Dear readers and customers,
as we move further into the year more news reached us that the shrinking indie industry is a topic we will see more and not less in 2024.
This Monday we got an Email by Dark Horse, one of our most beloved indie comic publishers out there. They’re canceling the Android app by March 25. Although the iOS app will still be developed for the moment, the advise here is to visit their regular website which residies at digital.darkhorse.com. They share a coupon code with us which we want to share too, use it on any checkout you do until April 30 2024, it’s COMICSFAN. It can be used as many times as you like until it expires.
Another news is that Vice Media will stop publishing vice.com. Although a lot of people will see this as “a cleaning process” for the web and its content, we won’t judge but want to remind that especially in the 90s and early 2000s it was impressive what could be done from a new media perspective here. Of course a lot changed there internally and from the outside (investors, ehemm) but this is definitely a story which could have been a huge success to this day. Whatever it was, it’s over now. R.I.P.?
Google Cache is also dead. Okay, you may argue, not very indie indeed. But we used it still to this day and are a bit sad that it vanished. Our times close the open web more and more, even popular websites like reddit do this. Having a cache feature available to see the content even when your Google click sent you to a gated website is not so free and positive thinking after all. R.I.P.
We are sure there will be more to digest the coming weeks and months. These are critical times.
Let’s look ahead.
For example with a Harvard study which stated recently Open Source software adds $8.8 trillion to the global economic power. We live and work in this industry here since almost 25 years now and believe us if we say this is even an understatement. It’s in the nature of open source software that some things are just not trackable. We are proud that it was tried here though. That’s definitely something we can build up upon. Kudos!
Take care and all the best,
your indie open source wizards from AETHYX MEDIAE
