Contribution Box on Website? : Apps On The Move

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Bill Day

started a topic over 5 years ago

I don’t know if it would work or be helpful, but maybe you should consider adding a contribution link to the website. I bet there are people — at least a few — who might be willing to support development in contributions larger than those provided for in the app. Most people just want to buy an app and be done, but maybe Beorg is a little different. I understand that you want to move in the direction of an independently attractive iPhone app, but Beorg is, in my view, also a tremendous service to the Free Software and Emacs community in a society that has become smart-phone dependent in a fashion unimaginable when Richard Stallman first developed Emacs. (Given the usual shelf life of software, it is amazing Emacs still exists, although I have never been able to find any usage statistics.) In light of the (relatively/sometimes?) tight-knit, supportive, and public-spirited nature of the Free Software community (despite the existence of a certain amount of rivalry, politicking, jealousy, narcissism, and backbiting among volunteers), you might find a number of people who would contribute not only for the direct and immediate benefit of a well-designed smart-phone app, but also in the interest of preserving and enhancing the value and continued viability of Emacs and org-mode, which despite their complexity and learning curve, are nevertheless extremely valuable tools in organizing the life and work of their users. I, for one, felt in the past that I had leave org- mode behind and search for alternatives for a number of years until the arrival of a satisfactory companion app for my phone. (I tried many alternatives to org-mode, some with collaborative advantages, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and more sophisticated scheduling that Emacs lacks, but in the end, nothing beats org-mode and Emacs for power, flexibility, and a wide range of uses that go far beyond scheduling. Maybe it would not yield anything, but you could probably find a service which would only charge you by taking a small percentage of each contribution,, so that there would be no continuing or upfront cost to you. (You could also, in addition, follow the Act Blue model and ask people to make a separate contribution to cover the transaction costs.) Just a thought in the interest of seeing Beorg — an essential and ever more useful tool, especially for people who rely on org-mode — flourish and continue to develop.

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Matthew Kennard

said over 5 years ago

Thank you for your post! Sorry for a delay in reply I've been on holiday the past week.

I have been thinking more about how to increase revenue from beorg. Currently most of my income is from freelance development work - and beorg revenue at the moment is only equivalent to 1 days freelancing per month. I would love to be able to spend more more time than I do on beorg and really accelerate development. Eventually I want to find a way to make beorg Free Software - however this isn't an easy proposition for an indie developer who needs to generate a decent income from my time spent during the working day. My dream is to get enough users on board who are not necessarily current Emacs and Org mode users - but users who just want a decent task management app for iOS and see the benefits of plain text. At that point making beorg available under a free software/Open Source license could then become a reality as I would have sufficient time to both manage it as an open source project and as a business.

beorg 3 is going to be released next month and will introduce subscription pricing. For users who don't want to subscribe I will continue to offer the ability to unlock individual extensions with a one-off in-app purchase. Alongside this is a new clocking/task timers extensions and I hope that beorg will then become attractive to a whole new group of users who will see the benefits of plain text time tracking.

Asking for contributions for a specific app outside of the App Store can be problematic (although not impossible) as Apple like to make sure they take their cut. So ideally I want to stick with the current in-app purchase model, however may review this in the future.

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Don Morrison

said almost 5 years ago

I think this is sort of related:

Thank You so much for doing Beorg, and being such a good citizen about making it freely available. It's cool seeing it get better over time, too. I just went to leave a tip, and on the way saw information about Premium, and thought "gee, an annual thing is a better way to support this, even if I don't currently have need of any of the extant extensions." I did have rather a lot of trouble figuring out how to sign up for Premium, though. I eventually found it in the forums, but it might be worthwhile making it more front and center somehow so folks who want to support your efforts can more easily do so.

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Matthew Kennard

said almost 5 years ago

I am going to look at improving how users are told about Premium (including existing users who installed beorg before Premium became available). Thanks for support beorg!