[Feature Request to the Community]: You came here from Bartender? Reroute your money as well.

[Schrank]

Description

Become a sponsor -> https://github.com/sponsors/jordanbaird

Or throw some money via https://icemenubar.app

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[Xytronix]

Really awesome of you to support an open source project. Would really love to turn this open source project into a major player

[jordanbaird]

Thank you for this!!

[TrveBlve]

Done and done.

[julienbordet]

Done !

[txkxgit]

Done! Thanks a lot for developing Ice!

[Spoekenkieker]

I purchased it on https://icemenubar.app 😊

[dylanmei]

What's up with Bartender?

Edit: Got it, mysteriously sold to Applause.

[TrveBlve]

What's up with Bartender?

Edit: Got it, mysteriously sold to Applause.

Sorry, just saw this. But yeah, you're right - there has been some weirdness with the sale of the app, which wasn't acknowledged until a thread on Reddit gained traction.

Either way, I'm happy supporting Ice since it does exactly what I need it to do.

[fishcharlie]

Purchased through Gumroad, and after realizing how great this app is, ended up sponsoring on GitHub. Thanks for your work on this @jordanbaird! Hope to see more improvements in the future.

[joaofrgomes]

What's up with Bartender?

Edit: Got it, mysteriously sold to Applause.

Yep. After checking Applause's website and learning about their MO, it made me extra sad and also a bit mad at Ben Surtees himself (especially considering how I had bought a perpetual license – yes, a license that might conceivably allow me to make use of ALL future updates, even full new major versions from the Applause team – fairly recently, in November); no matter how good of a developer he was, or how much he was paid, this is not the way to do things.

Also, because the buyers are obviously the worst offenders here (and, to Ben's credit and despite their horrid “sell us your app in five minutes and be done with it” messaging, he might've just been naïve and assumed they might show their faces, who knows…?), there should be an Applause-like “golden parachute app acquisition” service, but without the obsession on subscriptions as the only way of monetising apps, guaranteed transparency throughout the process and excellence-based values (like, say, Panic levels of love for the trade, instead of the half-assed, money-first vibe it reeks of).

Heck, it might even make apps seem more trustworthy post-acquisition, not less, which just goes to show how the guys at Applause know, deep down, they're the villains in the grand scheme of things (if they weren't, they'd also be proud of acquiring apps and direct their marketing also at their future clients, make a big fanfare about acquisitions in their websites, establish some rapport with the user base, etc., but no; much like Google's clients are advertisers and users are the product, for Applause developers are the clients, the service is acquiring apps, the apps are a “product” which is rendered mediocre in the long run and end-users, while nominally “clients”, are just the suckers who finance the whole scheme, which has nothing to do with app development for the love of providing great user-facing services or experiences).

And guess what, even if they do get rid of all the telemetry, like the Bartender v.5.0.53 beta seems to suggest (I mean, maybe they're not lying about not selling whatever data original developers had inevitably collected up until that point via the sales process, but that doesn't mean they can't collect new data – and sell it, or be lying about the entire thing and selling older data still! –, and the fact that they seemingly do makes me consider the option of trying to make use of some EU legislation and ask them to delete my data from their servers, perpetual license be damned – though I suspect that I could still make use of it, unless they implemented some sort of on-line handshaking in the future, because I could definitely register it with my name and license code while LuLu was blocking it), and keep the app running smoothly, I am not buying into any of that crap, and would much rather donate to honest, open-source alternatives like Ice, which won't be sold any day and can always be forked if the developers move on. I WANT them to see a sharp decline in downloads and user engagement, and a total flop in new purchases and the subscriptions that are inevitably coming, i.e. the acquisition must fail miserably, as that's, at best, the only way for them to fold altogether as a company, or, at worst, the only way they'll learn to do better with their next acquisitions. I don't care how good of a service they provide to outgoing developers; they're doing us wrong as users and, at least until they come clean and start behaving as decent, honest, normal adults, they deserve nothing short of a thorough exposé and a total boycott.

