Hi All,
I'm sure you're all wondering, why is this current change at Yahoo taking so long to fix?
By way of explanation we must first go back in time...
In early 2001 the Dotcom implosion was in full swing. Large companies were going bust right & left. No one was safe.
I'd always been keen on the idea of being able to have a local copy of my groups messages but now the need was considerably more urgent. Being an oldtime mainframe type programmer, I knew what I wanted from a group downloader but had no idea what to write such a thing in. I also didn't have the time so I approached a Russian outsource company and they created the first PG Offline from my specification.
They continued to maintain PGO until they folded in 2003 and in that fallout I did a direct deal with Alexander Nechiporenko (the lead programmer) so that he would continue maintaining PGO in his spare time. That arrangement served us well until 2006 when Alex got a more demanding day job and he had to give up maintaining PGO.
At this point I asked Matti Aladin to continue PGO maintainance on an ad hoc basis and that worked fine until this most recent problem. Matti was not involved in the original PGO development like Alex and although he is a perfectly competant programmer he doesn't have the full skillset Alex had to deal with PGO. Primarily because Alex wrote PGO around the skills that he had.
So, the upshot is that we were stuck when it came to fixing this latest problem.
As you will know from reading the forum posts, I've been asking around my programmer friends to find someone to pitch in. My friend Stewart volunteered but then suffered a pretty bad car accident. Now Stewarts protege Ewan has taken over.
Still, whats the delay here? Shouldn't this be going faster? Well, herein lies the rub... my original business model was to maintain the program using the funds from new sales. Currently PGO has about 500 users, new sales being about two or three a month. Thats OK for keeping up with small changes but not for the big stuff like this last change. The other thing I didn't expect when I started was to have to do so much maintainance. Since I started in 2001 I think there's been about 200 versions. Thats an average of one every fortnight for 8 years. You can't fund that from $75 a month.
The credit crunch has been unkind to quite a few people and I'm no exception. If I'd had the money I'd just have hired in an external contractor to go at this 8 hours a day till it was fixed. Currently I am depending on the good will of people (ie Ewan) to help.
I object to paying a licence every year for software that does what it did last year just fine. I have old versions of programs I've simply never upgraded because they work fine. Like Paint or CAD programs. But PGO isn't like those programs. It can't exist in isolation. When Yahoo says 'Jump!', I have to say 'How high?'. So something has to change. Either we need a lot more registrations per month or I'm going to have to make PGO a licenced product with a yearly licence fee. Nothing crazy. Maybe $10 a year.
What do you think?
Cheers,
Wilson.
Thank you, Wilson, for your continuing efforts to keep PG Offline working well!
For me PG Offline is a very valuable product because it lets me save all the group messages on my hard drive so that if Yahoo or a group owner capriciously or by accident deletes a group that I am especially interested in, then I will still have the messages to sort through to obtain information I may need. This happened to one of my favorite groups in March during the Yahoo changeover and all messages on the website were lost and were never restored.
Another big thing for me is the time-saving factor. I find it tedious and time-consuming reading messages on the website and trying to search for information. And if I have them sent by email I don't get past messages that were posted before I joined the group.
With PG Offline I can sort easily and search quickly for key words so I end up getting much more information out of the group and in less time.
Bottom Line: I would certainly be willing to pay $10 (or more) per year considering how valuable PG Offline is to me.
Pat
Dido. Many want a free ride but I have no objection to supporting it.
Brad
Santa Fe, NM
The program is valuable enough to me that I would pay $10 for it a year. Just being able to search the groups offline makes the program valuable. I am just surprised that more people do not use it. I try to send people here every chance I get.
Bill
Do it Wilson. I understand the software issues you're dealing with and a yearly fee for continued use of PGO makes perfect sense. If that's too much for some folks, there always is the Yahoo groups web interface people can use for free. Where do I send my $10?. I'd also be willing to contribute a little extra as a "donation" to try and get things back on track hopefully soon.
