Our company has earlier non-music projects that have blessedly given us financial flexibility in the last decade, and let us work on Sitala as a labor of love. We still generate income there, but it’s been in slow decline, and soon we need to either invest more in projects that are bringing in dosh, or charge for Sitala.
We’ve literally thrown a couple hundred thousand dollars of our own cash at getting Sitala this far, so asking for $20 doesn’t feel like crazy-talk.
And we’re not pulling the free version. 1.0 is still available, just like before, for free.
Windows XP was released 22 years ago. 64-bit processors became standard 17 years ago. We know a few folks are clinging on there, but it’s such a vanishingly small percentage of our user base that testing and packaging doesn’t make sense anymore. And on top of that: the main thing the 32-bit packages have done the last few years is confuse users of our 64-bit packages when they install the wrong thing. Here again, the old version is still available.
This is a hard one for us, since both Sitala developers come from a background in Linux multimedia.
The truth is the Linux version has always been buggier than the versions for macOS, Windows and iOS. We felt like we could kind of get away with that when we weren’t charging for it, but when users pay for software, there’s a reasonable expectation of it, well, working.
Most of the bugs come from the framework we use (JUCE) and in the past we’ve spent a lot of time hunting down Linux bugs in JUCE, and sent them upstream to a big resounding nothing.
On top of that, packaging on Linux is a bugger. We’ve tried to just target the most recent Ubuntu LTS, because we just can’t afford the time to test and debug on a dozen Linuxes (which is about 0.9% of our user base), but of course that doesn’t stop folks from trying and using Sitala on other distros.
As a result of these inconvenient truths, Linux is about 1% of our user base, but about a third of our support mail. Up to now we’ve been resigned in just throwing our hands up in the air when people hit issues that are real, but that we can’t economically test or debug, but that feels smarmy when we’re charging people cash for things. So, at least for this release, we’re going to sideline our Linux support.
Our previous release is still available for download.
Yes, you can use the same serial number to activate Sitala on all of your personal computers (Windows or macOS). iOS purchaes however are separate, and are handled exclusivly through the Apple App Store.
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