Opposite problem. TextMate made Alan Odgaard so much money that he didn't need to work on it anymore[1].

Who wants to maintain an old code base when they could spend ten weeks trekking in New Zealand[2] and then hunker down for the Great Rewrite That Fixes All The Problems?

(Not that I blame Odgaard; in fact, as an ST2 user this is my greatest fear about that product--selling thousands and thousands of copies at $60 is an extremely viable level of revenue for a one-man shop.)

[1]: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/year-in-review/ [2]: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/20-will-require-leopard/

I had always suspected that TextMate was a huge financial success but never did the googling. Thanks a lot for posting this.

I wonder if PixelMator is on a similar trajectory after Apple has featured them in nearly every possible spot on the Mac App Store.

I disagree, I think it it more that the future effort vs reward didn't stack up as well. Because so many developers had already purchased and it was well known, a free version 2 wouldn't represent the same kind of financial gain the initial spike did, despite all the extra effort.

A paid version 2 though produces a similar windfall again, rather than diminishing returns.

> A paid version 2 though produces a similar windfall again, rather than diminishing returns.

Marginal utility. The first million is worth a lot more than the second.