LadyBugz Becomes a Free App

(Update: An offer to our existing paid users from manicwave, developer of the Tickets app, detail here.)

We have just released LadyBugz 1.7.1. This version fixes a number of bugs, and can now import snippets automatically from your FogBugz website.

We also regret to announce that we are discontinuing the development of LadyBugz.

As of March 1, 2011, LadyBugz becomes a free download for all: the 21-day trial restriction is now removed. We’ll be offering customers who buy licenses after February 15, 2011 (inclusive) full refund. We will continue supporting the app until April 30, 2011, but we will no longer be able to do any active development.

Also, the digital certificate that LadyBugz uses will expire after March 16, 2011. LadyBugz has been a signed software, and that’s how you have never been asked to confirm if you want to save your FogBugz password in your keychain. This is a standard practice recommended by Apple since Mac OS X 10.5 was released. As the certificate expires, LadyBugz will start to ask you to confirm if you want to trust LadyBugz to access the keychain. This will only happen if you run a new version of LadyBugz for the first time.

We released LadyBugz 1.0, a FogBugz client for Mac, in March 2010, as our first Mac software product. Unfortunately, the product has never been able to sustain itself. Because of this, and also because of various personal reasons, we will no longer be able to continue developing it.

Eventually we will discontinue offering LadyBugz altogether, some time after we offer it for free.

At the same time, we are also releasing the underlying library that LadyBugz uses. BugzKit is an Objective-C library that makes it easy to make FogBugz requests. We’re hoping that by opening up the library, we will be able to contribute to the Mac/iOS developer community, and help people develop new FogBugz clients, especially for iOS devices.

Discontinuing LadyBugz is a hard decision for us. We really appreciate everyone who recommended LadyBugz and gave us valuable suggestions. A redesign of the app icon set, for example, was finally done in version 1.7. We regret that we couldn’t keep a balance between developing our products and fulfilling our other committments. In addition, if you’re interested in take over LadyBugz, we’d also like to talk to you.

One again, thank you for your encouragement, suggestions and recommendations.