Patreon for FileBot for Linux

[rednoah]

FileBot currently only officially supports Windows 10 and macOS because these platforms make it easy to sell software via their respective app stores.

Unfortunately, selling software on Ubuntu, Synology NAS, etc is not as easy and not really worth the effort considering the small number of users willing to support the project.

This Patreon is an experiment to see how many users are willing to financially contribute towards freely available donation-supported new releases on these platforms.

https://www.patreon.com/filebot

[choakem]

RedNoah - Happy to become a Patron for linux version of FIlebot - Whats the latest version available for Ubuntu? If you check your records I have donated before in the past via Paypal - Address was [email protected]

PS Happy to donate again too.......

Cheers

[rednoah]

Ubuntu is still stuck on the old donation supported FileBot 4.7.9 release.

Your donation is much appreciated. You're one of very few very cool people. Please just support the Patreon if you can, that might be a better long-term solution in absence of a proper app store on Linux.

[obstin]

> Ubuntu is still stuck on the old donation supported FileBot 4.7.9 release

Is there _any_ up-to-date/current _portable_/linux release, paid or otherwise, available for download?

If not, and it's 'unsupported', are there build instructions for the github release?

[rednoah]

No to all of the above. Please support FileBot for Linux on Patreon if you're interested in any of the above.

[ben2talk]

I've entered my pledge...
Keep us updated as to how close we are to getting a .deb, thanks.

[Rumpel288]

Also added myself to the patreons
But release-independent via PayPal. This way you have a small continuous (monthly) cashflow instead of a release-bound one.
I also appreciate .deb's

[rednoah]

There are customers who have approached me in private and asked for private builds for their specific platforms with offers I couldn't turn down.

Expect to pay at least 50 EUR / 0.01 BTC for that kind of service though.

[Mustang]

Hey rednoah!

You provide an incredible product and I'm happy to donate whenever I can. I've purchased Filebot on Windows and have donated several times. Always happy to help! The amount of work you save me is worth every cent.

I'll head over to Patreon and give another donation asap.

Thanks for all you do and please don't give up on Linux

[doscrash]

Hi, I've just donated $1 to the project. So is there anything temporary for the Raspberry Pi that I can attempt to install? If so, where can I find the package?

[vincen]

Pledged too for 5 bucks for each release and keep up the great work

[ironcity1861]

just became a Patreon! also own the OSX version!

[rednoah]

Much appreciated. This Patreon will also support the brew cask CLI version on Mac that isn't allowed on the App Store.

[mathzb]

How does thos Patreon work? Havnt used it before.
Just supported the linux project on Patreon, but how do i get the .deb file?

[rednoah]

There is no deb file at this point. Your pledge will not be collected until there is a new release (i.e. deb files) but that won't happen unless there's enough people that pledge support.

@see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patreon#Business_model

[mathzb]

Oh, thank you

[All4get]

Did you changed the Patreon Goal from 1.000$ to 1.000 Patreons?
Iam pretty sure the goal were to get money and not patreons.

1000 Patreons is a bit too much in my opinion, you said yourself there is not such a high userbase for linux, why do you take the chance away, for the few people who are supporting you, to get the software only because the userbase is not high enough?

Some people are even ready to pay more than 1$ and if they would donate 50$ they wouldnt get the software only because there are not enough people?
What exactly is the reason to aim for 1000 patreons instead of 1000$?

[rednoah]

Let's find out if we can find 1000 users that are interested in FileBot for Linux!

The minimum goal was always 1000 users. I just didn't know they had a specific setting for that. It's not about money. If it was about money, then there would be a paid version, or no version.


If there are less than 1000 Linux users, then there's absolutely no point in developing FileBot for a minuscule number of Linux users. However, there's probably around ~100.000 Linux users, so assuming that 1% of users might be willing to pledge $1 is perfectly reasonable to me (i.e. the goal is extremely low IMHO). The Synology NAS package alone as more than 1000 users (or at least unique NAS IDs that installed the package via the repository).


Patreon is about continuous support with small amounts of money. As you can see they by the comments, lots of Patreon supporters specifically write to support only the first release, and then lower or drop support. Also, it's not fair for a small number of people to support FileBot for everyone else, and more importantly, it's not sustainable.


As of 2018, Windows 10 users effectively fund everything here. A free Linux version for just $1000-ish per year (i.e. 50 individual sales on the Windows Store) would be a slap in the face to my loyal Windows 10 customers.

[All4get]

So you would just drop the support if there are not enough people who are willing to support linux?
What about the people that were willing to support? Isnt that also a slap in the face for them? They dont have an alternative or did i miss something?

Would you consider to make a paid version so atleast some people could get the chance to use your software? In my opinion you could even higher the price so it would compensate the work for a smaller userbase and i think the few people who were willing to donate would agree.

Or maybe a smaller and more simple question: What options do we have if you dont find 1000 Supporters?

