Kickstarter campaign for the future of Send Later

[Jonathan Kamens]

For those of you who are unclear about what Rick was referring to in his recent message...

Recent changes to Thunderbird have required more and more time and effort to keep add-ons compatible. Unfortunately, it's not going to be feasible for me to keep maintaining Send Later and my other add-ons for Thunderbird 78 without more financial support. I've launched a Kickstarter campaign to find out if there is enough willingness for people to pay for these add-ons to make continuing to maintain them sustainable.

The campaign is at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jik/rewritten-add-ons-for-mozilla-thunderbirds-next-release

As Rick noted, the campaign is almost half funded after just a few days, but the thing is that while there was a big spike in donations early on, primarily because I emailed all of the people who have donated for my add-ons in the past and asked them to pitch in again, donations are quickly starting to level off and looking at the graph right now I think it's far from a sure thing that we're going to make it to $50k by the end of the campaign.

So if you want Send Later to continue to be available past the middle of this year, and you haven't yet pledged to the Kickstarter campaign, you might want to consider it.

Please see the campaign for more details about why this is happening.

Regards,

--

Jonathan Kamens
Send Later Thunderbird Add-on
Install | Write a review | Join the mailing list | Make a donation

[Dave Warren]

Hey! So, something that crossed my mind is this: Do you really want us
paying for lifetime or does this just kick the proverbial can down the
road? Maybe it does and maybe that's okay if this covers the rewrite and
those who pay the subscription cover the ongoing maintenance costs?

For the moment I pledged for the "Lifetime for all" as that's what I'm
willing to spend, but I could be just as happy with a discount on annual
payments going forward which would help maintain some sort of ongoing
revenue, but this would mean a lower contribution to the KickStarter
campaign and could be self-defeating.

I literally only heard about the KickStarter campaign a few hours ago
and contributed -- Hopefully others will be in the same boat, as the
Thunderbird Add-ons get upgraded and notify users.

> *Send Later Thunderbird Add-on*
> Install
> <https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/> | Write
> a review
> <https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/reviews/add> |
> Join the mailing list
> <http://groups.google.com/group/send-later-users> | Make a donation
> <https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=jik%40kamens%2eus&lc=US&item_name=Send%20Later%20add%2don%20%28%245%2e00%20recommended%20donation%2c%20but%20give%20what%20you%27d%20like%21%29&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donat>
>
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[Herbert Eppel]

Same here, i.e. I too wasn't aware of the campaign until Jonathan's explanatory message, prompted by Rick's message

Like Dave, I tried to pledge for "Lifetime for all", but for an 'unknown reason' Kickstarter won't accept my cards – have contacted Kickstarter support.

Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslations.uk

[Peter Körner]

I got an email today asking for localization of the kickstarter campaign texts into German.

I am happy to volunteer, let me know, how exactly I can help.

Peter

[Jonathan Kamens]

I am confident that if the Kickstarter campaign succeeds, the combination of people who choose to pay annually and people who choose to buy lifetime subscriptions will be enough to support ongoing maintenance and development of the add-ons. Therefore, whatever you prefer to do is fine.

You're right that there's a long tail of people still hearing about the Kickstarter campaign, for two reasons: (1) it takes a while for Thunderbird to check for add-on updates, and (2) even after Thunderbird gets a Send Later update automatically, the update doesn't actually get installed until the user quits and restarts Thunderbird.

Also, as I noted in the update I just sent on the Kickstarter campaign, I just added the pop-up notification about the campaign to the legacy Thunderbird 60 version of Send Later last night, so I hope we will see another spike in pledges to the campaign as those users get the update and the pop-up notification.

As things stand now I think there's a good chance that the campaign will reach its goal but it's by no means a sure thing.

Regards,

Jonathan Kamens
Send Later Thunderbird Add-on
Install | Write a review | Join the mailing list | Make a donation

[Jonathan Kamens]

I definitely prefer for you to resolve the issue with Kickstarter so you are able to pledge to the campaign, since contributions sent to me outside of Kickstarter don't count toward the campaign goal and the campaign goal cannot be changed after the campaign starts.

However, if you can't resolve the issue and you would still like to get one of the campaign rewards, you can donate through Paypal using the link on the add-on home page and send me email telling me you've done that and why and I'll make a note to send you the reward if the Kickstarter campaign succeeds.

Full disclosure: if the Kickstarter campaign does not succeed I will not be refunding Paypal donations since that actually costs me money (I have to refund the full amount, but I still get charged fees both for the original donation and the refund).

Thanks,

  Jonathan Kamens

Jonathan Kamens
Send Later Thunderbird Add-on
Install | Write a review | Join the mailing list | Make a donation

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[Jonathan Kamens]

Thank you! I've already had several offers to help with the German translation, but if they fall through I'll let you know. I certainly don't want to ask multiple people to do the same translating, that would be rude. :-/

Regards,

Jonathan Kamens
Send Later Thunderbird Add-on
Install | Write a review | Join the mailing list | Make a donation

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[Peter Körner]

Perfect. Good luck. 

[Rick]

Well in 7 days you have hit the halfway mark so congrats on that!

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