Nick Bradbury

My Plan for FeedDemon

Since announcing the end of FeedDemon last week, I've been overwhelmed by the number of people who say they're sad to see it go. Many of these people have told me they want to keep using it.

So here's what I'm going to do: sometime before the demise of Google Reader, I'll release a new version of FeedDemon which no longer syncs with Google Reader. This version will be free, won't contain any ads, and will have all of the features of the Pro version. You can use it free of charge for as long as you like - but it will be the last version of FeedDemon.

It's been impossible to respond to the many tweets asking me about open-sourcing FeedDemon, or making it sync with another service. So I'd like to address those questions here.

First, open-sourcing FeedDemon sounds nice, but I don't see it working. I use a number of commercial third-party components which can't be open-sourced, and some of them are older versions that I've modified quite a bit. Perhaps more importantly, FeedDemon was developed in Delphi 7, which is very out of date. Delphi geeks will recall that version was released before the product supported Unicode, so all the Unicode support you see in FeedDemon was added by me (using owner draw, custom string routines, etc.). Long story short: it would be easier to write a new RSS reader than it would be to upgrade FeedDemon's code to the latest Delphi version (which would need to be done).

Second, switching to another sync service isn't practical. It's not as simple as just using a different set of endpoints for API calls, as some have suggested. No matter how close the new sync API is to Reader's, there will be differences that require a lot of attention. Reliably syncing RSS feeds is a ton of work, and as I mentioned in my previous post, I already have a full-time job as an Android developer and just wouldn't be able to devote extra time to switching sync platforms.

I don't take the end of FeedDemon lightly - after all, it has occupied a huge chunk of my life since I created it back in 2003. But I haven't been able to give it any attention for quite some time, and it has earned very little for the past few years. Really, it's time for me to let it go.

PS: As expected, the end of both Google Reader and FeedDemon have brought a fresh round of articles saying "RSS is dead," which is way off-base. Google Reader and FeedDemon represent the "old school" of RSS readers: they were designed for geeks and held little mass-market appeal as a result. There are plenty of popular "new school" feed readers with new approaches, and most of them don't even call themselves RSS readers or even mention that they rely on RSS (which is a good thing, since most customers don't care about the plumbing).

The End of FeedDemon

This is a hard post for me to write.

I've used FeedDemon every day since I created it back in 2003 - it's part of my daily workflow, the first thing I turn to after pouring myself a cup of coffee in the morning.

I've thoroughly enjoyed working on it and I'm grateful for all of the people who paid for it over the years despite free alternatives.

But it's time for FeedDemon to die.

If you're an avid FeedDemon user, you probably know that I've struggled to keep it updated. FeedDemon stopped "paying the bills" a while ago, so I took a full-time job elsewhere and haven't been able to give FeedDemon the attention it deserves.

Then today came the news that Google Reader is shutting down on July 1. FeedDemon relies on Google Reader for synchronization, and there's no decent alternative (and even if there were, it's doubtful I'd have time to integrate with it, at least not without trading time away from my family - which I won't do).

That was the nail in the coffin for me. I hate to say goodbye to FeedDemon after a decade of working on it, but it's time to say goodbye. When Google Reader shuts down on July 1, FeedDemon will also disappear.

If you're using FeedDemon without Google Reader synchronization, it will continue to work beyond July 1. You can keep using it to read your feeds for years to come. If you're synching FeedDemon with Google Reader, you can disable synching by selecting Tools > Options > Synchronization Options, then switching to the "Accounts" tab and removing your Google account.

I'm truly sad to see FeedDemon go - it's been so much fun working on it, using it, and engaging with other people that use it. For those of you that rely on FeedDemon, thank you for supporting it for so long, and my apologies for not being able to keep it going.