CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  To be frank, we have 3 developers and 1 project manager working on Growl. 1 of those is a full time student. The other is a full time developer at a prestigious mac shop. The last is a full time doctor.

So we have one guy who can work on Growl for maybe 5 hours a month (doctor). Another guy who can work on Growl 10 hours a week (dev) , and the last guy can do the same (student). I can work on Growl roughly 10 hours a week as well (project manager).

When considering what we could and could not support, based on the fact that the Growl project is entirely volunteer supported, we had to make judgement calls. 10.4 was released over 4 years ago. No new hardware supports it. Very few of us have a box to test on, and it makes the testing process go much longer. The testing process for 1.1 itself got extended another month due to 10.4.

So just on a testing basis alone did we think about dropping 10.4.

Then you have to consider maintenance of code. There is a large amount of code that we were able to remove and stop maintaining once we dropped 10.4. The ability to do this made the codebase smaller, and easier to read.

Finally, it is hard to work with old API's.

It is unreasonable to expect unpaid volunteers to work on something they do not want to work on. Period. I've forced people to do that before when I worked as the Project Manager of Adium. We needed Group Chat support, and I basically told one guy to do it or else. He did it, then he quit the project. People stop working on things if they are forced to do something they don't want to do.

Let me put it another way. Supporting 10.4 is like supporting ie 6. You can do it, but why? For a group of people with barely a lot of time, it's not worth doing it.

I hope this explanation helps. By the way, livings works on another mac app. Saying "it's not that old!" is not a good argument for either of us. We both have to make judgement calls based on cold hard fact and not emotion. I simply don't have the resources to support 10.4 at the prefpane and extras level, and I'm sure the argument to livings doesn't really shine through compared to resources either.

Open source projects are supposed to be fun. Threads like this make it not fun. Come up with a better argument for 10.4 support that addresses all my points and more and we'd maybe rethink it, but currently 10.4 support for the prefpane and extras is gone and won't be returning.

I hope this helps you understand our reasoning.

Chris  
(Version 1.2)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  The updater really isn't very good right now, agreed. We're currently switching to sparkle at the moment which will take care of that. Sorry about the problem, not much we can do about it at this time though.  
(Version 1.2)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  It's definitely a beta, not for the general public, so your milleage may vary and all of that.  
(Version 1.1.2)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Dude, you need to make up your mind. Is it shareware or freeware. If it's shareware, make it shareware, and if it's freeware, drop the nagging.

This just seems conflicted.

20,000 downloads is nothing, by the way. And guess what, Growl itself has gotten, *maybe*, 400 bucks. If you want cash, make it shareware. You won't get it with it being free.  
(Version 1.5.2)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Sorry about these others ivanovitch, they don't represent Growl.

There's not much we can do, the developer of that product wants to use Growl as a way to push for registrations. Growl is a generic notification system, i.e., anyone can send anything. I'm sorry about the problem.

I agree with you about the documentation needing to be supplementary, and not required reading.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Sourceforge?

Umm.. we moved away from sourceforge because they were unacceptable from a development perspective. Their support forums are inadequate, and at the time they had cvs and we were all pulling our hair out with that.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Check out 1.1.1 :)

Should fix up the slowness with mv stuff  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Is this fixed in 1.1.1?  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Indeed. :D  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  We're avoiding an upgrade issue which would cause thousands of support requests for us. However, the prefpane will work fine in either / or ~. You can even use pacifist to extract it.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Fixed in 1.1.1. Please download the update.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Fixed in 1.1.1. Please download the update.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  How does a claw relate to children?

How is the claw "stupid"?  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Fixed in 1.1.1. Please download the update.  
(Version 1.1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Glad you like it. People are entitled to their opinions, I just need an explanation from the person as to why they don't like things in order to get them fixed, if they can be.  
(Version 1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  You are welcome to suggest alternatives that resolve these issues:

http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?p=96475#96475  
(Version 1.1)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Assuming it's haxies is probably a poor thing to do as a first troubleshooting step.  
(Version 0.7.6)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Fixed in 0.7.5 and 0.7.6. Thanks!  
(Version 0.7.6)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  Ya, I messed up and forgot to update the stupid background for the dmg. It's 0.7.6.

Your system prefs where it says version says 0.7.5 because system prefs, upon installing, won't stop the currently running GrowlHelperApp. This causes it to display that, there's nothing we can do about it. Stop and start Growl, restart sysprefs and it'll be the new version.  
(Version 0.7.6)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  So basically there's a few reasons that could cause this. Most of the time it's because you are using a display style which is based on Webkit.

