I liked Sparrow. I bought it. I used it, occasionally. I reviewed it for MacFormat too, more than once. That, in the weird and wonderful land of reviewing stuff does mean that I could have blagged a free copy, but I didn’t cos it was cheap and, well, I’d already bought it truth be told. That said, it *was* cheap and I might have continued using it, I often buy software that I’ve reviewed.
When I learnt they’d been gobbled up by Google I was nothing but pleased for the developers. They did some work and reaped the rewards. Not everyone on Twitter was, which lead me to tweet:
More than 400 people retweeted it. So, my assumption is that many people felt the same way. However, there is always another side to the story another face to the coin and some continued to argue that this was a bad decision. For a variety of reasons. The one reason that really seemed to jar with me though, was the idea that the developers of Sparrow should have had more integrity and eschewed the big bucks on offer for the higher moral standing that is going it alone with a moderately successful mail client. A mail client.
To them I say only this, you stay safe and warm over there in the corner nursing your integrity I’ll be watching my kids eat and planning next years holiday and you can have your better ethics keep you warm this winter.
Money isn’t everything, but it’s still a thing and there’s no way in hell I’m going to judge someone for making the right decision for them. Sad to see Sparrow go the way of the dodo, but delighted that the deal was right for them and they made it.
And one final thought, perhaps money wasn’t the only reason. What if someone came to you and said “Hey, we see you done some awesome work, how would you like the opportunity to put it on hundreds of millions of desktops?” I mean, you’d hardly want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life would you?
