I’m fairly certain that most software should be open source.
Over several decades I’ve developed the habit of starting projects that I strongly desire to be around for many years only to find them difficult to maintain and host securely and within a budget.
For example, 14 years ago I built a personal side project called Nilai, a to-do app for bookmarks. My vision for that app, at the time, was to build something that would be around well into the future. So I decided to charge for it in the hopes that it would make just enough to justify keeping it online.
But that didn’t pan out. Not only did Nilai fail to get enough users, but I soon started a company, hired a team, and we had other priorities that meant I had very little time to maintain the project. So I shut it down.
A few years later, my team decided to dust off the idea of what Nilai was trying to accomplish (a to-do app for bookmarks) and we built Unmark and open sourced it from the beginning. I knew then that if we were going to build this idea a second time, we should make sure people could continue to use it even if we were to abandon it. Unmark quickly became, at the time, one of the most popular PHP repositories on GitHub.
And although it was never commercially a smash hit, it is still running today! I personally host Unmark.it, which is a hosted version of the open source Unmark app that has an additional feature or two.
Well, today I’m announcing that Unmark.it is no longer accepting new sign ups, it will be shut down by the end of the year, and that its repository will be put into stasis. Of course, if anyone needs longer than that to get their data, send me a note. All users will get an email soon about this.
Unmark’s underlying stack is very outdated and while I’ve managed to limp it along for several years I don’t think it has a future in its current form.
This is where Rinku comes in.
Rinku is an open source, cross platform, to-do app that is wholly inspired by the features and design of Unmark. Except it has no database, no “stack”, no install process. All of which were big hurdles for most people. You just run it on macOS, or Windows, or the Linux distribution of your choice.
I’ve learned from building Signboard that this method of distributing my software ideas is the best way to go. Just offer it free and open source. This way, I’m not left with anything to maintain or pay for. And I get the added benefit of people contributing their ideas and fixes as well.
I’ll have more to announce about Signboard soon.
This era of agents makes it much more reasonable to maintain the software. And because it is an app you install and all of the data is stored locally and synced however you’d like, it means (I hope), that these projects will be around an awful long time.
Rinku is just getting started but I’ve been using it every day for months. It has most of the features Unmark did, and has a few I always wish existed (like contexts for work and personal, etc.). And I look forward to continuing to make it better with the help of the community.