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

[gregmail at outtacyte.com]

How about a Paid Support offerings (subscription and 1-off) for the product?

Something very low that I could talk my customer into.  This would provide
you with a regular stream of revenue and I can tell my customer the product
is supported by the vendor and the maintenance/subscription is very
affordable.

My customers often don't like the "open source" model because there is
no-one-home.  Yes, if they were technically savvy, they could simply search
the forums and often find the answer.

As it is now, they call me, I do that and charge them for it.  I am their
support for your product.  They are happy because they can call me.  I am
happy because I get paid and once set up, the product just works.

Of course, the downside is that you have to provide the support for your
current released version.  The upside is that the current released version
nearly always runs with no problems (usual caveats of supported OS and with
supported equipment).


How about selling setup walk-throughs for those who want the product but
aren't really savvy enough to read the manual and get much from it.  This
would take lots of pictures and require screenshots from the various devices
to do, but other than that it's just assembly.


How about selling access to a ".vpn" generator for the various types of
setup with lots of help and walkthrough with the end result being a useable
.vpn file that can be imported into the client's installation?


I absolutely love the product and would like to see it continue.

I'm sure others will offer other ideas.

-greg

-----Original Message-----
From: vpn-help-bounces at lists.shrew.net
[mailto:vpn-help-bounces at lists.shrew.net] On Behalf Of Matthew Grooms
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 3:52 PM
To: vpn-help at lists.shrew.net
Subject: [vpn-help] Whats going on with Shrew Soft and the 2.2.0 release?

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
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