I love transparency. So here is an update on what is going on, about XKit, XIM and Filter-By-Type.
The Good
I have only one week of summer school left.
After that, I will have ~45% more free time, and I got some great suggestions in the last 2 weeks, so if they are technically possible to implement, some great features will be released in a few weeks.
The Bad
Ah. I’m shaking as I’m writing this, because I know what happens when I remove a feature (any feature for any reason). I will be ducking-and-covering after publishing this.
I’ve checked my PayPal account, my credit card expenses and determined that I might have to shut down XIM soon.
The reason is simple: money and me not having enough money.
There are two servers I have to pay for each month:
One is the “XKit Server”, which hosts xkit.info, the troubleshooting tool, extension gallery (and all the extension files), automatic update backend, XKit News backend and much more.
And the other is XIM Server, which is used for XIM only. And XIM Servers cost around 12 times more than XKit Servers for doing 99% less.
The thing is, all of the donations I get each month goes directly to XIM servers. And by my estimates, at best, only 4%-6% of the people who use XKit use XIM. That is 100% of the donations going to a feature that only (at the very best) 6% use.
And worse, not only all the donations going to it, some months, when I don’t get enough donations, I have to pay a lot of money for it out of my pocket. I don’t want to deceive anyone, it’s not like it costs $4,000/month, but it is still a lot of money for a college student working part-time.
I don’t think it’s fair to me, or people who donate to me for other features (I know that most people donate when I release a new extension, so I doubt most people donate for XIM only.)
This is not written in stone. If I can find a way to make it cost less, or the usage of it increases, I would gladly keep it alive, re-writing it from the ground up if necessary.
And nope, I am not going make it paid or anything. XKit is free, and every part of it should always be free for all.
Please understand that if I do end up shutting XIM, it’s because I have to, I don’t get some kind of sick pleasure from taking features away from people, nor that STUDIOXENIX is huge corporation owned by people who shut down services because “it’s not generating enough profit.” This thing is actually bankrupting me.
The Ugly
Filter By Type is still not working. I’ve sent at least 3 e-mails to Tumblr support, they replied to one saying that they will look into it and get back to me.
It’s been a month, and I doubt they will reply to me soon, which means I will have to remove that also soon if they don’t.
Please understand that this has nothing to do with me, and there isn’t anything I can do about this.