaranteed time on their problems every Tuesday and Thursday with potential for more; an amount I could live on for a month or so if things grew cold. At that point, for the first time, I hired a secretarial service to look after all the bumpf, and I hired an accountant (as a client of his, not full time) to do the books and pay my taxes on the basis of time and expense sheets from the secretarial service. Life was good; I solved problems for a large list of clients and someone else looked after the crap (for money, of course).

You're a creative guy, Phil. Leverage that.

[justG]

Red Sweater Software is awesome but Daniel is also a new father. I'd really like to see *more* aggressive development of Journler, not less. I don't know who'd be a good fit, but I'd hate to see the application fade away. *twitch* I'm far too *twitch* dependent on it.

[NovaScotian]

I agree justG -- Daniel is busy (and sleepless), and we don't know whether Phil is burnt out by the bumpf, distracted by something (or someone) else, or just tired of it all.

Having said that, and as a constant user of Journler, I have to say that if it never moved an inch from where it is now, I'd probably stick with it for quite a while. It satisfies virtually all my journalling needs as is.

What I'll really miss is Lex.

[dale.francum]

Phil, I think you have a lot of options here, because this is the best note-taking app out there for OS X. I do think you need help though, because it's a big project, you have a lot of ideas, and to be blunt, Journler has some frustrating bugs that aren't being addressed.

I purchased a Journler license and have been using it heavily for the last several months, but I'll be honest in saying that I shopped around a bit a few weeks back, just because I feel like the Spotlight problems hold me back. But -- there's just not another app that matches this one for what it does. It is the best, for now.

[Orenhy]

I thought the whole idea of moving to the purchase policy was to get the manpower to deal with journler. Obviously the question is how dear is this project to you. As you know we see it in a very good eye.
In our perspective we would like to see this bad boy get the attention it needs, and it is hard for us to believe someone else could deal with it better than you. It's not a crime to ask money for something you make, on the contrary, i urge you to give it one more push, it's worth it.

On a side note, wanted to mention i use journler for academic use, note taking in class and organizing all the ppt's pdf's spreadsheets and what not. the transition to journler came after a great free program called schoolhouse 2 was suddenly stopped being supported by its programmer, and it was right after realizing it had a major crashing bug for leopard users, (such a time to ey?), so first of all that leaves quite a viod for students that you could, and in my case have, filled, i think journler offers more than schoolhouse and i'm sure more will agree.

[MikhailT]

Phil,
I have to be honest here, I think it is not fair for the people who is going to buy licenses from now on only to find out that the developer is no longer interested or have plans to sell the program to unknown developers.


While i love Journler and paid for it as well as recommending several students to buy it for their school, i would not have done that if i knew what you just said. I am no longer confident in this program and can no longer recommend this to people to buy this program because I can not tell people to pay for something that is going to be sold to another company without knowing what is going to happen in the future.

I understand you are falling behind and having a hard time but you can not keep telling people that you are going to charge for 2.6 if you are not going to release it. That is just misleading and frankly I am a bit upset here because I saw and love what you did with the 2.6 interface.

Get a couple of freshly grad student to work under you, you have the vision and ideas, they can handle the coding. Some will be glad to work for free if it meant extra reference to their resume or portfolio.

[Douger]

Just to add to the notes above, I would not be surprised if Apple wouldn’t like to take a run at an acquisition of Journler.

I think everyone is surprised about the success that MSFT is having with OneNote, now that the product has been re-tooled for business and research, away from from High School note taking. People on the Windows platform rave about it. (I just laugh and tell them how much better Journler is, and remind them that they can’t have it because they are PC, and not Mac...I know, it's evil...)

There is nothing comparable to OneNote in the iWork suite and OneNote is showing that there is market for these types of applications, probably a big one. Given the preponderance of researchers and academics in Apple’s target market segmentation it seems like this gap in product type would be on their mind.

Just a thought....

[ratliff]

I don't develop software, so I don't know what it's like to be an independent developer, but from reading forums here and elsewhere I can guess. It seems very much like the situation of any artist: You put astonishing amounts of work into something because you love it and you want it to be great, but until you put it out in the world there's something a little fake about it.

