Zugg Software :: View topic - Mid-Year Letter

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2011 5:49 pm

What a wild summer it has been…

Normally I write a "New Year's Letter" at the end of the year. Last year I didn't have much to say so I never got around to it. Now it seems that I have lots to say, so let's call this a "Mid Year Letter"
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As you have probably noticed, there haven't been any CMUD releases for the past few months. I feel bad about that, but it's been a hectic summer around here.

It all started back in May when Chiara and I decided to down-size our life. CMUD/zMUD sales have not been paying the bills for several years now and we realized that we had a big expensive house and a big expensive car that we could no longer afford. When you haven't used a room in a house for more than 3 months it's time to ask why you have that room. We thought that maybe the housing market was going to start recovering (it didn't) and decided to put the house on the market to sell (it didn't). We traded in the car and moved to a small town-home in Colorado Springs. We didn't want to try and sell the house with our 3 cats running around and downsizing into a town-home was a good way to start getting rid of excess stuff.

It took over two months to move to the new town-home. It was really hard to work on software updates when our computer was packed or when we were spending all of our free time packing and unpacking boxes.

Then Chiara's grandfather passed away. That caused even more turmoil, emotions and lost time. The worst part was that we couldn't even go to the funeral because by then we were involved in the next big move of the summer: moving from Colorado to Washington DC.

For the past 3 years I've been supplementing the sales income from CMUD/zMUD with web development consulting. I specialized in small business web sites implemented using the Drupal CMS. The work on the tessh.com web site came out of this for example. I also worked on some Drupal plans for zuggsoft.com but put them on hold for performance reasons. Mainly I wrote web sites for small local businesses who couldn't afford a huge development firm. It helped pay the bills.

In August, my freelance web development business was acquired by Phase2 Technology (www.phase2technology.com). They are one of the top Drupal web development companies in the world. Some of their high-profile sites include whitehouse.gov and many many others. Being hired as a senior developer for Phase2 is truly one of my dream jobs. I couldn't pass up this great opportunity to make a huge difference in the world. My fingerprints will now be on some of the largest government and media web sites in the world.

This transition meant two things: 1) moving to Washington DC, and 2) even less time for zuggsoft.com work. And honestly, it was the moving that was the biggest pain. Moving once is bad enough…moving twice in 4 months is just hell. Fortunately Phase2 was paying for this move, so at least we had packers to help. But driving our cats across the country and then unpacking has taken another couple of months out of our schedule.

We are almost finished with this latest move. We got our computers set up and Chiara has started on the backlog of support email. I'll answer as many forum posts as I am capable in the coming weeks, although everybody is already doing a *great* job helping each other. Oh yeah, and the zuggsoft.com (and tessh.com) servers went down a couple weeks ago because their hard disk filled up (when does that ever happen anymore??) Tessh.com was actually down for a couple of weeks because of a related corruption to the MySql database that I just fixed this week. So things are slowly getting back to normal.

What does this all mean for Zugg Software? Well, as I've said, I haven't been spending full-time on CMUD for several years now. As MUD sales have declined I have had to spend more time on other activities to pay the bills. From failed software projects such as zApp and Tessh to playing around with mobile phone apps to developing Drupal web sites for local businesses. So working for Phase2 will just be more of the same as far as time away from CMUD.

In fact, working full-time for Phase2 should actually benefit CMUD in the long run since I no longer need to completely rely on CMUD sales to pay the bills. That removes a lot of stress and allows me to do MUDding for FUN again instead of a job. I can focus on the fun parts of the software rather than worrying about which changes make the best business sense.

The other fact is that CMUD is really pretty darn stable these days. I don't want to just keep adding stuff for the sake of adding. I don't want CMUD to be bloat-ware. So my focus for the next several months will be on bug fixes and not new features.

Zugg Software remains as a S-Corp of Colorado. We never did sell our house and ended up renting it, so we still own property in the state and still pay taxes in the state. Keeping Zuggsoft in Colorado just made a lot of sense to reduce paperwork. Our address and phone numbers have changed and I will update those on the web site and in the order invoices soon.

Most importantly, Zugg Software is not closing or going out of business. It's just going back to more of a hobby like it was when I first wrote zMUD 15 years ago. I worked full-time at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the first 4 years of zMUD. And some people would argue that it was the best time I spent on zMUD. As long as people keep playing MUDs and want a full-featured client, I'll keep working on CMUD. I'll only stop if people stop playing. So keep telling your friends about CMUD. The more people who use it, the more motivated I am to keep working on it.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:40 pm

Sorry for your losses, but the new job sounds like a windfall.

Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:03 am

It sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you, Zugg. I wish you and Chiara all the best in your new home in Washington.

Beginner Joined: 21 Feb 2011 Posts: 15

Congratulation on your new job. It sounds like a wonderful opportunity. I wish you all the best. That being said, I'm a little concerned with the development of Cmud and the requirement to pay money every 2 years to receive updates. Since you are no longer developing cmud full time, will you be as strict in requiring payment every two years for updates? Is it fair? It sounds a little extreme if all we're going to get are bug fixes.

Newbie Joined: 23 Oct 2011 Posts: 2

It's good you wrote what was happening. I'am new user of cMud but I know zMud for years.
For more then week I've tried everyday to buy cMud hoping you fix the webpage. When I try
to buy it, after filling new customer form and select paypal, click ok - it always redirect me
to empty cart site, and btw. maybe it has something to do with 'Purchase Now' page to
open always in new tab not in the same window which I selected 'P. Now
I've tried many combinations, configurations, computers, and browser. Help :D

BTW.
Change your location then ! It's still Colorado.

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 1:11 pm

@nojathon: No worries...bug fix versions are always free. Only *major* updates require payment. Even if I add some new features I doubt there will be enough to justify a new major version for a long time.

@deathtomb: Just tried it here and not seeing any problem...PayPal cart came up fine. Also still getting PayPal payments from other users, so it's still working for other people. Maybe it's a browser cache issue, although you said you tried that. In any case you should probably start a separate thread about it instead of posting to the comments in this thread.

Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:35 pm

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 6:01 pm

WTG Zugg Glad to hear things will get more stable in RL, that always helps for "hobbies" so i'm sure mudding will stick around and you'll be able to contribute like you have for sooo many years :) Take care and Happy Holidays!

Beginner Joined: 21 Feb 2011 Posts: 15

Wanderer Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Posts: 57

[quote="nojathon"]

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

Isn't $15 close to the monthly fee for World of Warcraft?

Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 170

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

I just thought I'd say sorry for getting annoyed and shouting at you before, if I had known any of this I would have shut up

I hope CMUD isn't going on the backburner forever I noticed you haven't posted since last year, it would be a shame - most people tell me to use that client with the oil lamp icon that you probly know of, but I have stuck since zmud because I think CMUD is way better. I have trouble convincing others to use it because of the price, it's hard to convince peope just how much better it is (like selling water to a fish kinda thing) without them having packages and maps to see just how much the difference is, since most people can't figure out how to make their own like most of us on this forum do I think. It would be cool if the Zuggsoft site had a tab on it with user-uploaded packages of graphical Gauges and other triggery stuff, a sort of mod database with screenshots like fallout3nexus or mozilla addons :) It could be cool if maybe some parts of CMUD were made open source too since you don't have as much time to update it, but of course I understand why you might not want to do that with any of your hard work, it just seems a shame at a time when a lot of MUDs are struggling for players for there to be no progress being made on the best client anymore

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

Newbie Joined: 21 Jun 2012 Posts: 8

Thanks for your great contribution to the online world =)

Apprentice Joined: 14 Apr 2008 Posts: 105

its ok bump :p