The notion of planned releases for Internet software seems to be fading fast. Well, at least from a user perception standpoint. When was the last time anyone really noticed that YouTube updated their site? It’s to the point that sites that announce an update seem to be antiquated. And for fat clients that seems to be more and more true all the time as well. With auto-update features (Liveupdate, etc), the upgrade path has almost become invisible. Of course that leads to a subscription model for paid software, but for ‘free’ software it’s wonderful. Now you add value to your user population without them having to do any upgrade work. If you’re not doing auto-update somehow, you’re not going to have a long lasting product. Well, that’s my opinion anyway and we’re doing it.

Originally published on WordPress on August 08, 2007. Migrated to this blog on May 29, 2025.