Mastodawn

On the philosophical side of things: with the release of Rad Reader I'm trying out a new model of sustainable software production.

This tool has had a lot of thought, time, and care put into it, I would like to continue doing so with this + other projects. Crafting tools is made possible by the food I eat and the shelter I habitate, and I can't pay for either of those with Github stars or toot likes.

So the model I'm trying out with Rad Reader is this:

1. Release the software with a paid price
2. Common the software and its source code once a number of sales has been reached, converting it into free software in perpetuity from that moment on

I don't know how/if it will work out, but I *am* excited to explore new models of making ends meet while also making new software happen :)

https://cblgh.itch.io/rad-reader

Final: If you want a lifetime license (with no accounts and no subscriptions) for a calm #rss reader on Windows or #linux (~6MB binary), 10+ themes with liveloading of your theme tweaks + ability to make your own, a reader that is capable of reading the feed bundling format .opml and with built-in automatic export of your feeds *back* to .opml to prevent lock-in and LOTS of other nifty bits

Well then, please consider buying Rad Reader! Thank you!

Rad Reader by Alexander Cobleigh

a cross-platform RSS reader

itch.io

https://itch.io/t/2990644/michievous-feeds-and-other-goblins

for anyone kicking the tyres and coming across any rare, wonky feeds here's the thread over on itch where you can let me know about those + other things to fix

thank you for taking the time to try things out and/or buy Rad Reader!!! 😊 🖤

Michievous feeds and other goblins - Rad Reader community

HELLO ALL RAD READERS ! We *just* released and it seems people are having a blast exploring websites and feeds! Let's use this post to gather any bugs you have found hidden under rocks, feeds that mig

itch.io

Bad Diode Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh looks very nice! I’ll try it once I’m back home. Curious to see how this model works out for you, as someone that is also invested in open sourcing my projects but also wants to eat from time to time :P

@bd thank you! 😊 and yes! i had that & you in mind when i was asking you questions about Stepper's model in venice! :>

we both gotta have bread/paella money amirite

Arch

Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh This looks really cool. My one request would be some sort of support for some common RSS feed sync servers like FreshRSS, but I could honestly live without that because of the OPML importing/exporting.

Great work, will consider picking this up :3

@arch thank you arch! i will look into the feed sync servers you mention :)

Ruby Jul 10, 2023

@[email protected] does it handle html and css well? I use those in my personal feed sometimes and would love another tool to recommend

@rubymayvalentine well basically yes! it only shows the titles of posts and offloads the reading experience to where people will be reading / annotating (the browser of their choice)

so the ux is you click a title that you want to read and it opens a tab (or the browser) for the associated post

Ruby Jul 10, 2023

@[email protected] ah okay makes sense!

Clarjon1

Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh This looks awesome, i've tossed a purchase your way :3

@clarjon1 oh heck yes, thank you kindly! 😊

Malte Feb 28, 2024

@cblgh FYI, you can't buy the program if you address is in a different country than the one you're currently in.

Alexander Cobleigh Feb 29, 2024

@malte huh! that's unfortunate, i'm guessing the reason must be due to anti-laundering or something on itch's / stripe's side??

Malte Feb 29, 2024

@cblgh Maybe! I just entered a different address.

Devine Lu Linvega Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh I'm super happy to see you try this model out. Everyone I know is building software for others to live off, and end up having no assets of their own. I can't open itch right now, but once we're back in victoria, I'll give it a try! Maybe it'll replace liferea :)

@neauoire yo thank you so much! really means a lot to hear it from you 😊

if this even remotely pans out it'll be the start of making many more tools in this vein :) would be fun to hear your comparisons with liferea & feedback after trying it out!!

jak Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh this is a cool model, I’ve contemplated something similar where the product page shows the number of hours put into the work along with the lifetime revenue, and then some little stats like the effective wage per-hour and average price paid (if using a name-your-price scheme). it’s interesting to sort of set a wage target to unlock “free software mode”, and might also encourage people to chip in a bit more to get to that point.

congrats and good luck!

