Rad Reader
screenshot shows the application Rad Reader in two of its 10+ themes. the left pane has a darker theme with gold highlights. the right pane has a lighter theme featuring a wheat-coloured background, red-tinted links, and purple titles. the panes are set on a background drawn by swedish artist kilian eng
I’m SUPER excited to announce the launch of Rad Reader!
A calm tool (OSX, Linux & Windows; 6MB & Electron-free!) for reading and following RSS feeds. I’ve been working on this for the past months during spare time and it’s my first journey in making something polished enough to sell!
Radical enough it is actually a paid product, the first I have ever made! The launch price is 4.95 USD (34% off) and I’ve been super anxious about even considering selling software!!
It also has a demo you can try for free on macOS, Windows, and Linux!
Spiritual Successor
It is a kind of spiritual successor to Kicks Condor’s Fraidycat. The choice to develop something new came from Fraidycat’s lack of maintenance and critical bugs hindering daily use.
One day on opening up Fraidycat, I could not load all my feeds. One of the feeds was no longer being served properly. I couldn’t remove the offender, either, because it wouldn’t appear in the interface! The problem persisted—and multiplied, as feeds and domains dropped off the net—from that point on. I looked at the code but the issue was difficult to pin down. The situation was further compounded by the maintainer, Kicks, having disappeared from the internet for a few years.
Looking at the issue I submitted in the Fraidycat repository, I guess Rad Reader has in some sense been baking 2.5 years in the oven :)
Models for Sustainable Software
On the philosophical side of things, with the release of Rad Reader I’m trying out a new model of sustainable software production.
This tool has had a lot of thought, time, and care put into it. I would like to continue doing so with this + other projects. Crafting tools is made possible by the food I eat and the shelter I reside in, and I can’t pay for either of those with stars or likes.
So the model I’m trying out is this:
- Release the software with a paid price
- Common the software and its source code once a number of sales has been reached, converting it into free software in perpetuity from that moment on
I don’t know how or if it will work out, but I am excited to explore new models of making ends meet while also making new software happen :)
If you are in the market for an Electron-free account-less program to keep track of cool posts coming out / a pokedex for cool websites, well then, please consider buying Rad Reader!
It’s a lifetime license, and if it reaches 350 purchases it will be turned into free software as well.