September 30, 2014

I’m not sure it’s Mou against the world

I like Mou the markdown editor for OSX which has just launched a campaign on Indiegogo to raise $20,000 to bring a 1.0 release to market.

In September 2012 I donated $10 to the developer of Mou, in response to his then fundraising effort. (I think $10 was the only funding option, or else I was being cheap.) The plan at that time was donate, and get a free license for Mou 1.0. (I’ve bought a full license to Smaller by the same developer, and would probably just buy Mou 1.0 and to hell with my donation.)

Now it’s two years on, and the developer is looking for $20,000 to finish version 1.0. Last I heard, and I can’t remember where I read it, was that Mou was abandoned and for sale. The Indiegogo page hints at such:

To finish the 1.0 goal, early this year, Chen even thought of selling Mou to a team with enough ability, but didn’t find a suitable one.

Now here’s the developer selling domains, some for as much as $20,000.

Screen grab of moe.io website

And here he is selling mechanical jumping frogs.

Which is great, I’m all for an entrepreneurial spirit. But it kinda makes me wonder how much of a priority Mou is for the developer, and whether or not the much vaunted 1.0 will materialise in ‘early 2015’ as the Indiegogo page states.

And just how far off 1.0 is Mou anyway? Why not just release it already? I’ll buy it, and I’m sure lots of other people will too.

Meanwhile here’s MacDown an open source alternative, based on Mou, that might need some support.