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Dear readers and customers,
the major problem for an indie publishing house like us developing for the F/OSS environment is not what to develop next or how to innovate but how to make money out of it.
It may sound unbelievable but in the last 30 years of open source existence, to this date there doesn’t seem to be a viable business model.
So, even if it is a lot of fun and we’re proud to be part of the WWW since more than 20 years as of this year, it sounds pretty incredible and frustrating that we, as others, aren’t commercially successful.
Why is that so is up to a discussion which we now would like to share with you all. It sheds some light on the problems we and others face and also tries to find some solutions for the bigger problems we had from the open source community in being a commercial success over the last decades:
[via]
Living in pandemic times made the year 2020 the hardest so far since our founding in 2010. We’re working hard to deliver like always but it’s an open secret that to this date our work doesn’t compensate like a typical 9-5 job in the IT industry. Which is a pity but a reality we were ready to face from the beginning. Yes, we were young and stupid, ehhh, idealistic, back then.
But fear not: not every question in life needs an answer, that’s just not how reality works. With this posting we don’t want show our frustration but share some insights about the harsh business reality we and others from the open source community face on a daily basis. To be honest, if you’re not doing from your heart and not willing to create for some dozens instead of hundreds or thousands of users, you should overthink your ambition in general here. And believe us also when we say we’ll find a solution for every problem – it’s just a matter of time and it will tell us and others too that we were completely right from the start. F/OSS already runs and rules this highly technologised world, so we’ve got that going for us which is nice! 🙂
Take care, stay healthy, and enjoy your pre-Christmas times this year,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers and customers,
by the 2nd of November Google will disallow all Android app update uploads which provide no support until at least API 29/version 10.
To avoid this, we already updated some of our apps on the 21st of April but fell short for others. This was due to a transition from our development environment to the official Android Studio. We still don’t have an easy time migrating our apps, be assured. Problem here doesn’t seem to be code but the UI, especially the downwards compatibility.
So, long story short we will provide updates for YAABy and Kryptowiki over the weekend. By Monday the 2nd there will be no Android 10 missing anymore from our side. We guarantee.
Android development still is a lot of fun for us despite the quirks, so we’re not planning to fall short of more updates and new features for years to come. Plus, by planning one or two more aquisitions in the future, we surely will have something in our sleeve to surprise our users and enhance our portfolio too.
In the meantime don’t hesitate to contact us if you’re in need of an own app: visit our Android product overview page for more detailed information.
Stay healthy and happy social distancing,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers and customers,
we took some time the last weeks and invested it wisely into new and easier pricing schemes for our products.
By implementing a three stage matrix (“starter”, “professional”, “ultimate”) which applies to all of our product categories, your choosing of your appropriate product will now be a breeze.
Plus, by adding additional infos about the exact scope as well as the concrete pricing anywhere, you will quickly get a feeling of what you really need and what can be implemented.
Try it out if you haven’t already, we’ll provide the categories right here in a short overview
Of course it’s possible to reach this information like in the past through our menu bar, only the content has changed, not the links to our product sites.
We’d be happy to hear from you as we’re here to serve you!
For a better and more sophisticated future in IT. Together.
Enjoy the beginning of autumn, always wear a face mask where necessary and take care,
your aethyx staff
Dear readers and customers,
on August 11 WordPress 5.5 was released, code named Eckstine, after US Jazz musician Billy Eckstine. Being only the second major release in 2020, it brought new features such as lazy loading for graphics as well as automatic update features for plugins and themes.
As the upgrade process itself was a success and went through everywhere without much hassle as we were used to WordPress updates in the near past, using and maintaining the web projects afterwards wasn’t.
In fact, several plugins just broke and we couldn’t use the software as we were used to: hovering the main menu on the left didn’t work anymore. Our editor was missing the buttons for all tags. All in all it was a messy user experience and it just felt wrong. Plus, we didn’t know exactly what and where things broke after the update.
There are only two things you can do at the moment:
1) downgrade(!) to 5.4.x
2) install a plugin which is called Enable jQuery Migrate Helper. [via]
What the latter does is check your site for outdated jQuery functions. After activation, your website/web project should function like normal. Only addition is a red coloured box which specifies outdated jQuery functions in use on your site. In our case it was constantly this one: jQuery.fn.live() is deprecated.
What we are doing now is editing the code for those plugins and themes where this error is shown. All updated code will then be found available in our WordPress plugin repository. We created this back when we migrated to PHP 7.x. It will now be updated for jQuery converted plugins as well. We are realisitic here: being in WordPress development since 2005 (15 years is a veryyy long time in WWW terms), we don’t expect some of our older plugins in use to be updated ever to run updated jQuery stuff. This is, in all its fame and glory, the “power” of OpenSource after all.
We apologise for the inconvenience if there should be any. So far on the frontend side, what you see as users, you should see no negative consequences.
Stay sharp and good luck updating to 5.5,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers and customers,
IT security for our consumers and clients always is one of the top priorities at AETHYX MEDIAE, your friendly and independent European online publishing house.
That’s why we started implementing and activating SSL on all our products and projects in spring 2017 already.
Since this month, for one and a half week or so, we also activated the last lock for securing our domains and the communication over the aether: HSTS.
As of 2020, the measurements to be safe and secure is now at the absolute maximum, technologically it looks like the following:
* SSL activated since 2017
* SSL enforced since 2017
* HSTS activated (and set to 16,070,400 seconds) since 2020
At the moment, this has to suffice as we can’t do more for domain security from our side.
Let’s hope it stays this way but who knows what the future of the web will bring.
We leave a lot of old and maybe beloved browsers (and browser versions) behind with these measures. But in the end we’ll all benefit from it: the developers as well as the users and consumers.
We’re not sure if people will remember why we had to do this stuff. But the open web is dead anyway, there is nothing we can change about it, at least since May 2013. Seven years ago, that is, a very long time now.
Stay safe out there! With or without us!
Greetings,
the aethyx staff