I saw today a release notice for MailMate 1.10 and was reminded of the crowdfunding campaign in 2013 or so, for MailMate 2.0 development, that never seemed to actually deliver a product -- though MailMate is still around. Or the crowdfunding for Butler (v5 I think was the promise) that never delivered. Butler is still around, but hasn't had an update for years. Or the money raised by the NovaMind crew for new development, before it went bust. The fellow promised apportioned refunds, wrote us funders several long and mysterious emails, over the course of a couple of years -- explaining his banking problems, and then disappeared early this year. Novamind is now under new ownership and a subscription model.

I paid into all those schemes. Since none of them has paid off, I got to wondering if crowdfunded development has ever paid off.

I don't know of any, Paul. I had a similar experience to you with Novamind. I don't plan to repeat the experience - once bitten, etc etc.

A long time ago there was all sorts of activity to resuscitate Ecco Pro. As I recall, some included purchasing the code, fund a developer to create a modern Ecco, etc. All came to nothing. Ironically (and happily) IQ was developed without going the crowd funding route. Pierre is a perfectionist, but from my standpoint IQ is virtually complete, fully functional and very stable. Also ironically, a programmer named Slang developed an extension for Ecco which significantly added to its feature set. This was also provided to the Ecco community gratis.

Jon

Yes a lot of people revived money on crowdfunding platforms. Many if not most went bankrupt, ehem: got a lot of money via publicity etc etc. And went on to other money making schemes.



Crowdfunding latforms being clever commission based businesses themselves, no lose operations, like mafia bookies, making billions in profits and evaluations in last few years alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySxHud7abko

Phone browser posted my last post early, instead of paste a link. Here it is anyway, South Park explains crowdfunding well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxjQgP3ikZM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXOywGjYuIk

Thank you to all those numerous people who made others rich without delivering anything.

Thank you, come again! Next?

To take someone's money and then not deliver and not return the money is shameful. I don't know how those people sleep at night.

--

Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

Paul Korm wrote:

I saw today a release notice for MailMate 1.10 and was reminded of the
crowdfunding campaign in 2013 or so, for MailMate 2.0 development, that
never seemed to actually deliver a product -- though MailMate is still
around.

Mailmate has been updated regularly and is a great product. It may be that some of the other products you mention were poor to their customers, or just charlatans. But Mailmate has been updated about 5 times just in the past week. Regularly updated over the past few years. Yes, it does not have a 2.0 number. But that's just numbers. In terms of consistent improvements it is probably the most consist product I have in that regards.

If you have Mailmate be sure to turn on access to beta builds. There's a lot there under the hood!

No, I'm afraid in the case of MailMate it is not "just numbers". They ran an Indigogo campaign in 2013, raised a good chunk of change, and made specific promises about features in "MailMate 2.0" and what the contributors would receive.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailmate-2-0-the-email-client-for-the-rest-of-us#/


mathew wrote:

Mailmate has been updated regularly and is a great product. It may be
that some of the other products you mention were poor to their
customers, or just charlatans. But Mailmate has been updated about 5
times just in the past week. Regularly updated over the past few years.
Yes, it does not have a 2.0 number. But that's just numbers.\

Paul Korm wrote:

No, I'm afraid in the case of MailMate it is not "just numbers". They
ran an Indigogo campaign in 2013, raised a good chunk of change, and
made specific promises about features in "MailMate 2.0" and what the
contributors would receive.

Okay ... so what did you NOT receive? What features are not in it currently that were promised? I'm not seeing missing features on the page you linked to. Perhaps it's true, but I'm not sure what you're specifically talking about.

I didn't receive the software described on that page and that I paid $150 to support. I did not receive what I was promised on that web page. I, and everyone else, who signed up for that campaign was fleeced.

Sorry for the heat -- but it's kind of hard to find a defense for that developer's behavior.

I'm still very confused. I contributed a bit. Seemed to get everything promised and more. I've contacted the developer a few times over the years about problems or confusions. Always a great response in much less than 24 hours.

I don't know how to explain this as you really only give a vague response (in my mind). Did you ever contact the developer?

At any rate, I'm sorry about your bad experience. I'm just chiming in to say it's not universal. And vastly different from folks who actually close down shop.

Paul Korm wrote:

I didn't receive the software described on that page and that I paid
$150 to support. I did not receive what I was promised on that web
page. I, and everyone else, who signed up for that campaign was
fleeced.

Sorry for the heat -- but it's kind of hard to find a defense for that
developer's behavior.