The difference between artists and software developers is that by the time an artist attracts enough critics to, say, populate an online forum (I'm NOT talking about this particular forum; flame off, please), the artist is at least managing to sell her work, because if she wasn't selling people wouldn't bother to criticize her.

But a developer has to endure the slings and arrows of the entire world from the word go, even before the work has had a chance to be refined. Because everybody has an opinion. (Okay, fine, democracy is a wonderful thing. On the other hand, I give you Jerry Garcia: "What's all this noise about 'people's music'? There wasn't any people sitting around with me when I was learning to play guitar.")

And maybe just as bad: people who LOVE the software, really they do, so much that they trumpet it far and wide, always mentioning that it's FREE, instead of that it's donationware, because really, what's the difference? What kind of chump would pay for software he didn't have to?

So then you try to come up with a price that makes sense and you realize that to make a living from it you'd have to charge everyone 115 dollars, and THAT doesn't make any sense, so you're screwed.

I empathize completely. I feel the pain of independent developers. So I ALWAYS pay for independent software if I use it past the trial period, including making donations. Yes, I'm that guy who voluntarily pays for software, and I'll tell you what, I'm not a developer or a sysadmin, I'm a WRITER, so I don't make a lot of money, but I don't mind paying for work that has been well and carefully done.

So, no regrets. But being loyal to independent developers is kind of like saying you're only going to date artists just out of college: if what you really want is a long-term commitment, you're going to get your heart broken a lot.

I'm not blaming the developers; like I said, I empathize completely. But when I'm trying to find an app to essentially dump my whole life into -- as I am now, AGAIN -- I find that more and more, instead of looking at the subtle design or the elegant execution, I'm checking out the size of the bank behind it. Is this software I can stay with for the rest of my life? Or is it always going to be late to dates because it doesn't have a car and then ask me to loan it money when it gets there? (Again, I'm not talking about Phil; I'm riffing here.)

Mori did exactly what I wanted it to, and I loved it, and it wandered off into the abandonware wilderness and broke my heart. So I exported all my stuff back out and started looking around again.

So there's Journler, which is clearly a labor of love and which does a LOT of things I like and a few I could live without, which I now find may be sold off, for completely understandable reasons. It might get sold to someone who really understands and appreciates it and does remarkable things with it. Or it might get sold to the guy who bought Mori. (Sorry, I'm bitter.)

(On the other hand, there's Yojimbo, which doesn't listen to me and has to have things its own way and is a terrible compromise, BUT which will probably be bankrolled from here to eternity by BBEdit. Actually, it seems to be losing steam, too, so maybe this is a false choice.)

I'm not complaining, really. I'm just remarking on the fact that, as hard as it is to be an independent software developer, sometimes it's also pretty hard to be an independent software advocate.

Peace out.

[Linada]

Phil, i just wanted to say, i love Journler. You have created something that at first sight might look rather like a lot of other PIMs and journaling programs, but is actually very very unique.
I don't know what's going on in your life at the moment. Busy, burned out, behind, or one of life's disasters. Point is, stuff happens. To all of us. Most of us using journler are probably either very creative, or productivity nuts or both, and i am sure a lot would love to help you out in any way shape or form.
If you sold Journler i personally would be very worried whether it would stay Journler, or turn into something else. It's IMO a good solid program. Users always want more bells and whistles, but they are not urgent. They are not gaping holes that make or break it.
Personally and selfishly i hope that you do continue, at whatever pace you can manage.

[ptone]

zoiks,

oh man, I came here searching for a status update on this project, and basically find this post from the author confirming that, for all intents and purposes, Journler is now abandonware.

While I think it is the best program in its class - if it is not in any form of current development, then its not a good platform for me to be storing some of my lifelong notes and resources. Thankfully it is based in the FS and is very scriptable, so exporting won't be a nightmare.

I'll be sticking with it for a while to see what sorts out, but I'm also going to have to start considering other apps - do people have any runner-ups they can suggest?

-P

[NovaScotian]

In a PM, Phil has said that he has every intention of completing 2.6, and at that point he'll consider his options.

[justG]