Question:

Answer:

1. I felt it didn't make sense to charge for such a small addition to an already free web browser.
2. Other browsers support these features, but I'm too cheap to purchase them. That's one reason I wrote Sogudi.
3. Other reasons I wrote Sogudi were to learn:
• How do Input Managers work?
• How can I decipher the inner workings of a program?
• How does the shareware & freeware model work?
• etc.
4. And finally, Sogudi could be a leader package to draw people to my other products (of which there are currently none).

What I've learned:

1. Writing software for distribution takes a great deal more effort and time than I had anticipated.
2. The user community can be very supportive, helpful, and appreciative, especially if they are getting what they want & for free.
3. This same group of people can be quite nasty if the author so much as hints that he'd like his efforts to produce enough for the occasional sandwich.
4. Sogudi has been downloaded almost 1600 times, is currently installed in over 900 separate computers, and I have received exactly $0.00 in donations. At that rate, it doesn't pay for the web space it takes up.
5. This project wasn't about money, but about fun, community interest, and a pretty neat idea.
6. I'm not ready to make the jump into what a shareware project would require.

What I've decided:

1. As long as Sogudi remains useful and fun for me, I will continue to develop it and it will remain free.
2. As long as the users contribute in a positive manner to this site, I will be having fun, and Sogudi will stay free.
3. As soon as people start demanding one thing or another and get nasty, I will either stop developing Sogudi or start charging for it. I really do have better things to do than listen to a group of freeloaders complain about the unfairness of the world.
4. Apple has a tendency of taking good ideas that others have implemented and copying them into their own software (MultiFinder, Multi-Level Apple Menu, DropDrawers, LiteSwitchX, DragThing, ...) so this may become a pointless debate when some future version of Safari supports shortcuts.

If you are truly concerned about Sogudi remaining free and supported -- Donate! I guarantee that those that donate will always get upgrades of Sogudi free (please, no pennies). Those that have contributed to the language translations will get Sogudi free, also.

RE: Apple's tendency to "take" good ideas. LiteSwitchX? itself was a copy of an idea that already existed on other platforms, but re-done with a pretty Mac OS X interface. Proteron has no monopoly on the idea, nor do they have a monopoly on the "look" of pretty Mac OS X apps (in fact, Apple are the ones who invented semi-transparent bezel windows, the ones who started using 128x128 icons etc). I could make similar comments on Konfabulator vs Dashboard. No theft there. Sherlock vs Watson. No theft there either. If you're in any doubt about either of these cases see the articules on daringfireball.net. And as far as Sogudi goes, it's a great idea; but there's plenty of prior art (from both Omni and the Mozilla camp, perhaps other browsers too that I haven't used yet), so if Apple rolls this kind of thing into Safari it won't be a case of "taking an idea", but of implementing a feature that is already standard in a lot of browsers.

On another note, I develop shareware, and I'm not surprised no one has paid you. In general, no matter how good/useful your app, you only get paid if you oblige people to do so. Sad but true.