Terry
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the positive sentiments. It really does mean a lot to me.
One other thing I forgot to mention in my litany of woe is that the original code for PGO is nearly 10 years old as evinced by the fact that bits of it are so old that they're no longer supported (ie the regex_split command). I am informed that sooner or later it will need to to be re-written in something called "Dot Net". I've been given an estimated price for this that exceeds the original cost of writing PGO.
But, I'll worry about that later. If we can get the thing going again I will re-double my efforts to grow the user base. Hopefully to the point where I can afford a re-write.
Cheers,
Wilson.
I signed up just to leave this comment.
I bought this program a couple months ago, and it seems I began using it just shortly before it stopped working. Lucky timing. I downloaded all the messsages from 8 different Yahoo Groups, some of which have archives going back 10+ years. I work in a very specialized field, and the information in these messages is invaluable to me. Sure, I could just log into the group and search the messages manually, but PG Offline makes this process immeasurably easier, and I've been able to archive the messages on my own hard drive -- so if one of the groups goes belly up I will still have this important information.
I would be more than willing to pay $10 a year.
I agree that $10 a year is a bargain. Most software is priced by anticipated value to the user, so I would have expected this to be priced by the group. For example, $10 plus $1 per year for each group over five. However, pricing is up to you.
I would suggest that you add a donate button to the web site so that those of us that think that $10 is too low can contribute more. Paypal will do this for about $0.75 for a $10 donation.
See https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donate-intro-outside (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donate-intro-outside)
-Gabe Fineman
Washington, DC
Wilson, I really appreciated the way you were open about the problems facing PGOffline. Like others who have replied, I'd willingly pay 10 dollars or so a year. I notice it being out of action. Best wishes, Dennis aka Denos
I would be happy to pay the software is invaluable to me
Minnie
Wilson
I have been with you almost from the start
Like others who have replied, I'd willingly pay 10 dollars a year ;)
Your service is second to none
Dave In Canada
thats canadian dollars ;D
Add me to the list of people more than happy to pay a $10 annual maintenance fee.
And thanks for the progress updates!
Cheers,
Kevin -- Australia
Another long time user here, suffering badly from withdrawal symptoms.
Add me to the list of people willing to pay to guarantee a revenue stream
to maintain PGOffline software.
Steve in USA
Hi Wilson
Count me in for $10 a year
Ian
$10.00 a year is easily affordable for what we get. Let me know when to send it in.
Scott
Hi Wilson,
I'll be happy to pay $10 a year. The majority of new users would not balk at that either, I don't think--once they have tried the program and had a chance to see the value of it.
There just have to be way more potential subscribers than 500 out there. I'll do my part and talk it up more.
Deb
I'm willing to pay 10 dollars for a working program too. It's very important for me.
Quote from: gillylee on June 17, 2009, 12:33:33 PM
I'm willing to pay 10 dollars for a working program too. It's very important for me.
I would do the same Wilson. Count me in.
Julian
Quote
I agree that $10 a year is a bargain.
I would suggest that you add a donate button to the web site so that those of us that think that $10 is too low can contribute more.
I am absolutely willing to pay a subscription for this program. It's reasonable. Yahoo is always making changes that have to be addressed.
I agree also that even after that sub fee is paid, we should be given a chance to donate more to indicate just how important this program is. Not having it work, drives home that point to all of us. roga
I can't imagine any present user of your excellent utility objecting to a mere $10 annual fee, especially if it prevents this kind of downtime to occur again.
However I wonder how many of your subscribers have visited this forum to see what the hold up is, and I know I haven't received an email from you since you moved ISPs last September.
There is also the matter of marketing. I couldn't find any record of your software at Tucows for example, and the listing at Cnet doesn't have a single comment or review. That might be corrected by all of your present subscribers making a brief visit after you are back up and running.
http://download.cnet.com/PG-Offline/3000-12945_4-10219234.html?tag=mncol
When you visit you will see that 1 unlucky person downloaded last week!
