Farewell Pegasus
Bruce Simpson has the very sad news that Pegasus Mail, a very long-standing kiwi product, is being discontinued.
I’ve been privileged to get to know and work with David Harris, creator of Pegasus, over the last few years and he is a real Internet champion – puts huge amounts of time not just into Pegasus Mail, but also anti-spam activities etc.
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Tags: Internet
January 8th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Pegasus Mail is the best email client ever. And I’ve tried them all. Very sad indeed.
It seems that if funding could be found the project would continue. Since NZ is trying to positiuon itself internationally as a cutting edge knowledge economy (yes, two cliches in a row
) it would seem to make sense that the government support this in some way.
Ah for the days when the government had a venture capital agency. Or simply buying it, spending a fraction of our international promotional budget on positioning it as a Kiwi product, and then giving it away so as to interest potential importers in our software development capacity.
Something… surely…
January 9th, 2007 at 12:47 am
He should release the source code and let the open source community continue developing it.
Netscape did that many years ago and now we have Firefox and Thunderbird.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I looked at Pegasus Mail some time ago and it looked quite good, but I settled for Eudora in the end and paid $US39.95 (maybe $US49.95?) for it.
Why on earth did David Harris think he could survive in the real commercial world by putting probably thousands of hours into developing a software product and then giving it away FREE? It doesn’t make any sense.
I wish the guy well – but I can’t agree that he needs ‘government support’ of any kind as suggested in the link. That way leads straight to socialism and fat lazy greedy slug-like activity.
Its obviously too late for this Harris bloke to start chatging for a previously frre product now, but perhaps he might use his considerable programing talents to develop another product and this time s e l l it. There’s a radical thought! He could sell a useful product to a worldwide market of willing buyers for money! Blimey…!
January 9th, 2007 at 10:50 am
You know, Dave, if you actually knew any creative people you might be aware that many – arguably a majority – of the people who create the things that make our lives a little more bearable do it for a range of motivations other than getting paid. Money is a part of life, but it’s only a part – making the mistake of thinking that all valuable things in society can be assigned to dollars and cents is a common one in right-leaning circles. But it is a mistake.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
err… its absolutely not a mistake ever to sell a valuable product to a willing market for a reasonable fee. Apart from any other consideration, it helps to ensure that one can continue to be creative (if that’s what you want to call it).
Professionally, I operate a business in a creative industry (for money) and I also do about 20 hours’ unpaid voluntary work in the community per month – so I have some experience of business, creativity and helping.
Thanks for the tip though. I’ll remember your good advice next time somebody wants me to do a commercial job for them for free….. lol
January 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
“Why on earth did David Harris think he could survive in the real commercial world by putting probably thousands of hours into developing a software product and then giving it away FREE? It doesn’t make any sense”
er, google, youtube, blogger, hotmail, Linux, AVG anti-virus…
January 9th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Dave, here’s a real-life example for you: me. Right now I’m taking a lunch break from doing some programming work. It is boring. I work for myself, on my own. So, if I spend my entire day doing this I find myself bored and unstimulated, and if I go out to meet friends later in the day I find myself with little to say because all day my attention has been focused on boring, mechanical crap that is of little interest to me or my circle of friends. However, said boring, mechanical crap is actually rather profitable and keeps me in a decent lifestyle. Not only that, it’s profitable enough that I don’t need to do it all the time in order to live – twenty hours a week seems to do just fine, when I could be doing sixty in another job and be poorer.
So, for the rest of my time I do a bunch of creative stuff, both alone and with friends. It is never profitable – while it might provide some revenue I don’t doubt that I subsidise it with the other stuff I do. I would be financially richer if I didn’t bother at all. But it keeps me happy, and I value it – it makes the other stuff worth doing.
So, what should I do? Should I start trying to monetise the stuff I enjoy? Maybe. But then again, maybe not – many of the things I enjoy about my creative work is that it DOESN’T involve all the stuff that my daily bread does – tax accounting, sales, invoicing, handling client relationships etc. When I’m being creative I don’t have to give a shit about all that stuff – I just create. And that’s the bit that feels good. It makes my life emotionally and socially richer, more interesting and frankly worth living. So yes, in that context it actually might be a mistake to sell a valuable product to willing market – because the processing of selling products to markets is something I find rather dull, and would rather ruin my enjoyment of what I do.
So, I keep the “selling products to markets” stuff for things I can do which have a very good rate of financial return for my time – while keeping my inherantly less profitable creative work as something that I can enjoy without the inevitable boring distractions that come with trying to run an activity as a business.
I’m not saying that people should in any circumstance be obliged to work for free against their will. But denying that money can at times be a polluting influence on an activity is just silly – of course it can. If people choose to ignore it in favour of getting on with creation then that’s their decision, no? Sure, maybe one day they’ll get older and need more money and shut down some of the creative stuff in order to sell more of their time. But you seem to be acting as if it is some kind of stupidity or offence against nature to REFUSE to sell any part of your time that you can.
What next? Should I start invoicing my family for my time spent with them? Or would that take some of the fun out of it?
January 9th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Of course, this does not rate in the tragedy stakes compared to the demise of Auslebrook’s Cabin Bread….the lengendary carbo staple that resisted 2 weeks of Fiordland moisture and SWland bivis easy peecy.
We now have a shitty made in Fiji sub that doesn’t work.
Why didn’t they try tripling the price? My demand is inelastic.
January 10th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Sonic , AVG has just told all users getting updates that their version will “expire” on the 15 January 2007.
Of course when you click to get the new version its very hard to find since they are offering a paid for product instead.
The writing is on the wall, whats the bet upgrades suddenly arent available in 6 months unless you cough up.
January 10th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
“Of course when you click to get the new version its very hard to find”
I just googled “AVG Free Download” or words to that effect and lo, the new one turned up in a jiffy. I guess making your free version subject to some kind of test of basic intellect isn’t too unfair…