[vpn-help] Whats going on with Shrew Soft and the 2.2.0 release?

[Matthew Grooms]

All,

I've had a few folks ask me this question. Completely understandable 
considering the lack of updates and my involvement on the list lately. 
If it weren't for the generous efforts of folks like Kevin and others, 
most of the questions would have gone unanswered. Thanks so much for 
contributing your time and effort by lending a hand to the community.

So what's the hold up?

At the outside chance that no-one has guessed, Shrew Soft is basically 
two non-programmers that help out with company administration, and me. 
In other words, I wrote the software, ported it to Linux, BSD and MAC 
OSX, handle bug reports, maintain the colo servers, the website, wrote 
most of the support documentation and, up until recently, answered the 
majority of questions on the mailing list. Identifying why development 
and support has slowed to a crawl is pretty simple. It's me.

For those who want the short answer: No, I have no plans to abandon 
development of the product. Yes, my time has been completely consumed 
with other things recently. No, I don't have an ETA on the 2.2.0 
release. Interested in the long answer? Read on ...

Like almost all programmers that write freeware/opensource software, I 
have a day job. Rather, I should say that I had a day job up until 
recently. This didn't come out of left field. The company I worked for 
has been having problems for a while. This prompted me to try to build 
secondary income over the last few months, but unfortunately that didn't 
materialized. Now I'm scrambling to find alternate employment. This has 
left almost no time for development or support.

To be honest, I was hoping to have acquired some form of corporate 
sponsorship by now. We just passed over a million downloads ( 1,055,710 
) last month so there is obviously a demand for the software. I can't 
tell you how many times someone has said in a support request, "[insert 
giant multi-national corporation here] support told me to download the 
Shrew Soft VPN Client so I can communicate with their product. Please 
help!". The sad truth is that I'm just not sure how to make the product 
pay for my time as the primary developer and all the other costs that go 
along with delivering the product.

This definitely needs to be an Ask Slashdot question: "How do you turn a 
popular free/open ource application into a reliable revenue source?". 
Actually, It's probably been asked a few times. I need to go see what 
people had to say about it.

So I should just get a new job and start focusing my time back on Shrew 
Soft right?

Theoretically, yes. But Shrew Soft needs to find a revenue stream of 
some kind or we may have to give it up in the future. Developing a VPN 
Client is not your typical freeware/opensource product from a financial 
perspective.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A PLEA FOR DONATIONS! I'm just stating facts. We are 
good for a couple of months and a short term increase in funds wouldn't 
make a dent in replacing my income, I assure you.

There have been a number of generous donations made to the ongoing 
support and development of the software. Believe me, they are greatly 
appreciated. But the reality of the situation is that monthly colo and 
bandwidth costs, yearly class 3 code signing certs, MSDN subscription 
fees, up to $1500 for every release that requires kernel driver changes 
( due to the MS driver certification requirements ), periodic code 
reviews of kernel code by highly specialized programmers, vpn gateway 
hardware cost for testing, standard fees for things like state/federal 
filings and insurance ... it all ads up, quick. After donations and 
revenue from advertisements, I still subsidize the cost of operations to 
the tune of about $600/month ( no joke ). In any case, I think it's kind 
of ironic considering that similar products sell for $70-$100 per end 
user license. How do we fix this? Wish I knew. What I do know is that if 
I had a $1 for each copy of the client downloaded, I would be working 
full time on the software, it would kick lots more ass and everyone 
would be a lot happier with productivity. Maybe we need to switch to the 
humble bundle model ...

http://www.humblebundle.com/

That way, we could continue to provide an open source version on open 
source platforms and provide a 'pay what you want' version for closed 
source platforms. Not sure how that would work out.

So for what it's worth, there you have it. I'm really busy and will be 
at least until I get settled into a new job. Hopefully that will happen 
very soon and I can get back to doing what I really love to do, working 
on the VPN client. I just don't know if we can keep it up forever.

Thanks again to everyone who has been active on the mailing list. It's 
been a huge help.

-Matthew