I think we can agree there are quite a few Yahoo group users. You need to let them know about your product, and they will be hooked. The name PGOffline or Personal Groupware doesn't tell anyone that it has anything to do with Yahoo groups, so you might consider renaming or "rebranding" it.
I must confess I have been looking for another product of similar capabilities, and none I've tried even come close to yours. So...
Yes, of course I would be willing to pay such a user fee. However, we need to get past this crisis first.
I know nothing about writing software but can easily accept that it can be a difficult and complex process. If I didn't like this utility as much as I do I would simply move on. Instead, I wait. As another pointed out, you would think the Yahoo community would be all over your product. Perhaps with a bit of marketing you could make this less a burden for yourself.
Regardless, and not to be obnoxious, I did pay to use your software and have every right to expect it to function. I am losing patience and am learning to live without PG Offline. I hope you find a way to resurrect this truly worthwhile utility. But, until you do, to talk about adding additional charges isn't really appropriate. It smells of a hostage drama.
Best of luck,
Trawick
Hi Wilson
Anyone should appreciate that business models become outdated in the normal course of events.
From my point of view I have no problem with paying $10 a year for the continued use of this excellent program.
The group is used as an archive for my national association so a local backup is essential for our records.
Suggestion for a future re write:- Include a mass delete between specified post numbers. Deleting 100 posts a month using the Yahoo page by page method is an absolute pain in the ***.
Keep up the good work.
Alan
Hi Trawick,
Point taken about the hostage drama. The fixed version (when it arrives) will be freely downloadable. The $10 yearly licence will be discretionary to existing users. I sold this program on the understanding that there would not be a licence fee and I stand by that. Circumstances however dictate that something must change. Either I'll be able to continue due to the assistance of users or preferably, I'll be able to drum up enough new sales to make the licence a moot point. In the worst case scenario I will make the code public and I'm sure the open source folk will be happy to continue where I left off.
Cheers,
Wilson.
Definitely, $10 is a bargain. Anxiously awaiting new release. Your product is invaluable.
BTW, your integrity in your response to Trawick is admirable.
Dianne
I'd certainly pay $10 a year for PGO. It's one of the more useful programs I have on my PC.
Kurt
Quote from: Wilson Logan on June 13, 2009, 12:49:17 PM
In early 2001 the Dotcom implosion was in full swing. Large companies were going bust right & left. No one was safe.
I'd always been keen on the idea of being able to have a local copy of my groups messages but now the need was considerably more urgent. Being an oldtime mainframe type programmer, I knew what I wanted from a group downloader but had no idea what to write such a thing in. I also didn't have the time so I approached a Russian outsource company and they created the first PG Offline from my specification.
They continued to maintain PGO until they folded in 2003 and in that fallout I did a direct deal with Alexander Nechiporenko (the lead programmer) so that he would continue maintaining PGO in his spare time. That arrangement served us well until 2006 when Alex got a more demanding day job and he had to give up maintaining PGO.
At this point I asked Matti Aladin to continue PGO maintainance on an ad hoc basis and that worked fine until this most recent problem. Matti was not involved in the original PGO development like Alex and although he is a perfectly competant programmer he doesn't have the full skillset Alex had to deal with PGO. Primarily because Alex wrote PGO around the skills that he had.
So, the upshot is that we were stuck when it came to fixing this latest problem.
As you will know from reading the forum posts, I've been asking around my programmer friends to find someone to pitch in. My friend Stewart volunteered but then suffered a pretty bad car accident. Now Stewarts protege Ewan has taken over.
Still, whats the delay here? Shouldn't this be going faster? Well, herein lies the rub... my original business model was to maintain the program using the funds from new sales. Currently PGO has about 500 users, new sales being about two or three a month. Thats OK for keeping up with small changes but not for the big stuff like this last change. The other thing I didn't expect when I started was to have to do so much maintainance. Since I started in 2001 I think there's been about 200 versions. Thats an average of one every fortnight for 8 years. You can't fund that from $75 a month.