Which display style(s) were you using?  
(Version 0.7.6)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  After looking at that widget, it looks like it requires internet access. Jisho does not.  
(Version 1.3)

CHRISTOPHER FORSYTHE  We're working to fix this for the .8 release, or at least where we can.  
(Version 0.7.3)

CHRIS  Oh bah, I read that wrong.

So you want notifications to be sent via email and also to have on screen stuff at the same time?

Mind if we take this to the forums? I don't monitor macupdate too much because it doesn't tell me via email when someone responds. If so, http://forums.cocoaforge.com  
(Version 0.7)

CHRIS  I've never seen this happening, what in the world are you doing to cause this?  
(Version 0.7)

CHRIS  What you are describing happens with every display except bezel and music video.  
(Version 0.7)

CHRIS  Traditionally linux users prefer /usr/local/bin.

Traditionally for unix admins, /opt has been preferred. Unfortunately I was overuled with Growl, but either should be acceptable. This makes it so that iceberg isn't in the default installation directories. 3rd party tools being kept in a separate directory is rather nice for management :)  
(Version 1.1.5)

CHRIS  Installers are actually needed for some things though. Drag and drop is nice, but kills things like frameworks for some people.

In either case, we felt it better to move to just a double click of the prefpane. Glad you like it. :D  
(Version 0.7)

CHRIS  Yes  
(Version 0.7)

CHRIS  We're currently beta testing Growl, and should have a release soon to resolve these issues.  
(Version 0.6.2)

CHRIS  The crash above is due to zero link. You need to build in deployment. The xcode doc on the Growl website should tell you how Tee.  
(Version 0.81)

CHRIS  Pretty cool stuff. Very pretty. :)  
(Version 1.0.1)

CHRIS  One word of note: If an app has applescripting or some other scripting language which Growl supports in it, it's pretty easy to write a script to work with Growl as well.  
(Version 0.6.2)

CHRIS  Ya, the only problem you may have is with GrowlMail.  
(Version 0.6.2)

CHRIS  This will be fixed in the Growl 0.6.2 release. Sometime this weekend :)  
(Version 0.6.1)

CHRIS  "No, it's not clear, and again you don't explain."

You didn't really explain how it wasn't clear until just now ;)

"A notification about what?"

Anything that is sent to Growl. That's why we said "Global"

"That says what?"

Anything that an application sends to Growl.

"Who is notified?"

The user....

"Why? "

Because some people need more than just a dock bounce. The about page on the website already covers this. I'd really like your feedback, but not the negativity that you are carrying along with it here (maybe I'm just reading it wrong, if so sorry)

"Simple questions that should be easy enough to answer in plain English. "

Then answer my plain english question from earlier.

"What would you have said?"  
(Version 0.6.1)

CHRIS  What's lame about the icon?  
(Version 0.6)

CHRIS  This is the same comment as for md5it. It still applies here:

This is more of a comment, not really a revue or anything.

I think the reason why this is getting a lot of negative comments is the following:

1) This is free on OS X (via terminal)

2) This is free on OS 9 (some app called shorten)

3) It's 10 bucks.

4) OS 9 is basically dead. Only a small group use it. Those who are on that platform probably won't be needing md5.

5) For those on OS X needing md5, for the most part they would be the type who also would be knowledgeable of the terminal.

6) It's 10 dollars.

I think it's pointless to post any more bad comments, and also bad ratings. At the same time, from the feedback you've received so far, I'd ask the developer to rethink his/her approach to this solution. This would appeal to a small group I think, and I'm not sure if they'd be willing to pay a shareware fee of the current price for what this does. I realize that you have done a lot of work on it, it does look useful, but.. *shrug*  
(Version 2.0)

CHRIS  This is more of a comment, not really a revue or anything.

I think the reason why this is getting a lot of negative comments is the following:

1) This is free on OS X (via terminal)

2) This is free on OS 9 (some app called shorten)

3) It's 10 bucks.

4) OS 9 is basically dead. Only a small group use it. Those who are on that platform probably won't be needing md5.

5) For those on OS X needing md5, for the most part they would be the type who also would be knowledgeable of the terminal.

6) It's 10 dollars.

I think it's pointless to post any more bad comments, and also bad ratings. At the same time, from the feedback you've received so far, I'd ask the developer to rethink his/her approach to this solution. This would appeal to a small group I think, and I'm not sure if they'd be willing to pay a shareware fee of the current price for what this does. I realize that you have done a lot of work on it, it does look useful, but.. *shrug*  
(Version 2.0.1)