I wrote a blog about Goodnotes was my handwriting app of choice, but when it was released, it was full of bugs.
In 2020 I switched from Goodnotes to Notability.
The handwriting apps continue to be at the top of the productivity charts in App Store. I find that neither app has been innovated over the last few years. I wrote about the power of digital handwriting back in 2018.
Three years later, I still find it powerful. However, the apps are relatively the same as three years ago.
I wrote a blog about Goodnotes was my handwriting app of choice, but when it was released, it was full of bugs.
In 2020 I switched from Goodnotes to Notability.
The handwriting apps continue to be at the top of the productivity charts in App Store. I find...
Goodnotes 5 was released last week. Goodnotes is my favorite stylus note taking app on the IPad. I’ve tried most of the competitors at least once and revisit them when they release new features. I’ve been on Goodnotes for years and have been using it daily.
Let’s move to the topic of this blog, Goodnotes 5 is a bit buggy. There were a ton of negative comments on Twitter towards the release. The development team has released 7 updates as of the writing of this blog. Goodnotes 5 is not a forced upgrade from version 4. While I’ve not seen all the problems described on Twitter, I’ve seen a few of the issues. I knew installing the initial release, and there were going to be some bugs.
However if you think about the DevOps model release, fix, release, fix, release, fix. The model is built for this type of release and user feedback.
However, many of the twitter complaints, where why was buggy software released. So it made me think about when is software ready for release in the DevOps model? Typically there is a release once code passes, unit tests, integration tests, load tests, functional tests, and GUI Tests. However bugs do reach production and the users, there is no fool-proof plan.
App store doesn’t allow releasing of beta software. However does offer TestFlight, so maybe GoodNotes could have leverage 10,000 of its customers to beta test the software and avoided the negative backlash on Twitter.
Goodnotes 5 was released last week. Goodnotes is my favorite stylus note taking app on the IPad. I’ve tried most of the competitors at least once and revisit them when they release new features. I’ve been on Goodnotes for years and have been using it daily.
Let’s move...
Open source has been around for decades, but the real initiatives started in 1998. Due to some recent experiences, I started pondering open source and the future of software.
I believe the future of software is open source where a company which wraps enterprise support around it.
Take any open source software, if you need a feature typically someone has built it. If they haven’t, your team ends up creating it and adding it back to the project. Open source has the power of community vs a company with a product manager and deadlines to ship based on some roadmap built by committee. I made it too simple, open source has a product manager, really in most communities they are gate keeper. They own accepting features and setting direction, in some cases it’s the original developer like Linux, or sometimes it’s a committee, However, at the end of the day either commercial or open source has a product owner.
It’s an interesting paradux which created two opposing questions. First, why isn’t all software open sourced? Why would a company who has spent millions In development going to give the software away and charge for services?
The answer to the first question is see question two. The answer to the second question is giving away software is not financially viable if millions have been invested unless a robust software support model is supporting the development of software.
I worked for many organizations who’s IT budget was lean and agile, Open source was was minimal budget dollars. I have worked for other organizations whose budget is exceptionally robust and requires supported software as part of governance.
Why not replace the license model with a support model, and allow me or even more importantly the community access to the source code, contribute and drive innovation. Based on users, revenue or some other metric charge me for support or allow me to opt out. Seems like a reasonable future to me.
Open source has been around for decades, but the real initiatives started in 1998. Due to some recent experiences, I started pondering open source and the future of software.
I believe the future of software is open source where a company which wraps enterprise support around it.
Take any open...