I'd be happy to compile whatever information people would find helpful or informative in a post here, in my documentation, or on my website. I can even do all of the above. What sort of information would you like to see? Details on what's upcoming in future version? Troubleshooting tips? Something else? I'd love to get feedback on what would be useful to everyone to know.
Information on Upcoming Releases
For the info on future releases there's really 3 types of info:
1. Bug fixes, committed features, new equipment support. I'm comfortable talking about these freely since they're well defined and in a definite version plan. I generally won't comment on when the version will be released beyond generalities however since in this line of work there are so many variables and one never really knows, especially since this work is all done in my "spare" time.
2. Major new features, new software editions (upcoming Pro version, for example). I'll sometimes discuss these things, but there are reasons why I won't sometimes also. The feature may not yet be well defined or I might not know if I can actually make it work. I may not want to have others potentially implement the feature in other software before I get a chance to release it, etc.
3. New products. I don't discuss these ahead of time. When I announce them it will be at a time I'm ready to take orders and have all the details. I think the reasons for this are obvious.
With those constraints, I'm willing to share this info here in some consolidated location if you guys would find it interesting or helpful. At some point (fairly soon, 1.4 will likely be the last 1.x version of AstroLive) catagory #1 will be reset with version 2.0 being focused on catagory #2 type stuff and being a paid upgrade from AstroLive 1.x. In the future this will probably be about a once yearly occurrence, and version 2.0 will also likely be sometime about a year after the initial release of 1.0 back in February. This will allow me to continue to fund development on AstroLive without forcing anyone to pay again for the product if they don't find value in the new functionality. The other option is a subscription type license where you pay yearly and don't have to pay for major version upgrades at all. If you guys strongly prefer that model I could go that way instead, but my feeling is that the other model is what people prefer. Unfortunately the video astronomy market isn't big enough (yet) to support a one time purchase pays for it forever even with major new versions kind of license scheme. I would soon see a big decrease in license sales and I wouldn't be able to continue to support the product.
Discussions on Pricing
My current level of support is that I generally reply to all support emails within an hour of getting them while I'm awake. Frequently it's within a few minutes. Any bugs that are very serious or easily cured I will generally release a fix within a day or so of them being reported. Even major feature requests have seen a general turn around time of only a month or so. I have determined that this will be a difficult pace to sustain with the current level of revenue from the product which is why I will soon introduce the Pro version so that I have a place to put the things I, and others, really want to get done, but which are too much work to justify for a $69 product that sells in low volume. This is also why with the release of 1.4 the standard version price is going up to $99. I need to be able to make the revenue from the product meaningful in order to be able to continue spending my time on it. I spend at least 10 hours a week (generally much more) on AstroLive, which at my normal consulting rate works out to $2,000 to $2,500 per week of my time. I love this hobby, so I'm willing to effectively provide my labor at a discount to work on software that I think is really useful and important to the community and which I use myself extensively, but you can see from this calculation why the combination of small market (I won't go into detail on my sales numbers, but suffice to say I'm not selling the ~30 copies a week that would be necessary to break even versus consulting work) and low software price has to shift somehow to make it worthwhile. I have the software I want for my own use now, so I'm not really getting any further benefit in that direction, it's just for love of the hobby at this point.
In addition to the Pro version of AstroLive, I'll be introducing another new product at ECVAR which I hope will also help to bend the revenue curve in the right direction. It will be a completely novel product that will give an entirely new experience to live video observation and there is nothing else on the market that competes with it. I will post here with more details after I show it off at ECVAR. I hope some of you will be there to see it; I'm extremely excited about it!