AniMap, the story is interesting and real for me. However, so is the current situation.
I’ve always developed AniMap on my dime, my time. Subscriptions help with expense of server operations. Any license used in development and time writing code has always been done after a full work day.
Recently I lost my job of 10 years. Why, financial troubles stuck and they needed to reduce employees. My job was listed as eliminated.
Currently at 65 years young I face a tough job market, new hiring processes and a much younger and much larger workforce than I have in the past. Yes, it is a long and trying road. We all have them, we all face them. They are all priority when we do.
That is the story bringing me to what I write today.
AniMap is owned by one, me. Andrew E. Allord. My wife, my primary tester of all things users use and enjoy.
Currently I am working on AniMap version 5. Users will be happy to learn I am switching to version 3.0.2 UI. What I thought was smoother, well I make mistakes too. It was smoother for how my mind works, for others; not so much. I heard you and it is coming.
My problem leaves me with about a two year gap to fill. Income to pay the bills and keep driving AniMap forward.
The gap is tougher than anything I faced before. Not only does it hurt to ask support of users through helping to spread the word. I’ve never been in this position before. This age makes it for anyone exponentially worse.
The goal of making AniMap open source, well that was destroyed by news how open source is being treated today. One open source product was rewritten using artificial intelligence (AI), packaged under a more open license model and republished. The original creator didn’t know of this until after the damage was done.
I owe Art Lassange, Adrian Ettlinger and John Long their attribution for all of their work that came before me. With open source being taken over like it was, I cannot and will not risk removal of reference to these people. I never met them, but I know the work, the effort and their love of what they brought for all of us.
This also means it will never be profit driven. It was never my intent to make this something to make massive profits for me. It just needs to pay bills of operation and development of improvements.
Subscription will go away. I hate it, but it is required to keep moving forward. Those men deserve that from me, from us.
So today all I ask is please help by spreading the word of how you benefit from AniMap. That, would be the best marketing anyone can help me with. Better than any money can buy. So please tell your story using AniMap, share the blog where it fits well. For that, it is everything to these men and my ability to quickly move AniMap forward. Thank you.