doublewitt wrote::arrow: According to the
roadmap, there will be a commercial version released. Is there a tentative date for this? Will it be relatively soon? Can you share some information about this project? Ofcourse, we ask questions because this is a nice piece of software - interesting & useful!
Hello doublewitt, and welcome to the forum!
Thanks for your interest. Yes, you are right, there will be a commercial version of CintaNotes. I know we all love free software, but the point here is, I really enjoy making CintaNotes (and hopefully it shows in the product), and the only way I can devote really much time to it (which is more than necessary if the roadmap is ever going to be halfway done) is if CintaNotes becomes my day job. That's why I've decided to try doing a commercial version and seeing if it's gonna work this way.
As you probably know, the members of this forum who helped CintaNotes in any way while it was in Beta phase will get the commercial license from me for free.
I plan to release the first commercial version optimistically by the end of this summer, realistically in the early fall.
The big question is which features would go into the commercial version. I don't want to put all the goodies into it so that the free version is stripped down and not very interesting for anybody. On the other hand, putting in too little of benefits will give people no incentive to buy the product. As they say, you don't sell the commercial version, you sell the difference between the commercial and the free version.
So I really try to strike the balance between the two extremes.
As for now, I plan to prioritize those features which are easier to implement. And of course I count in the user votes here on the forum. I guess the following features will appear in the commercial version first:
- Parse clipped HTML for links;
- Advanced search with regular expressions;
- Notebook encryption;
- Template-based export & import
I'm also considering making Multiple Notebook support, Tab-based note categories and Advanced backup commercial features, but still haven't decided yet. One thing is for sure - later on, adding features to the free version would be much easier than removing them (which is all by itself a big no-no).
The other question is the price. I guess it will be somewhere in the range from $30 to $50. Charging less would make little sense for me, because I see CintaNotes as a work of art, and it can't be that cheap
(Probably I should be more humble, with all that plethora of free software out there, but hey, why not try at least).
The free version will also evolve, some features (but not all) from the commercial version will also appear there (with a more-than-a-year delay, and by that time the commercial version will be much more ahead). The overall UI polishing and of course bugfixing will take place.
Well, that's how I see the future now. Maybe I'm wrong, but let's see what it brings. And I'm as always open to reasonable suggestions;)