[rednoah]

Support for Linux was dropped last year. This is an attempt to bring it back. I've been saying "Sorry, Linux is no longer supported." since last year and got lots of shit for that. The Patreon puts all responsibility back in the hands of Linux users, with a very very reasonable goal at that. If it doesn't get funded, then nothing happens, and things stay as they are now.

If there's only a total market of 319 Linux users, then that's not really a market that I can support, right? You won't find FileBot for FreeBSD or Solaris either. Even if each of those 319 Patreon supporters were to pay $20 it still wouldn't be worth my while (unless there was a super easy way to sell software on Linux).

Considering the feedback I got from Windows 7 users for the $50 backwards-compatibility build, and the number of sales (i.e. a complete waste of my time in retrospect), there's no point in doing the same for Linux with only a fraction of potential users.

[All4get]

Ah, didnt knew that Linux had no support since some months.

Why is it so important for you that linux has no easy way to sell the software? The Userbase would still be the same, doesnt matter if they get it trough Patreon or from a Linux Shop like the Windows Store/Mac Store. Do i forget something here? You would still have to work for 319 Users (Yeah i know its not a must for you to work).

I understand that you dont want to work so hard only for a few people, just not the part why a Linux Shop would help you. I hope you dont think i want to hate or something else, just understand the full context of your decisions and thanks for taking your time to answer me/everyone else.

Edit: I think I understand it now. The Problem is that with Patreon you need to do many things manually. With a Linux Shop you could automate nearly everything so you could focus only on coding/updating, right? So if there would be a Linux Shop, you would sell it even if there are only 319 Users? Because you dont have to manage the sellings manually and providing everyone the new Versions etc?

[rednoah]

Yes, the primary problem is software licensing. On Windows and Mac the Store takes care of that.

I could easily sell you a Linux build, but if you then decided to share it on the internet, there'd be absolutely nothing I can do about it.

By my estimates, building and maintaining my own software license infrastructure isn't worth it for Windows 7 / Server users, so there's no existing infrastructure / development efforts that I could just reuse for Linux.

The Patreon would allow me to make a little bit of money without the need for a software license infrastructure. That would be the ideal solution.


EDIT: Yes. I originally spent a lot of time to make FileBot work well on Linux because of the Ubuntu Software Center / App Store but then they dropped support for paid applications, so I dropped support for Ubuntu / Linux.

[devster]

I've been trying to find this out but is there a difference between JARs built for Windows and MacOS which makes them incompatible with Linux?
It's a genuine question, coming from someone who knows basically nothing of Java.
I'm failing to understand how, if the JARs are platform-agnostic, such a support isn't worth it?
Releasing an already built file with no guarantees about its functionality doesn't seem a massive endeavor.

[rednoah]

Indeed the technology choices I made make it fairly easy to make FileBot work on all common platforms, but the same technology choices also make it extremely difficult to make FileBot not work on Windows 10 / macOS.


I could easily make a free version of FileBot for all platforms, but that would decimate my business model on Windows 10 / macOS. Why would I do that? Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not insane. [1]


In the past, I offered a version for Windows 7 / Windows Server for free for users that can't use the Windows Store / Windows 10. Naturally, most Windows 10 users just used the Windows 7 version for free, and the few customers paying for FileBot on the Windows Store weren't happy either because they perceived that they had to pay for something that others got for free.


The last $50 custom build for Linux ended up with me spending 2 days helping that particular customer make Java 10 / JavaFX 10 work. I can't sell unsupported software. That makes neither me nor customers happy. But I also can't make FileBot available for free for reasons mentioned above.


Making software available for free is much easier than charging for it, and it makes things much more convenient for the end user as well. Unfortunately, the abundance of free software has lead to an end-user software market where software has no value. At the same time, software developers are paid near-ridiculous amounts of money in the corporate world. Here's a somewhat interesting yet unrelated read on the topic. [2]

[hootenanylizard]

Can you please clarify all of this? I've read through this thread and on Patreon.

What I understand:
* You want to charge for Windows/Mac products, and so you have.
* You can't support Linux because it's free and licensing is too hard, and you want to be paid for your work.
* You created Patreon so people can donate to get the LINUX version, and to show that we are in fact interested in this product and are willing to contribute toward a linux version.
* You have specified $1,000 as the goal.
* You have reached $1,000, but your most recent post is for patreon donators only.

What I don't understand:
* If we donate, are we going to be given a new/updated version of Filebot?
* If not, what was the point?
* If so, now that you have hit the milestone of interest, and clearly people ARE interested, when can we expect a linux update?

I am sitting here with money in my hand willing to hand it over to you for access to the linux version. However, you are only saying that we can get it from old sources, and this whole patreon thing is confusing. Why? Because you haven't made it clear when/where/how/what is going to happen with Linux, and the only way to know is MAYBE by getting to read the locked content on the patreon page.

I want to KNOW if I donate money NOW, can we please just get access to a new linux update? It's really that simple.
I feel I am constructively trying to criticize. We linux users also want your product, but you're making it very confusing.