The credit crunch has been unkind to quite a few people and I'm no exception. If I'd had the money I'd just have hired in an external contractor to go at this 8 hours a day till it was fixed. Currently I am depending on the good will of people (ie Ewan) to help.
Let's do the math here. I'm personally quite surprised to hear the "500 users" figure. I figure that means at very least, 500 users who have paid to have the full version. I know I and a number of other people who have promoted the program to a lot of other moderators, in major excess of that number, so I'm surprised there arn't more of them.
I don't know how the price has changed over time, but the price is currently about $25 (rounded up for ease of math.) I think I paid $20 when I bought it. If EVERY one of those 500 users paid $25, that's only $12,500. Lets assume that there are more people who have paid for it in the past, as Wilson says "Currently there are.." so maybe he has some way of knowing active use, and is only saying the number of current active users as a way to potentially judge potential for 'subscription' income. So let's double that number... if say... 1000 people had purchased PGOffline at $25 that's still only $25,000 -- that's not a lot of cash for initial development, ongoing maintenance, support, maintaining the website, etc. over eight years. Based on these numbers, I'd say if he's gotten anything more out of the income from the program over and above the costs of creating and maintaining it, it's about a pizza and some beverages every now and then. So, this leads me to believe that this is NOT a major business concern for Mr. Logan; i.e. he doesn't rely on it, or need it to keep his family fed. Rather, as he says, he initiated getting the program created because he wanted and needed it. This is the most honorable of sentiments; filling a need.
That being said, since relying only on one or two developers is not working (currently), and since Wilson has already expressed a willingness to open source the project, I would recommend and highly push for him to do this now.
Quote from: Wilson Logan on June 18, 2009, 03:56:19 PM
The fixed version (when it arrives) will be freely downloadable. The $10 yearly licence will be discretionary to existing users. I sold this program on the understanding that there would not be a licence fee and I stand by that. Circumstances however dictate that something must change. Either I'll be able to continue due to the assistance of users or preferably, I'll be able to drum up enough new sales to make the licence a moot point. In the worst case scenario I will make the code public and I'm sure the open source folk will be happy to continue where I left off.
I do not think that going open source should be deemed as a refuge of last resort. I do not feel that going open source is antithetical to Mr. Wilson Logan's goals or process, and don't see why it can't or shouldn't be done now.
Let's tackle some issues:
Going open source should NOT mean abandoning the project.
Going open source also does NOT mean not being able to charge for the product, nor request donations.
Going open source does NOT mean not being able to pay a central developer and/or even earn a bit of extra profit in order to pay for that pizza and a beverage.
Clearly there are at least a number of people here who are willing to pay a small amount yearly to help ongoing maintenance of the project.
Let's be realistic however: going open source is NOT an instant magic bullet. There still needs to be people well-versed with the programming language you have chosen who are willing to look at the code and figure out what is wrong, what is not working, or how to improve things here or there.
If revenue is an issue, open source does NOT prevent you other possible revenue sources besides just requesting donations, or charging for the software package: You can still sub-license your code for inclusion in a closed-source commercial or private project, and all code submissions provided that people submitting additional code or corrections also submit the copyright to that code. You can offer paid, personal, support, over and above just the basic back and forth you already provide on the forum and email. You could sell geegaws and gimcracks (PG Offline buttons and tshirts, etc.) would anybody buy them? I have no clue.. but, hey, that doesn't stop you from trying to sell them! :D
What going opensource DOES, or MIGHT mean:
One clear things that open source means is possible inclusion of pre-existing code. What if there is another program out there that already handles parts of yahoo quite well and regularly tackles and updates the problems with the parts that change? Say, logging in, or interpreting the message boards, or whatever. You could possibly find a pre-rolled solution for one issue or another out there that could be integrated into PGOffline. (Most of the projects I am familiar with are mainly oriented around yahoo IM and yahoo chat.) If that code is licensed with a compatible license all you need to do is figure out how to integrate the code, and do it!
