I received a long note this morning from Rael Bauer, of which the following is an extract. I'm sorry the future doesn't good for RightNote: sad news.

"As someone who has purchased the RightNote lifetime upgrade, I want to thank you for your support of the program. Back in 2017 (when I released version 4), I sent out a letter saying how the demand for this kind of application has decreased, and indeed this trend has continued. We do still get some new users, however at this point RightNote is mostly supported by existing users and renewals. So it seems there is still some demand for this kind of application, however in terms of visibility, it has kind of been eclipsed by the sheer popularity of big names like Evernote, OneNote and others. Nowadays, there are also many free and open-source note taking apps available, making it further difficult for people to find RightNote.

"While my intention is to continue developing RightNote - with the current level of income, it will be difficult for me to spend large amounts of time, working on large features, and at some point I will need to limit my efforts to smaller fixes and improvements."

Yeah, I received the same - and was surprised, as I had the impression that RN was quite popular. Obviously not (or not enough).

I am unsure how I feel about these Loyalty Licenses. And wonder if timing could have been better - asking for these donations roughly a month before Christmas could be problematic, as I would imagine for many users this is a time of the year with many other expenses.

Hopefully RN will stick around, I quite like the software.

Curious to hear the thoughts of other users!

His forthright email to the user base is breathtaking.

It's too bad, although I suppose not surprising.

I've been using RightNote as my main information manager for some time now. I've realized that I simply prefer "old school:" offline and native Windows software rather than ports of javascript apps.

In the old-school arena, RN is my favorite of the tree-based organizers, because of:

- multiple trees per file
- note-based, but the search can find individual paragraphs within a note
- the editor is really great; very pleasant to write in
- I use the task list note type to have multiple task lists sitting throughout the file near the other information they relate to
- I like and use the spreadsheet note type quite a bit
- I'm a programmer, so I also use the source code note type for storing code snippets
- the clipper is great

Also, I forgot to mention that even if the future of RN is only small fixes and improvements, that seems fine because to me it is already complete and mature.

There was the introduction of some project and task related features relatively recently, and I do hope that those continue to get fleshed out more.

While I was a Windows user, I very much enjoyed using RN – one of the top notes managers IMHO.

But competing against the likes of Obsidian etc. must be really, really hard.

Chris Murtland wrote:

Also, I forgot to mention that even if the future of RN is only small
fixes and improvements, that seems fine because to me it is already
complete and mature.

There was the introduction of some project and task related features
relatively recently, and I do hope that those continue to get fleshed
out more.

RightNote also has a truly wonderful tagging feature. If you search for a particular tag, it will show you the results but also show you the subsets, the number of documents assigned to the chosen tag and a different tag.

Steve wrote:

His forthright email to the user base is breathtaking.
————

Well, honestly Steve, I would have thought the same had it been the first time he’s done this, but unfortunately, it’s not.

Donovan - I don't quite understand your concern, but I may be missing something. Even if the RN developer has given this message before, perhaps it is even more relevant and bears repeating as, increasingly, newer apps such as Obsidian, UpNote, and others continue to take market share.

It's admirable that the developer is sticking with RightNote even though he isn't making much money from it and has very little chance - in today's market - of making much money from it in the future. Other developers, in his situation, have shut down shop.

I owe the developer an apology. Rightnote is still being developed which, yes, deserves support. I was thinking of Cintanotes which stopped development 3+ years ago and still sells a $40 Pro version. I wish I could edit the original, my apologies.

Thanks Donovan - I appreciate your clarification.

Daly

Donovan wrote:

I owe the developer an apology. Rightnote is still being developed
which, yes, deserves support. I was thinking of Cintanotes which stopped
development 3+ years ago and still sells a $40 Pro version. I wish I
could edit the original, my apologies.

CintaNotes works well and the developer still answers questions and handles support in the forum. I don't see a problem.

Donovan wrote:

I owe the developer an apology. Rightnote is still being developed
which, yes, deserves support. I was thinking of Cintanotes which stopped
development 3+ years ago and still sells a $40 Pro version. I wish I
could edit the original, my apologies.