Before getting into details, though, you should know that this switch was neither a quick decision, nor did we take it easily. We have been talking about it for over 2 years now. We’ve had uncountable discussions, and the topic came up at least once every month — yet we always postponed a decision. The sheer complexity and far reach of this change were too intimidating. I am not exaggerating in saying that this was the hardest decision in our whole time as professional software developers. After all, we have a system which currently works — after 14 years we are still around, Ulysses is still “a thing”, it’s even going better than ever before, and there are no immediate signs which hint at a change coming soon.
A little birdie told me this change was coming a few months ago, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing how well Ulysses pulled it off. It goes without saying to anyone who reads me regularly that I support this decision 100%, and I was happy to become one of Ulysses’ earliest subscribers yesterday.
Max’s writeup is lengthy, but well worth your time if you are interested in how to explain the benefits of moving to a subscription model.
I’ll confess: I have a very lengthy blog post of my own about the general topic of subscriptions drafted that I will likely never publish, because I couldn’t find a satisfactory way to argue many of the points that Max puts very eloquently in this piece. I’ll elaborate more of my thoughts on this topic in the coming weeks, but I’ll be smart about it this time and break it down into smaller chunks so I can manage to actually post something.
One thing’s for sure, Release Notes attendees are in for a treat when Max takes the stage this October in Chicago.
(written with Ulysses 11)
