Open letter to ULYSSES and the new annual subscription system
(or transition from adolescence to adulthood)

Riccardo Rossi
Aug 22, 2017 · 7 min read

(english text)

A few days ago, like a lightning strike, I received a mail from the ULYSSES team to let me know that they were changing the terms of use and licensing of the software by switching to a monthly or yearly subscription system.
The formidable writing application for macOS X and iOS, irreplaceable companion of all my work days for a couple of years to this part, from now on can be used as a subscription.
Who, like me, is already in possession of a regularly purchased license, can continue to use this version of the program, working perfectly, but will no longer be up-to-date; by switching to the new subscription version, instead, as I am already a regular license holder, I can have a living discount on the annual fee, which would cost me twenty-nine euros a year (against I believe the thirty-nine of a new user who intends to subscribe from now on).
I have to be honest, or more precisely, I want to be: initially I was very annoyed, tossed by this thing, almost to the point of feeling somehow betrayed, stabbed behind. The same kind of annoyance that you experience when an SMS from your crippled phone operator tells you the unilateral change in the subscription contract, the billing change every four weeks instead of a month, the addition of a service that is not required to your tariff plan behind a non-negotiable increase of one euro and twenty-nine cents, and so on. From scam to scam, legal extortion after legal extortion, constant search for a system to squeeze the consumer further, without ethics or sense of limit.
But I did not expect it from ULYSSES , really. Because for me it is not just and only a tool of daily work, though important, even fundamental: for me it was the motor of an epochal turning point, it was a small leap into the void, the trust placed blind and reciprocated with the interests.
When I left my job and my salary to finally move to live with my family, I had just started writing a novel: I did not know where it would take me, if I could ever make it to completion, not at all before, and even if I could maybe translate this thing of telling stories into a real trade.
I’ve found ULYSSES, a word processor that is also and above all a minimalist hymn to focus on your work, writing, without dispersing precious (even involuntarily) energies in other activities, such as the layout, the margins, line spacing, font selection and size, and so on. Although basic rather skeptical in the face of these solutions zen or worse yet motivational , because basically I think that if you can write it, you can do it also with WORD or with the Windows notepad, while if you are not capable there is not a creative writing school or tutor or software that can teach you, I was inexplicably attracted to this application. The price was interesting, thirty-nine euros if I’m not mistaken: of course, used now as we have apps for free or a small change, was a bit of a figure, but if we do not lose sight of reality, and we include these thirty-nine euros in the real world, it is now the cost of a dinner at the restaurant. They make me angry at those who have the iPhone for nine hundred euros, but then are not willing to scrap thirty-nine euros for a program that could potentially become a valuable tool to work.
We did it when we were little boys, when we were teens: we pirated music, we burned CDs and DVDs, the games of the first PlayStation, we tried to sneak or live out of espionage.
Then, at one point, it’s enough: you become an adult, with the first salary you know the mechanism behind this kind of things, you work and at the end of the month you get what you earned, so it’s right that even the people behind CDs and DVDs, and so on, have the fruit of their work.
It’s not just the new economic availability that you find in your pocket, your money, with which to do what you want: it’s just a whole change of mindset, if you want a DVD to watch and then put it on the shelf you buy it, if you want a CD to listen in the car you buy it, if you want a program for your computer or a game for your console you buy it.
I did not think twice, I said: let’s try. It’s right. Do I want to try to be a professional writer? I buy a professional tool, a dedicated application made for those who want to do this job. Going wrong I will have thrown forty cheap euro: I will recover them by eating at home on punishment Saturday night for a couple of weeks in a row.
I clicked, downloaded, installed, then started.
I do not know if it’s self-suggestion, or something, but right away I figured it’s been the right choice: minimal, clean, no frills, has everything it needs, has nothing to do without it, helps the creative process by removing obstacles and impediments, lets you write without leaving the keyboard for hours, time does not exist, the page does not exist, the font does not exist, but you exist, your story, your ideas, your punctuation. Stop.
After a couple of hours I used it for “test”, I imported everything I ever wrote, notes, projects, even the poems of school time, written with WORD 6.0 over twenty years ago and came miraculously to us.
That same night (yes, I usually write at night) I spent another twenty-nine euros to buy the iPad version for mobility: it was bought separately, but immediately guaranteed complete and total compatibility between the two versions, with exactly the same features (usually the mobile one is a sort of desktop version reduction ) and a real-time synchronization through the cloud that left me behind — I wrote two lines on this iMac and instantly appeared as well on the iPad and vice versa, automatically, without having to save or click or submit anything.
Since then I’ve been using it everywhere, always, for everything: in the end I finished that novel, I was also lucky enough to find a publisher who published it, I’m writing another, four more stories already completed, and three more projects in yard, all with ULYSSES — no doubt the best investment I have ever made, I mean, and not only relate to the usefulness of the almost seventy-euro for both iMac and iPad versions.
In fact, when the book came out, I made a post on facebook, tagging ULYSSES facebook official page , to thank them, because I believe and still keep believing that if I finish that novel and I’m still here to write today I owe it to a great part of this wonderful program. There was a nice exchange of congratulations and like , also a compliments email from the staff of programmers who realized ULYSSES and who carry out their changes and updates. In short, this program, these people, for me was as if we had become friends, almost complicit.
When I received that email, I felt betrayed: I’ve already given you nearly seventy euros, I bought the program twice, one for the iMac and one for the iPad, and now I should make an annual subscription to continue using it?
Could my ULYSSES, my friends have been doing this to me?
I gave myself time to cool down, to reason with the teenager that somewhere still nests in my depth and sometimes unexpectedly tries to resume, I spoke to him with patience, I explained a couple of concepts to him.
Whether you buy a work tool, pay it and use it, and if it breaks it off, you can either buy back or repair it, or do it without — but this is a software, not a material asset: you can not expect, then forever, natural life during, that developers, people who like us then have to go shopping and pay clothes and school to their children and put fuel in their car, etc., you can not expect them to do enough with those fucking seventy euro we’ve been giving almost three years ago, while in these three years they have continued to improve the program by introducing new features, some of them even essential, and will continue to do so in the future.
If you want a CD or DVD or a BLURAY I buy them to you, boy, if you want a game for the PlayStation 4 I buy it for you, we’ll have it home delivered by Mr. Amazon, if you want to be a professional writer and you really believe in it, you’ll pay twenty-nine euro a year to subscribe to people who have invented such a useful and essential tool for you, you will pay with pleasure and thank them, hoping they will not cease to support and innovate and maintain this wonderful companion of all your working days and all your working nights.
Let’s act as adults, boy: if you pay thirty-four euros a month for a slutty TV platform just to see your team play on Sunday in the championship and Wednesday at Champions League , what will it be twenty-nine euros a year for a tool that at least is worth the money, and it really worth it?
That is why I signed up for the subscription this morning, happy to support and reward serious and honest work, and I’m just ashamed of the annoyance that this mail had initially provided to me.

(italian text here: https://medium.com/@reeebs/lettera-aperta-a-ulysses-e-al-nuovo-sistema-di-sottoscrizione-annuale-o-del-passaggio-dall-d566d8599db)

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Riccardo Rossi

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