@jakintosh thank you! glad to hear the model resonates with you, i know we're kind of in the same spot trying to figure these things out :)

something that reminds me of what you are talking about is done with manyverse on their financial transparency page, check it out https://www.manyver.se/donate

Donate

A social network off the grid – mobile and available on Android

jak Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh oh wow this is a great example of that! my dream is for something like this to be on every product page online (and also in the window of every storefront 😅)

@jakintosh ikr it's really going above and beyond, first class financial transparency from mr staltz @staltz :')

Jason Cosper Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh I like this model a lot. And I hope it works! Especially since I'm interested in getting it working on macOS once it's open sourced. 😉

@boogah thank so much, glad it resonates with you! would be fun if we reach the open source threshold and we can get some mac stuff crowdsourced :> you are not the only one wanting it!

Jason Cosper Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh Honestly, you *really* had me onboard after you invoked Fraidycat. ♥️

Anyhow, I've got Mint running on an old MBP, so I’m good for a license.

André Staltz Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh I had this exact same idea about monetization, and I think it's promising for a certain type of software, definitely end-user software like yours is. I also thought about it for books, that go public domain or CC-BY once a certain revenue is achieved.

Congratulations on the launch!

Δῃάνειρα Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh got me thinking, a slight adjustment to your proposed model might "improve it".

1. Software is released with a paid price, where purchasers receive source code with a permissive personal license that restricts redistribution. Inspectable & customizable by early adopters for their own use.
2. Common the software and its source code once a number of sales has been reached, converting it into free software in perpetuity from that moment on, early adopters can now share their changes.

Δῃάνειρα Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh of course, authors may have some trouble with source leaks, but it means if they never reach their sales goal, the software remains maintainable by early adopters for their own purposes.

@deianeira yeah that's true! i was considering this approach as well, but was a bit afraid i think of someone "taking" the novel research i'd down into making this particular way of making an app like this possible. having the soft moat (as @vanderZwan wisely coined) lets me have a "headstart" before that could happen ^^'

depending on itch's mechanisms i'd also be really happy to send a PM to everyone who purchased with the source if it never becomes free software as well :)

Job Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh @deianeira Heh, the soft moat I was referring to was the social network aspect of the web-based reader I'm using. I think it's unfair to call your approach a soft moat, you're doing the opposite of trying to trap us.

@vanderZwan @deianeira ahhh ahaha i misread you then XD

Job Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh @deianeira otoh, I think you're on to something though: coming up with a catchy name for this approach might not be a bad idea.

The tricky part is that ideally it should be a good metaphor. One that signals the process and that it's the opposite of trapping customers with a moat.

meejah Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh Looks really interesting, and like the exploration of a new payment model.

Would be great to have a roadmap, or some idea of future features (maybe the answer is "none!").

Good luck!

juul Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh Interesting but how are you going to enforce the "open source at a certain number of purchases"? You'd need a contract with a trusted third party org to make the promise believable right? I'm not personally interested in installing non-open software but I'd put in a promise of $5 to be paid when enough other promises are made to cross a threshold, crowdfunding style.

Alexander Cobleigh Jul 11, 2023

@juul the same way any social contract or promise works: i put my credibility and good will on the line

i'll note you down for 5 USD when/if it's free software ;)

juul Jul 12, 2023

@cblgh Ah, the "just trust me" approach to doing business.

Mat Jul 12, 2023

@cblgh hope it goes well!
I've been looking at different ways to monetize FOSS and this is quite interesting. I am studying game dev and would not like to release proprietary games... but I have to make money somehow. I liked Aseprite's model, though it's only OSS (nonfree).
I hadn't thought of only going FOSS after a certain amount of sales, and it seems like a better solution than Aseprite's.

Mx. Aria Stewart Jul 12, 2023

@cblgh Ooh, kinda like an end user version of the BSL license

gadgetoid Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh about time RSS made a comeback! Dare I ask how https://www.gadgetoid.com/feed/ looks?

