Developer of Monodraw here.

Thank you all for the kind words regarding the app.

Unfortunately, my time is extremely limited which is why I haven’t had the chance to push more updates out.

I’ve got a few highly requested features in the works but I cannot promise when they’ll see the light of day (I usually get to make progress during my holidays).

I’m still committed to fixing any breakages due to OS upgrades and ensuring the product continues to work.

Thanks for your work in making an excellent tool; I, and many of my coworkers, use this. The price point is entirely fair and it’s a pleasure to use every time. But - above this - thank you also for prioritising personal life above development.

It’s great as it is and we’ll be happy to see new features when you’re ready. I would be really proud if I were in your position.

Cheers!

Thank you for the kind words!

Thank you, Milen! It's nice to see Bulgarians being behind a popular desktop app! I've been a paid user for years and Monodraw is among the first apps I install when I get a new MacBook machine!

Curious what some of the requested features are since it seems feature complete to me

The main requests have been for:

- Plaintext format (in progress) - Dark mode support for the main canvas (in progress) - Auto/Dynamic Layout - Table support - ANSI export

> Dark mode support

Hell yeah! I'm a long time user of Monodraw (thanks for the awesome work!) and this would be an instant upgrade for me :)

What does "plaintext format" mean? Isn't it already plaintext?

to offer a guess, I assume plantext probably means plain ASCII or maybe extended US ASCII (adds IBM box drawing chars, etc.) As opposed to full unicode text charset.

+ 1 for table support

Hi - I'm not a user but I am reacting to obvious love many developers have for your app.

Have you thought about open-sourcing it?

Or even keeping it closed source but crowd-sourcing help?

No need for profit sharing - your income is a nominal management fee if that. Just need a nice credits page to give thanks to the names of the people who contributed.

Might work?

Thank you so much for Monodraw! I've used it on and off for _years_.

https://x.com/Monodraw suggests there have indeed been updates

To be fair, the last tweet is from 2 years ago.

However, I’ve made pretty good use of it, and it’s really a “complete” product. Not much more to update than the occasional mandatory platform upgrade.

From the FAQ at the bottom

> Why not open source the app? > > Maintaining an open-source project can be a significant amount of work and I'm not going to have the time to take on such responsibilities. Furthermore, open-sourcing full products tends to result in many clones being sold directly to unsuspecting customers which is not something I want to enable.

It's strange how both of those statements are incorrect... open-sourcing a project allows for contributors to pick up some of the workload and certain licenses would prevent clones from being sold to unsuspecting customers

Contributors don't magically appear. Maintaining a community, reviewing changes, steering, etc. all take time and energy. Again, contributors don't magically appear who can do those things, who are aligned with the creator.

Licenses don't magically stop bad actors.

Both statements by the author are correct.

As someone who has worked on an open source product with a commercial version, the FAQ matches my experience. I think you're letting you're mixing up is and ought.

a license doesn't magically stop bad things from happening.

it doesn't, but it's a deterrent. the very fact that this app had limited commercial success is reason to believe there likely won't be "many clones", especially if they're forced to go against the license