Info: License Changes Coming In 7.3

[.dan.g.]

Hi All

Some of you may know this but many of you will not: I've been writing ToDoList for more than 15 years entirely in my free time, simply because I (mostly) enjoy it.

However, change is inevitable and from 7.3 onward most new plugins will display a 'Trial License' banner together with a link to buy a 'Paid' license which will make the banner go away.

My motivation is three-fold:

1. I want to generate some passive income

2. I want more people to contribute to the development of ToDoList, mainly via translations, because they will then be eligible for a free license (with a much 'quieter' banner)

3. I want to highlight to people that anyone can create their own plugins from which they may also derive a passive income

Note: Trial plugins will be fully functional in all respects, so buying a license is just about making the banner go away.

Note: Licenses will be bound to one specific computer but I'm happy to issue further licenses for other computers owned by you at no additional cost by refunding the cost via paypal. 

          ie. You still have to go through the same process (on the same paypal account) but once I have your details I will refuse your payment.

I know some of you will feel upset about this but unfortunately there's nothing I can do about that, so please don't rant and rave else I shall simply delete your posts.

ps. In case you are confused let me state that ToDoList and all the plugins available in 7.2 will always remain free for any use.

pps. Those of you who have already significantly contributed (in time or money) will also be eligible for a free license (with a much 'quieter' banner).

Dan

[Alessandro Verdoni]

Hi Dan, 

   I appreciate a lot free software not only because of no costs but also for its "feeling of freedom and cooperation" that should be the first and fundamental reason to justify why the Internet exists.

It would be nice if the community could support the developers by donations without creating the need of a paid license, unfortunately this doesn't happen in the most of cases. I admit that even my donations to todolist are a very few euros. I'll try to do better in future but there are a lot of initiatives deserving a support (wikipedia, oruxmaps, lichess, scratch, just to mention someone else I appreciate).

It is then understandable that a good developer would like to have a benefit from his work or, at least cover the costs of webservers, HW tools and SW licenses. A banner in exchange of a so good task management tool is a very negligible issue.

I just hope that the cost of the full license will not be very high (and especially not a monthly or yearly fee) because I would like to buy the license.

Best regards.

[.dan.g.]

Thx for your comments Alessandro.

>> hope that the cost of the full license will not be very high (and especially not a monthly or yearly fee)

Certainly there will be no monthly/yearly fee (you can quote me on that!), nor is it my intention to try to make people pay for something that was previously free. 

The 'Paid' licenses (that's not even an accurate word for what I'm imagining but it's good enough for now) are just for brand new modules that may not benefit everyone so each person gets to choose (and pay for) only the ones they want.

Additionally, there are 'Contributor' and 'Supporter' licenses which cover all such modules:

1. 'Contributors' are people who help develop the software itself, typically via Translation but there may be some other opportunities too

2. 'Supporters' are people who have already donated more than enough to cover all new functionality

So, for instance, if you were to accept the responsibility for maintaining the Italian translation then I could issue you with a 'Contributor' license that would cover all future licensed functionality.

[Jon R]

Sorry, been busy so late to the party again...

For myself all I can say is this - You and your software are #1 (by a long margin) in a line of developers/software which I benefit from enormously and mostly for free.

So I will be glad to contribute.

Like Wikipedia half the problem isn't people don't have the money or capability but just need that 'nudge'.

I said it before probably bc TDL is my sweetspot so I'm biased... but honestly compared to sw that is created by teams of hundreds (M$, Google et al), the functionality and ongoing growth of TDL is staggering.

I noticed a rival product suspiciously similar in premise to TDL marketed out of some eastern european country for $99 a pop. I know there are many other popular apps esp in the mobile domain, but for me they mostly miss the point entirely. I guess your users are loyal for these reasons too.

The crass American 'monetisation' and all that nefarious data collection, personalised advertising, cloud storage, SAAS etc is also a big turnoff for me. But objectively, I DO think you are entitled to proportional reward for your creation.

Regards,

Jon

[Manning]

A thought:

I donate to all the donation based software that I use regularly but I'm not sure how much and how often is reasonable.  I just pick some number.  For a non-programmer understanding the effort or how difficult a project isn't easy.  Many say donate its value to your or what you feel.  It still leaves the question.

Can you throw out some ball park numbers that would make a satisfactory income based on the user count?  (not sure how you get that).

I also don't know how often.  If you donate 50 do you do it every year.  Do you do it once?  I am not a fan of the monthly fee software revenue stream but I understand why it is done.  Upkeep costs money.

[Fitnerd]

Hi Dan!

