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Today is Father’s Day. I spent a wonderful day with my family. What do I come home to, but three reviews on GenSoftReviews giving Behold terrible ratings.
The first two reviews point to the very long time it is taking me to develop Behold. Both say Behold is an excellent GEDCOM reader. But the expectation from the first two reviewers is that I’ll never get Behold to the Version 2 and the full-featured onscreen editor that I’ve been promising for 10 years.
The third review took this even further and lists 6 points. 1, 2 and 3 are about the amount of time my updates have taken me. 4 is concluding I’ll never get editing into Behold. 5. and the Biggest Con: is calling Behold extremely expensive, and 6 is saying I shouldn’t try to help influence the future of genealogy and should only concentrate on Behold. It was scathing.
Now I don’t want to make any excuses. Just because I have an important full-time job that requires additional hours from time to time, I have a wife and daughters and we do things together, I’ve got my household chores like everyone that makes me hate the fact that we have to eat and that grass grows in the summer, I had a mother who came down with cancer and gave us six rough months, a father who came down with dementia and gave me three intensive years in the nursing home, I have other relatives and friends we spend time with, after finishing my stint on the Board and as President I still do volunteer work for our regional Heritage Centre, I maintain my personal website, GenSoftReviews, and contribute to Genealogy and Family History Stack Exchange, which I helped start, I blog and maintain close contacts with other geneabloggers. I give talks on genealogy that require preparation and thought (and I’ve got three proposals I’m submitting to RootsTech 2016).
Just because I’m doing a few other things, I’m not going to give any excuses. I should be able to spend 4 or 5 hours every night and stay up to 2 a.m. to work solidly on Behold and nothing else … and then go to work the next morning, shouldn’t I?
Should I be single-minded? Should I work on Behold and nothing else? Every little change I propose in Behold’s Future Plans sounds easy doesn’t it? If life and programming were only that simple and problem free.
Contributing to BetterGEDCOM and FHISO and going to Gaenovium all add to my global perspective of the program that I think is needed. I don’t feel I can ignore the surroundings. I must absorb, adapt, and continue on towards seeing Behold to fruition.
In really contemplating what the posters are complaining about, there do appear to be a few things they think I’m doing wrong.
First, obviously according to the reviewers, I shouldn’t be so open with everybody. I shouldn’t talk to other developers, or people who are trying to change genealogy for the better. I shouldn’t think about their good ideas. I definitely shouldn’t try to help the genealogical community in any way.
Second, I shouldn’t give any of my customers any ideas at all about my future plans. I should be totally mum to mentioning where I am going, and definitely not state any dates I’m striving for. In fact, I should completely take my ToDo list down and keep it private just like every other vendor does.
And my pricing is obviously totally wrong. I should not charge a single lifetime price for my product, but should instead do what all the other vendors do and charge an initial price, and then a significant upgrade price for every insignificant upgrade and bug fix each year after that. $40 is way more than any genealogist is willing to spend on any product. After all, shouldn’t all genealogy software be free?
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Sorry. I’ll just sit and take my lumps from those reviews. They certainly don’t do anything to motivate me. They only depress me and give me less incentive.
But I’ll continue on. I have been developing Behold a long time. I agree it is taking much longer than I ever expected it to, and I’m sorry if people feel deceived about the goals I have been setting for myself that I haven’t achieved. I’ve written many blog posts on my Behold Blog documenting my progress, lack of progress, and ongoing battles in programming and I’ve been open about everything. Do you know other genealogy developers who do this?
Now I’ll apologise again that Version 1.1 will unfortunately be another day later. I couldn’t work on it tonight because I didn’t expect to see those reviews and then need to spend the evening writing this blog post.
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Second thought, and I realize this is really what the reviewers were asking for: Maybe after 1.1 is out, I should directly track towards Version 2.0 and just do what’s necessary to make that happen.
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Joined: Sun, 16 Nov 2014
6 blog comments, 0 forum posts
Posted: Sun, 21 Jun 2015
Don’t let the reviewers get to you, and you don’t have to explain yourself to them. Things happen, plans change, priorities change. It’s understandable, at least to normal people if not those reviewers.
One of my websites still lists certain features that “will be added in the coming weeks” - and that was written 15 years ago! There’s too much going on to keep on top of everything (especially something that has minimal effect on income, like I suspect is the case with Behold). Even if I drop things (I ceased being part of Genealogy SE a year ago) there’s still not enough hours in the day (and night).
Part of the problem may be you strive to give a professional appearance for Behold - which means users may think it’s your primary job. It might help if you explain, in the “future” page, how little time is actually available for it each week. And so little time given to each week is the right priority: family, friends and local activities are far more important.
Joined: Tue, 1 Feb 2005
1 blog comment, 30 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 22 Jun 2015
Louis,
I wonder how many of the reviewers have ever tried to write a program as complex as Behold? Or any program for that matter? I purchased Behold many years ago and although I don’t use it daily, I do use it, like it and find it useful.
As for your pricing model, it works for me.
As for speed and frequency of updates. Your blog lets everyone know what you’re doing and some issues you are trying to overcome. Anyone who reads your blog shouldn’t be surprised that you aren’t issuing monthly updates.
And any developer of genealogy programs absolutely needs to be involved in organizations, roundtables and the like to keep on top of what’s happening in the world. If they don’t they’ll find themself isolated on some island that contains only them while the rest of the genealogy world has moved on … Just like in the book “Who Moved My Cheese?”
Keep doing what you’re doing on your timetable and pay little heed to these complainers.
Joined: Fri, 20 Jul 2012
20 blog comments, 3 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 22 Jun 2015
Seems a little suspect that all of a sudden there are 3 “scathing” reviews in a very short time period that are almost parallel to each other. Makes one wonder…
As far as the waits between versions, plans for editing, etc. there certainly is a grain of truth there. You, yourself have expressed irritations about it. Perhaps you are trying to put too much in an update? Perhaps you are striving for perfection? I don’t know, but whatever might be going on, maybe these 3 reviews can be used as a positive force that causes some reevaluation of the overall process?
I personally agree with the other comments above. I appreciate your efforts. I appreciate the way you keep open communication with us. And I certainly appreciate and agree with your overall vision of Behold.
Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 22 Jun 2015
Rob, Rich, Deckie,
I really appreciate the supportive words.
But really, what I want too is to get the editing capability into Behold. So it does make sense that I should not work on the lesser things, but work only on what is needed to get there.
There is lots to do, but it will happen much faster if I make it my primary goal, rather than just my ultimate goal.
Louis
Joined: Thu, 5 Sep 2013
9 blog comments, 9 forum posts
Posted: Sat, 27 Jun 2015
I think you should not let others tell you how to spend your free time, including me ;)
As for the 1.1 update, the changelog is very impressive, and it will be a very big step forward to have “life events”.
If you think that a rudimentary editor is possible to add quickly, without it being in the way of the other future developments, then that sounds like a good idea.
I guess even a very basic editor for correcting typos and maybe deleting lines could be helpful already for many users working on their GEDCOM files. That might be a new version 1.5. A full editor that allows adding new persons would probably need a bit more of an interface, so it could come later and still be called v2.0.