Are there any knowledgeable folks here who know what the current situation at/with ConnectedText is?

I sent some bug reports in mid December and didn't get any response. I tried the forum in January - they just assumed that Eduardo was on holiday, though there's nothing to that effect on the website.

One month on, still nothing, the forum is as quiet as the grave ... - I don't know how long Brazilian holidays are, but is this a sign that I need to start looking for a replacement?

I tried to sign up to the forum a couple months ago. Never got approved -- kind of discouraging.

I checked in with Eduardo on Facebook and got an immediate answer. Yes, CT is still alive, but he's not been able to develop it at the pace he is happy with.

Steve Z.

Hmmm. I don't see that responding to bug reports has anything to do with development speed. If he can't even find time to respond to anything, looks like a problem to me.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I checked in with Eduardo on Facebook and got an immediate answer. Yes,
CT is still alive, but he's not been able to develop it at the pace he
is happy with.

Steve Z.

So are you hoping that by calling it "moribund" on a public forum you will get Eduardo fix your specific bug more quickly?

I find that tactic a bit troubling. I don't know Eduardo's circumstances, but I hazard a guess that CT is not his main livelihood but his labour of love that he has sustained on the side.

Considering what CT is, to me it is a very mature, very stable and perfectly functioning product. I run into zero bugs in my daily use, but maybe I'm not a particularly sophisticated user.

Still, to me ConnectedText is an absolutely amazing and mindblowing software and I haven't found anything that comes near it.

I consider Eduardo a genius for being able to come up with something like this, especially if he had developed this product in his spare time.

So the last thing I'd want is for him to be put off or discouraged by these sort of posts from pursuing this project any further.

If anything, this kind of community should be helping and encouraging individual developers to survive in the face of mega giants promoting mediocrity and the lowest common denominator across the world with their mega budgets.

When will a Google or Microsoft ever come up with a product that comes anywhere near what CT can do?

If Eduardo is charging for his product - which he is - then he has a commitment to support the people who have paid for it, and at a minimum I believe such support entails replying to emails and monitoring his own forum.

Since Graham, a paying customer, could not get a reply any other way, he's justified in coming here to post about it, and to inform prospective customers about his issue - which is relevant to their purchase decision.

It seems silly that Eduardo can reply (within minutes!) to a text on Facebook - presumably letting him know about this issue of Graham's - and yet not reply to Graham himself. I hope by now he has.

Dr Andus wrote:

So are you hoping that by calling it "moribund" on a public forum you
will get Eduardo fix your specific bug more quickly?

No. I'm not devious in that way. As it happens, the bug is irritating but not major. Before trying this group I tried Eduardo (twice), waited a month, then tried the forum and monitored that for a month. Even a quick response, such as "thanks for this - I'll check it out when I get a chance" would have sufficed, but there was nothing.

The point is, CT is such an important part of my workflow (I run a 20000 page website from it) that, if it is going to become unsupported, I need to know that sooner rather than later. It took two years to get the data into CT, so if one day there's a chance that some changes in Windows stops CT from working, and that nobody will be there to solve that, I need to take action now.

At least Steve found out that Eduardo is alive and kicking, and that's a relief.

If I were running a 20,000 page website I would be sure I would have more than a single to keep it going -- well tested options, ready for cutover at any time.

Except for rare cases -- such as Tinderbox's subscription plan -- when I purchased ConnectedText (or most software from "independent" one- or a few-person shops) I had no expectation of warranty or support or even someone reading Twitter direct messages. Luckily most independents are willing to interact with purchasers and do what they can to help. But the work is hard, innovative ideas become difficult to conjure, and the revenue always reaches a plateau where the return on incremental development hours becomes vanishingly small. I've worked with independent developers most of my professional life, and I would never fault a single one of them for backing away from the often-thankless job of pleasing customers. The CT site promises no support and no warranty. Whatever Eduardo has done in the past (and, perhaps, cannot do any longer) was a gift.

I don't often need support, but when I do, the developer of a commercial product gives it, without fail. Maybe I've just been lucky.

It's amazing to think that a developer would take money (subscription or otherwise) for a product and then ignore his customers, and especially bug reports from his customers. I don't care how "innovative" the product is; if it's commercial, then support should be implicit in the deal.

I have a feeling that fans of ConnectedText are making excuses for this developer that they would not make for other developers.

If there's no support for ConnectedText, then a disclaimer ought to be provided.

bobmclain wrote:

If Eduardo is charging for his product - which he is - then he has a commitment to support the people who have paid for it
It's amazing to think that a developer would take money (subscription or otherwise) for a product and then ignore his customers

Hi Bob and others !

Well, from a software developer's perspective, things aren't that simple...

In the good old days, paying 200-400 $ for a software (combined with the lack of available social networks), implied that the company provided customer support, sometimes free for a limited time, sometimes paying.

Nowadays, people complain at paying less than the equivalent of half a tank-full of gas for a product that has taken years to develop (CT sells for 40$). The software product is what was paid for and obtained, not support. Free support should be seen as just that... something free, and no obligations attached. A good company should provide the infrastructure for building a community around the product, as it is easy and not very costly to do.

As a software developer myself, I do my best to provide free and fast support, but it's a tough world out there and one must often do paying outside consulting work, just to keep the business running.

Have a great day !


Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz

As Paul and Pierre had said, it is unrealistic to expect lifetime around-the-clock support for a single payment of USD 39.95 from a single developer. That just economically doesn't make sense.

bobmclain wrote:

I have a feeling that fans of ConnectedText are making excuses for this
developer that they would not make for other developers.

Indeed, that might be the case, but for a good reason: and that is the exceptional responsiveness Eduardo had demonstrated over the years when it came to fixing bugs and implementing requests.