Well, I don't want to trot out a lot of POSSIBLE ways for the program to be improved or expanded other than "it just works"... I'm sure we all have our ideas and desires for things that PGOffline could possibly do, or ways it could get better. As I'm sure you could all imagine.. there are lots of possibilities... but perhaps that is best kept to a new discussion thread.
So, in summation, I would personally recommend a GPL license, which should allow you to integrate pre-existing GPL, LGPL, & BSD code.
Here is one site for references about open source and associated open source licenses and issues: http://www.opensource.org/
Thank you for your consideration, and for the program to begin with.
Wilson,
When I have had problems you have been most willing to answer most usefully for me.
Thank you for that.
I would also be willing to pay $10-$15 per year to keep this extremely useful program alive and kicking (Yahoo's ***). I know on a couple of my favorite groups the moderator pulled some of his many posts to put into a book and I would have lost all those w/o PGOffline.
The suggestions about going Open Source sound good. I don't have a lot of knowledge about it yet I do know I use Open Source stuff in Thunderbird with good results.
Finding a new name might be helpful in marketing as well. One thought I have is YOffline. You probably want to stay away from using Yahoo name itself.
Mary
Anyone on this list got ideas?
I would be happy to pay $ 10 per year as the program is invaluable for me. ;D
Bettina
Scrounged under the cushions for some extra change and sent my PGO maintenance fee to Wilson. You should have had an email with a link to PGO's Paypal account this afternoon (USA time).
Don't put if off and forget. Do it now.
Brad
Santa Fe, NM
Perhaps one way for us to generate cash flow to fund the ongoing upkeep and development of the program would be for those of us who use it to mention it in our Yahoo Groups when it is appropriate. I don't propose that we all start spamming the groups, but one could post something like...
"The answer to your question was in post 12345 from a year ago. I found it easily because I use software called "PG Offline" that downloads the whole group for me and lets me search for specific words, even when my laptop isn't connected to the internet. Using that software, I quickly found the answer to the question you posed, which is....."
Again, I don't propose that we all start constantly mentioning PG Offline, but rather that we mention it if it is germane to include in a post that we would be making anyway for other reasons.
.
Hi Epod,
Yes. Where appropriate I think it is legitimate to mention that PG Offline can be useful.
Thank you for bringing up this point.
Cheers,
Wilson.
There is the possibility(?) of taking PG Offline source into Open Source (sourceforge.net, for example). Eventually, that would help.
Unfortunately for the last poster -- yahoo's search has become much better and it's easier to search the groups (though I admit that there are occasions when I'm very frustrated by it).
Linda
Hi Linda,
I agree. The Yahoo search used to be a joke but its half way passable now.
Where I think PGO really scores is if you have 5 or more groups and particularily if they are on related subjects.
Having all the messages in one place beats dotting around Yahoo to read all the new ones. The 'Show selection as Digest' reading mode makes this a killer app in my opinion.
From a search perspective, the PGO search is fully featured and it lets you search across multiple groups simultaneously. So if you have 5 motorcycle groups you could search them all for references to 'sparkplugs' and indeed references to 'sparkplugs' written by 'Old Dave' for example.
PGO beats Yahoo into a cocked hat.
But I would say that :)
Cheers,
Wilson.
I mostly use the search in single groups. Oh well.
Have you thought about taking PG Offline into Open Source? Where contributors would help over the rough spots? Not an easy thing, I know.
Linda
Hi Linda,
The Open Source thing is just too frought with possible legal problems down the line if things got better and I wanted to take back ownership. I have heard of people doing this but that reeks. Whilst it may be legal, its just not right. So if I did go Open Source it'd be all the way or nothing. I'd be letting it go 100%. Like selling it, but for no money :)
Fortunately, it's something I won't have to do anytime soon.
Cheers,
Wilson.