You know, all of this reminds me of Serif's acquisition by Canva, and really put things into perspective now… Despite that move not being very well received by users, and both entities only publishing a pro-perpetual-license pledge after a great deal of backlash and vocal suspicion in the user forums, at least they were fairly transparent and upfront about the transaction itself (the values were even made known through big Australian and British media outlets!). And regarding its future, in hindsight and despite Canva's similar penchant for subscriptions, AI-generated-“art” shenanigans and whatnot, development on Serif's Affinity apps did seem to have stagnated a bit at that point, which might've been due to a lack of funds. On the other hand, judging from the secrecy, the telemetry debacle and all the seemingly AI-generated and off-topic post-acquisition blog posts over at the Bartender website, we all know that Applause will basically keep it on life support instead of polishing it or adding new features (a vital step to compete with Apple's probably inevitable sherlocking of the entire category…?), which, by comparison, actually makes the behemoth that is Canva look like benign and honest challengers to Adobe at this point. Heck, they even say as much themselves on their FAQ, so developers know they're letting their “mature” babies wither on the proverbial subscription vine:

We certainly continue to invest in new features and improving the user experience, but our belief is that users don't want (or need) big overhauls on the products that they already love. A guitar tuner doesn't need a massive rebuild every six months!

Oof. I mean, in most cases, they're not wrong, but jeez, to just assume that any and all mature apps can be just left as-is and saying it out loud is not only disingenuous, but also disrespectful to original developers and customers alike – and to themselves as managers and developers! 🤦‍♂️

[fishcharlie]

@joaofrgomes Get over yourself. Ben Surtees doesn't owe you anything. You bought a license to his software. No where in that purchase did it include an agreement that he wouldn't sell the product to another developer/company. He's fully within his rights to do that. Sure it sucks. It's fine to be mad at the new owners for not being transparent and honest. But being mad at a developer who worked for years on an amazing product then deciding to move on is just crazy. It's his choice, you don't get to make his decisions for him.

Just be thankful that Ice exists and is open source. But a rage comment on an open source project about a closed source alternative doesn't improve the conversation here at all, and is incredibly off topic.

[joaofrgomes]

Let's put it this way: no, legally speaking, he doesn't owe me anything. But ethically? He owed me and all other users, and even himself, some basic respect, and he blew it.

Sure, there's nothing in that EULA promising that he would be the developer of Bartender until the end of time, and I'm pretty sure there could be some way for him to invalidate my perpetual license (I guess… selling the app to a different company is a way to test that?); but even if I had bought a regular, single-version one, or, heck, even if I had just downloaded the trial at the tail end of his tenure, don't you think I, along with all other users, shouldn't be allowed to know who the actual developer was at all points, so I could make informed decisions regarding purchases and/or updates?

There's a reason why the MAS was created in the first place and, as someone aptly put it on Reddit or elsewhere (I can't recall), there's also a reason why signing certificates were created in the first place… Except not even those were enough to keep users truly informed throughout the transition, they were just the tell/symptom; all we got was radio silence, then a bunch of weird blog posts, none of which addressed the sale, and then some really weird certificate and permissions shenanigans, and with an app that requests screen recording ones, at that! But, to wit, it was indeed the certificates that led the team at MacUpdater to figure out what had happened and both Applause and Ben (is it really Ben? His letter also seems AI-generated in places and it's posted on a supposedly personal domain that actually redirects to MacBartender's, it's not really hosted in a functional, personal space, and at this point maybe a LinkedIn or X/Twitter post would actually look more credible) to enter damage control mode and do… the only right thing you can do in these situations, which is to come clean (and, indeed, they also came clean regarding the telemetry, which they themselves put there in the first place, in secret, because of course they did). And it was too little, too late, I reckon. I don't trust either at this point, they're now more of a cautionary tale than anything else. 🤷‍♂️

Honestly: do you know of any user-facing business that didn't put out some sort of press release, even a basic boilerplate one, upon an acquisition? And between, of all parties, an indie developer and a company supposedly specializing in acquiring apps from indie developers? 🤦‍♂️ Do you think this is normal or acceptable in any way, shape, or form? In any industry? You see, in the business world, especially when dealing with end-users and individual customers, credibility is not just about money and EULAs, it's about transparency and trust, and in the absence of something like GitHub, where there are faces and names to any and all contributions, you'll just have to use your freaking blog or website like any other regular human being. To make subtle name changes to your certificate after the fact and try and hide/paper over your ineptitude is just the cherry on top. This was so ham-fisted of an acquisition that if I hadn't used this app before, I'd be convinced these people, including Ben, couldn't code or market their way out of a paper bag; it's still flabbergasting, because this is just Business and PR 101. And yes, if we are to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding Applause's legitimacy, this secrecy still reeks of shame all around, but if you can't handle shame, then… just don't enter mass business relationships with the public as an indie dev and work for a big company instead, easy.