As it turns out, Eduardo has just posted on the CT forum, explaining why he has been unable to respond to requests in the past 3 months:

http://connectedtext.com/forum/index.php/topic,3461.msg16722.html#msg16722

Thanks for that link, @Dr Andus.

Embarking on a career as an independent developer is a brave venture. Some succeed, many fail, and everyone who tries has committed their self to the ball-and-chain that users can sometimes be. Witness the trollish comment from someone in the linked thread that essentially says "well, sorry you're sick, but your illness proves my point that I cannot rely on this developer and I need a way out".

I'm only a trial user of CT at the moment, but if I end up buying a licence (and I think I shall), then it would be on the distinct understanding and acceptance that there is an implicit risk that the dependency on a sole author/developer may mean that support/development may stutter from time to time, or even stop dead as natural life events occur. Nothing is certain.

And if the support/development did indeed stutter from time to time, or even stop dead - and for whatever reason - then I don't think I would be able to substantiate such an egregious lack of grace as to harass or berate the developer for it, or impugn his motives. I would have already accepted the risk. If he's still alive and well, I feel sure that such a committed person, as this developer has apparently demonstrated himself to be over the long term, would be doing his level best to get back into the driving seat.

Get well soon Eduardo, and God speed.
(Also posted to the CT Forum.)

Hmmm. I know there's a lot of love for Eduardo in this forum, and I'm sure anything I write is going to get slammed, even though, as a sole trader, I understand perfectly the situation he is in.

But I have to ask. Eduardo's arm is (has been? Will be?) incapacitated for three months. I wish him well. But it's been at least four months since support apparently ceased, and he was able to answer Steve's Facebook message in February, so I guess this is a new problem. If I were incapacitated in some way, but conscious, I would do everything I could to make sure I let my customers know what the situation was, even if it meant getting a neighbour in and telling them which buttons to press. Even if I'm just away I make sure people are aware of that - I owe my paying customers that much. Maybe it's just me and I expect too much of others, but Eduardo's support has always been good before, so when it suddenly ceases, it's very noticeable!

Also, almost everybody who's posted here has said they know and accept that support may be marginal when they buy from a one-man company, and that the software's future is not guaranteed. Sure, that's a given. So does everybody, before buying any software, send a message to the company asking how many people work for the company and what their health situation is? It would never cross my mind to do that, and there's nothing on the CT website to indicate the size of the company. There's nothing on my website either to show that I'm a sole trader, and I also use the royal we. If I fall under a bus, all my products die with me, and I'm open about that - if asked! - and have lost business because of it. But I have left instructions to ensure that my customers get to hear about this if that happens.

Spare me the backlash, if you would - I do wish Eduardo well and I appreciate his software very much - but I am suspicious that this isn't the full story. Maybe I read too many whodunnits ....

Graham Rhind wrote:

there's nothing on the CT website to indicate the size of the company.

But it does advertise the product as a "personal wiki system" not a business software. It was your decision to adopt it as your enterprise system. There is no business licence and no enterprise-level support promised with the purchase.

You have benefited from adopting a very reasonably priced personal software for your business, but that does not mean that you should expect enterprise-level support to come with that just for you, gratis.

If those are your needs, you could try to negotiate a special enterprise level service agreement for an additional fee.

As for the risk that you have taken on by adopting a small business's product, that was a risk for you to assess and evaluate and mitigate (due diligence).

Dr Andus wrote:

But it does advertise the product as a "personal wiki system" not a
business software. It was your decision to adopt it as your enterprise
system. There is no business licence and no enterprise-level support
promised with the purchase.

Enterprise system? No, that's your assumption. I'm a person, it's my personal wiki system. That it has grown to contain so much data is down to the software's quality and to my assiduousness :-)

As for the risk that you have taken on by adopting a small business's
product, that was a risk for you to assess and evaluate and mitigate
(due diligence).

Yes, which is why I asked the question: do others do that when they buy? As people, not as enterprises. Which I am not.

Oh, and by the way:

Dr Andus wrote:

You have benefited from adopting a very reasonably priced personal
software for your business

Another assumption (I have to say, you make a lot of them). I use CT to provide data online for free. I get nothing in return.

And finally (I hope),

Dr Andus wrote:

Graham Rhind wrote:
You have benefited from adopting a very reasonably priced personal
software for your business, but that does not mean that you should
expect enterprise-level support to come with that just for you, gratis.

I have never, in any post in this thread, suggested that I need support for CT, nor that I think CT has to be supported, nor that that support should be free, nor that it should be "just for me".

For the record, in my 38 years of using software I have never come across a single company, large or small, that did not support software which it was actively selling. That support varied in quality and quantity, and cost, but has always been there. So I do not subscribe to any notion that we should expect software that we buy, from whomever, not to be supported.

That said, every company withdraws software and support at some stage - from the largest downwards. That's normal. What is also normal is that the customer gets informed of this. Eduardo is perfectly at liberty to withdraw support at any time for any reason. However, if one doesn’t inform one's customers, one should expect negative feedback. If Eduardo had posted that he was unable to support CT or respond to communications, for the next x months, even without giving any reason, at least we wouldn't have been left in limbo.

And, to repeat, my attempted contact with him about CT in December last year was a bug report, not a request for support.

Guess I'm just willing to give an owner the benefit of the doubt that what they say about themselves is true.

The licence for Connected Text states:

"Technical support is available directly from the Licensor at no additional charge. When encountering problems, the Licensee must first visit the Web Site and read the information presented there to make sure the question or problem is not already answered there. If not, the licensee may write to technical support email address with his question in the English language."

There is little more that may be said on this matter.