I saw the initial beta announcement of ForgEdit today and went over to check it out. For a 1.0 beta, it has some nice features, but overall it’s pretty far behind the Mac text editors I currently own (BBedit, TextMate, skEdit, SubEthaEdit).
Since there is no license or pricing information listed on the main portion of the site, I found that information the forums: the plan is to have it be a $20 app. I understand that this was probably the idea from the start and that a lot of time and effort has gone into the product (read the backstory), but I think it would be wise to reconsider this.
BBEdit and TextMate are pretty well entrenched as the big two in this space, and they have a big headstart on features (not to mention plugins) and mindshare. skEdit is a very nice and capable app that fills the low-end price point well. I don’t see being a “me too” in this space working out very well for Stefan.
I think he should consider making ForgEdit an open source project. By doing that, he is able to both differentiate himself from the existing products on price and also would likely gain a few contributors that might help ForgEdit catch up to the others on features.
A good web site for the project with a blog, documentation, forums, etc. might bring in as much in ads and alternative monetization strategies as he could reasonably expect in license revenue.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Jordan adds this Comment:
Don’t forget Smultron. It is open source and has a head start.
http://smultron.sourceforge.net/
I tried ForgEdit when I saw it pop up on MacUpdate. It was nice, but certainly not compelling enough to make me leave BBEdit and Smultron. Or vi.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:32 am
Alex adds this Comment:
I’d never even heard of Smultron.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:35 am
stephen o'grady adds this Comment:
you know what would further differentiate one of these editors? putting out a cross-platform version
i’ve yet to find a pretty editor for Linux; they’re all sort of blah.
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
My impression is that Objective-C/Cocoa/whatever these things are built in isn’t easily portable.
If I were building a cross-platform app, I think I’d choose the Mozilla XUL platform over Java these days. A good XUL text editor would be pretty sweet - imagine it as a Firefox plugin for blogging.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:00 pm
stephen o'grady adds this Comment:
sort of like performancing, i suppose. that would be interesting.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:12 pm