And finally, please tell me how or why me airing some grievances while giving plenty of context in a thread dedicated to rerouting our money from Bartender to Ice (which, if you've seen elsewhere here, I intend on doing ASAP, and while I'm sadly too late to ask for a refund and literally reroute it instead of spending more still, I would if I could and I will spend more anyway), is off-topic or out of hand… Is mentioning Serif, another recently-bought company, also off-topic? Is mentioning the way Adobe just bought Macromedia and killed off FreeHand with nary a peep back in the day as… maybe a means to give further context and praise FOSS in principle, off-topic, too? Go on, I'll wait.

TL;DR: this isn't about money or losses in productivity by having to switch apps (hence me mentioning FreeHand just now, because I indeed had to switch to Illustrator very much against my will; guess what, this is much, much worse, even with both apps being small utilities and Ice being functionally almost there and perfect for my needs once a couple of bugs and omissions are fixed) or, if I'm being honest here, not even about closed and paid vs. FOSS (and though FOSS certainly helps in that regard, we've seen an example recently, that of SSH/Xz, where it took the community waaay too long to do its due diligence, oof); it's about suddenly thinking you might've had a literal backdoor installed on your machines for months because your idiot of a service provider (which, for perpetual licensees and even regular licensees during the 5.x version track, and even the trial users as I've mentioned, Ben effectively was) couldn't be arsed to put out a basic, timely press release or blog post at the end of his tenure (from which he wasn't fired or anything, since this was, as you've aptly mentioned, his decision, but decisions come with basic expectations and consequences if they're not met). Is that a bit more clear now?

Also, in case you didn't get it, I'm not writing these comments for you, other longstanding Ice users or Jordan directly, for that matter; they're for the benefit of other former Bartender users and even prospective menu bar manager users who might've missed just how big and historic of a SNAFU this thing was, so that they may form their own conclusions and make their own decisions regarding indie software. In any case, I fail to see how this has any negative impact on Jordan's endeavours and, as you may guess, I'm restricting such comments to this thread in particular… Any mentions to Bartender elsewhere are just related to its core functionality and only insofar as they help Jordan in improving Ice as a competitor. I may be quite mad and on a mission, but I'm not an idiot. 🙄

[Xytronix]

I acknowledge thankfulness, transparency, and integrity. There is no reason to hate or mock Ben, it's rather about the decisions he made. I do not believe he didn’t know what he was doing. He did need money for a reason, the alternative of announcing a selloff to a company known for bad practice wouldn't make the situation incredibly better though. Announcing it prior to the sale would probably cut down acquisition pricing. Applause has many different reasons to not announce it as it cuts down revenue.

[joaofrgomes]

@Xytronix You are mostly right about him being entitled to make whatever decisions regarding his IP, and, who knows, maybe even the circumstances of said decision, but… I wholeheartedly disagree regarding such secret deals even being legal at all, let alone acceptable.

As a matter of fact, this all feels so wrong, I suspect they run afoul (or will at some point, judging by current trends) of EU customer protection laws. Which is just ironic, considering how I had just come from casting my ballot for EU Parliament elections before posting my second comment here.

Regardless of who's most at fault here, this is a textbook case of FAFO. These decisions come with consequences, and, sure, I can still have some semblance of empathy for the guy if he was really strapped for cash and needed an obscene amount thereof. Except we don't know if he might've been functionally ok with the lower amount and was just being greedy. In any case, unless he found stable employment and no longer has to answer to his end-users, it will take years (and maybe an extra about-face, if he's not under an NDA, that is) until he can rebuild trust.

Also, I never said that I hate the guy (I don't, I'm just mad and disappointed but, in hindsight, it does seem like both parties are more incompetent than outright malicious, in true Hanlon's Razor fashion) or mocked him (sure, I was very critical and called him an idiot, but… even if he did what he did because he ended up in a rough spot or whatever, from the outside it does seem like a completely idiotic way of handling business, and I'm not backtracking on that), or encouraging anyone to do so (you may notice that I only mentioned a boycott to Bartender and other Applause wares, which, yes, would also send quite a sad message to Ben, but especially to Applause and other prospective indie devs looking for an out), I'm just saying he seriously screwed the pooch here and exposing, in quite plain terms, exactly why.

One would hope someone (not the public, in the form of their mostly feeble boycotts, but real, legal, government muscle) would bring the real grifters here, Applause, to task, and not even allow them to put such secret deals on the table in the first place. They're unethical and immoral, for reasons on which I hope I don't have to elaborate further, but which aren't limited to expectations regarding software (they also extend to many other fields, and allowing them is a true slippery slope whose implications I can't even begin to fathom).

[tjharman]

I have donated $10 and uninstalled Bartender.
I see no point in bickering about Bartender, what's done is done, move on.