Hi Brian, I’ve been a very happy paying customer for almost a decade; it’s one of those products that I believe is worth paying for, even if the free version already offers a lot. I just want to make sure this tool always stays in my life, and that the business behind it survives. :)
One concern of mine is Linux support; I completely understand the business trade-off you’re making here, and I feel like I must be one of the few paying Linux users. But what I’ve been seeing the past few years that Linux became less and less “supported”. What’s your position on this? And how do you see this develop in the next few years?
Wow, thank you so much! We don't have the linux build for this version finished just yet but we get a lot of requests for it, for sure. Honestly hoping to get that build soon - but you're right, we're a small team (13) and so we have to balance priorities. The good news is we recently hired someone who is passionate about linux and we're hoping that'll jumpstart the process and make supporting it easier with this new version.
Please please keep Linux support! I would pay more to not lose rescuetime on linux.
Also, the api you have is great and I use it a lot. Good job!
One thing I worry about is how my data is being stored, and what you are tracking.
Rescuetime is useful enough to me that I haven't left for this reason, but I have looked at open source competing products that I can run myself. Could you make me more comfortable about the security and confidentiality of my data somehow?
In short we track the name of the application you're using, and the window title OR the URL of the website you're on (if you're in a recognized browser). We query the OS to detect what's in focus and whether or not the computer has gone idle to track time spent on a particular thing. We also use crowdsourced data collected over the years to understand what categories applications and websites are (meeting tools, communication tools, design/coding/business tools, etc.)
All of our data is never used individually, only analyzed in aggregate in an anonymized way. We're compliant with GDPR rules.
One concern of mine is Linux support; I completely understand the business trade-off you’re making here, and I feel like I must be one of the few paying Linux users. But what I’ve been seeing the past few years that Linux became less and less “supported”. What’s your position on this? And how do you see this develop in the next few years?