Friday, November 6, 2015

Information regarding Terml.io's future

UPDATE 1: All existing Terml.io users have Terml.io Premium. Enjoy!

TL;DR: Terml.io is "changing" hands and will continue to run. Premium features become free, and those pesky ads go away. See our FAQ below. Don't panic, we promise it's going to be okay! :)

Today, Terml.io is going through the largest change it has ever gone through. Justin, the owner of Terml.io, has worked diligently and tirelessly for many, many nights and finally launched Terml.io in May of this year. Since then, Justin and I have been working on the code to make it work better. PDF Integration and Quizlet exporting have even been added to make countless students' lives easier, and we hope it's made your life easier too. However, Justin has recently reached the conclusion that his business model is unsustainable and will not earn him enough money. If you would like to see his reasoning, you may find that on his personal blog post he has written in regards to his difficult decisions he will now make.

First, I'd like to say it's been an honor to host Terml.io on the MyWikis Startup Program. In May, I committed to Justin that Terml.io will always have free hosting for as long as the project needs it, and I continue to make that commitment. So, I have decided to take Terml.io into the care of MyWikis. I'll discuss "what's changing and what's the same?" below.

What will be the same?

  1. Your accounts and sets will remain as-is. You'll still be able to use the website like always.
  2. For the time being, we'll still use terml.io as the URL.
  3. The same code base and great features of Terml.io will remain.
  4. Your account will still be free! :)
What will change?
  1. Ads will be disappearing for all users. Isn't that great? Which means...
  2. Premium will be has been given to all users free of charge. Say hello to Quizlet export and PDF downloads!
  3. Our URL may change later next year to termlio.mywikis.com or termlio.mbhs.xyz. This has yet to be decided. (Don't want that? We need $95 to cover the fee for terml.io.)
  4. Customer support given to Terml.io customers will shift to MyWikis' customer support. Our ticketed support system is at https://www.mywikis.com/tss.
  5. Programmers only: Our codebase will become open source. Learn more about what this means below.
Thank you for supporting Terml.io. MyWikis looks forward to working with you.

FAQ for all:
  1. Will there be new features?
    We will see. If other developers decide to contribute to Terml.io's codebase, we may see some improvements :)
  2. So it's just an ownership change, really?
    Yep, that's what's going on in a nutshell.
  3. Tell us more about MyWikis.
    MyWikis is a web hosting company that specializes in wikis. We're excited to help Justin continue to leave his legacy, Terml.io. MyWikis isn't at all a stranger to Terml.io; in fact, some of our staff have helped code Terml.io.
  4. Why isn't Justin interested in developing Terml.io anymore?
    Please see his blog post for more information. 
  5. Terml.io isn't a failure, why is it being ditched like this?
    Justin's original plan was to have some income from Terml.io kind of like the model Quizlet uses. Unfortunately, not enough money was made to sustain Terml.io, and as a result, he has decided to move on. MyWikis intends to nurture Terml.io as best we can.
  6. Please don't ruin it.
    We won't. :)
  7. What's happening to existing Premium users?
    We will contact any paying Premium members and they get a refund.
  8. When exactly will this change happen?
    This change will require extensive code modifications. For example, we'd need to remove Premium and make sure all new accounts and existing accounts get Premium. We'll let you know when this happens.

    If you want Premium now, please request it at https://www.mywikis.com/tss; just specify your email address you registered with on Terml.io and we'll get back to you ASAP.

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FAQ for programmers and general computer nerds:
  1. How are you open sourcing Terml.io?
    (Preliminary information here. Subject to change.) While we can't divulge how the code is currently stored, we'll be releasing Terml.io onto GitHub ready to be set up as a self-functioning instance by anybody with Apache, Python, and MySQL or SQLite. We don't want anybody else setting up their own Terml.io and making money off of our code, so we're going to use the AGPL (Affero GPL) License or something similar. The original Terml.io will be the most "official" version of Terml.io, though.
  2. How can I contribute to the Terml.io codebase?
    Once we have our repository, we will share more information with you. We're excited to open our codebase to all open-source developers. It will probably be on GitHub, FYI.
  3. What is Terml.io coded in, and how do I run it?
    It's coded in Python. Running Terml.io is very easy and requires only some configuration.