@gadgetoid amen 🙏 here it is collapsed and fully expanded :)

gadgetoid Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh ooh, that's niiiice! Just realized my full article text is *still* not coming through in the feeds. Guh. And permalinks are very, very broken.

@gadgetoid the links work quite fine! rad reader's more of a digest kind of thing, it only shows the titles of the latest posts :)

clicking a title brings me to your website in my regular browser (where i do my reading & highlighting) 👍

gadgetoid Jul 11, 2023

@cblgh fwiw gave this a little shoutout in my news roundup - https://www.gadgetoid.com/2023/07/11/news-roundup-29th-june-to-11th-july/

News Roundup - 29th June to 11th July

What’s this? News! Back on Gadgetoid? Well I ran a poll asking if you’d be interested in a “bi-weekly" news roundup and you answered “meh, whatever." I’m going to take that as a yes and see where it…

Gadgetoid

Alexander Cobleigh Jul 12, 2023

@gadgetoid oh that's cool of you, thanks a bunch :)

@cblgh Oooh, I quite like this approach to open source. 🤔

Giving the demo a go on Guix...
Hm, it's a static binary, which is nice, but it does try to use /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, which doesn't exist on Guix, and I'm pretty sure has a different name on Musl based systems like Alpine.
Not a deal breaker, but it does mean I'll have to figure out what packages it needs and run it in an FHS container with them.

@cblgh Also some tags for better visibility in the OP might be a good idea.

@csepp any suggestion of tags? i don't really know so many except ours here in the town

@cblgh Hmm, I guess the obvious ones would be RSS and feedReader.

@csepp oh dang! yeah i tried my best to make it a static binary that would work on the most machines, would love to hear what you can find out & how i can maybe patch things up :)

i'll write a post some time about the baroque deploy maneuver i opted for to increase baseline compatibility across linux systems. but still very much a baby in that regard :')

@cblgh I don't know that much about the arcane art of dynamic library loading sadly. I think on Guix an FHS container is probably the best you can do, because the libraries it needs are not put in user profiles, so you can't just rely on some path variable.
As for Alpine... hmm... I guess just hardcoding a fallback to the musl loader is one option. 🤔

@cblgh Did more testing, it's looking for libwebkit2gtk-4.0.so.37, Guix has libwebkitgtk-6.0.so.4.0.3 and libwebkit2gtk-4.1.so.0.8.3, and some symlinked variants with simpler names, but no libwebkit2gtk-4.0. So all the webkitgtk libraries are newer.
Most generically named one is libwebkit2gtk-4.1.so.

@cblgh That means an FHS container won't be enough, I'd have to fake the library names somehow. This might manifest on other distros too that have different (mostly newer) versions of WebkitGTK.

cryptix Jul 10, 2023

@csepp @cblgh plus one to all of the above. You will have the same pains with something like nix(os). These kinds of systems depend on you building for them since they break the „old ways“ deliberately. Giving a list of dependencies to them is forthcoming enough in my book.

@cryptix @csepp ahhh good to know! i am very new to distributing binaries like this, i'll see what how we can improve this going forward :>

Vorsos Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh Looks great and lifetime licenses are the best! Any plans for a macOS version?

@Vorsos i don't know yet! it depends a bit on how this whole thing goes. i figured for a start i would just focus on the devices and systems i know better, apple's process for making a binary that will work on their new OS versions seemed to be pretty difficult!

Stanislaus Grumman 🇵🇸Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh Got a copy! I hope this strategy works out for you! The UI is very calm :3

@xiroux yooo thank you so much! yeah the calm ui is something i've really tried to focus on, alongside having a few different themes already seeded (click the little circle in top right to swap to the next / right click to go back to prev theme :)

Stanislaus Grumman 🇵🇸Jul 10, 2023

@cblgh I've tried all of them already :3 I didn't know about the right click, neat!