I would gladly support your product, if anything then to make it faster (it is pretty slow regrettably, even with basic usage). However I have one question and one concern:

Question / Suggestion: Will it be possible to buy a license via cryptocurrency (i.e. Bitcoin)?

Concern: Will the license be trackable? For sure, I do not want my license to be in any way associated with ToDoLists that I work with, those should remain strictly confidential and reside solely on my machine with no information being sent to activation server at all, including meta data. So, how is the privacy aspect addressed with the per-machine licensing?

Thanks.

[Jon R]

Will the hacker in the room please stand up! ;-)

Would be interested to know your 'use case' ie how big/many your lists are if you think it's slow... I thought I was a power user but maybe not so much...

[Fitnerd]

Just some random facts then... :)

My system is Win 10 x64 1803. Hardware-wise it's Intel 6-core Core i5 9600K with 32GB RAM and Samsung SSDs for storage. So, I would imagine it's a reasonably powerful desktop.

As for the setup, yes I am kind of a power user I suppose (though I almost exclusively use Tree view, so in that regard not a power user per se). But I do run 6 TDL instances at a time, each of which have around 5 to 10 task list files open, each with anywhere between 20 to 1000 tasks.

While it may seem like a lot at first, on a per instance, and especially on a per task list basis, it's not that much. I mean even if you consider 1000+ items, it should not be too demanding to perform all the basic operations without hurting responsiveness.

And yet, even switching between task lists takes on average 10 seconds, even when the task list has been loaded. Opening all the task lists (within an instance of a program, when there are around 10 of them) is on the order of 30 seconds, even with delayed load.

Task entry (create new task, change attributes) is ok, but certainly not smooth or great. There is a noticeable delay in the UI that is easily visible between when you type something or create new task and it shows up - usually on the order of a second or sometimes even more.

This behavior seems to be the case regardless of how and if the tasks are sorted or filtered, although the latter certainly introduces even more slowness.

At the same time I notice how excellent TDL is with RAM usage - it uses very little of it, even with largeish task lists and with having 10 of them open. On the order of 50MB for Private Bytes - nothing in comparison to say Chrome, where a single tab can require more RAM. So, perhaps the program can be sped up considerably by aggressive caching, i.e. use more RAM and less CPU where appropriate. I mean, I would not mind if TDL started using as much as 4 or even 6 times more RAM if it would work smoothly.

[Jon R]

Wow, OK I started it so I will reply in kind - bearing in mind I am just a user and have zero pro level IT knowledge.

I also have a win10 desktop 'recent' spec with SSD etc. But atm i'm on an ancient win7 laptop. honestly processor speed seems irrelevant, the bottleneck is read speed maybe?

I only ever use one instance bc my experience with Excel was that you can't copy paste etc quite so readily between instances so that defeats the point for me. idk if that is true for tdl.

I do have large lists and many of them and sometimes open many at a time - say 20x with each from 1000 to 5000 items. And for sure opening a list from cold takes a few secs. But i set up the lists to avoid needing to switch often unless i am in 'housekeeping' mode to fix wrongly filed items. and then i often batch the items to cut paste in one hit - or use the import export feature.

I use custom fields often but sparingly. I use all the fields heavily esp the file links and icons, reminders, recurrence etc.

I set my own limit on file size to around 5000 items (which translates to 5Mb approx bc even an empty list item takes up 1kb-ish). But that's just paranoia (of corruption) and also to maintain conceptual control. I assume if you have enough RAM you could put every single item in one giant list with 10 or 100mb. idk what the limiting factor would be.

But given all that I don't have any performance complaints as such. I mean opening large Excel files takes a while. From a pure IT-illiterate viewpoint but with some database 101 - you can't have superfast access and text readable files at the same time: I don't even know the proper word but the modern trend to have the field names repeated in the data file for every single record - is super space-inefficient - but you never lose sight of your data like you would in machine readable form. Add the fact TDL is super-friendly and configurable to use with a low bar of entry. Compare that to any 'industrial grade' database suite...

If Dan is reading I likewise have no clue as to the impact of software-driven or PC-driven RAM control on performance and what he or users themselves could do to improve it - I do know that my dying win10 machine was an absolute pig to set up from the outset even at the basic level of making it use RAM correctly and not filling it up with useless windows crap. (again apologies I can't even remember the terminology).

So for performance, I am happy with the trade-offs and don't notice any issues most of the time, but I know they are there. Most people I imagine don't need or want to run multiple lists let alone multiple instances. But the sw is punching well above its weight in terms of features, stability etc and esp compared to any/all rival 'planning' sw even the big brands - even Google seem to have given up trying to get their task list working with any feature set at all! (So hats off to Dan).

Anything deeper is beyond my knowledge of PC architecture....

Jon