hedonism on a budget

There was this guy at my school who was gay, and he didn't really know how to join in either. Seems to be a sign. You know?

Hey, yeah of course.

So my problem with ellipsus is that it's very, very hum about how it finances itself. If you dig through the FAQ, you will eventually find this buried under "How can I support Ellipsus:"

This is not transparent. This does not tell me how it is financing itself right now. Now, when you dig a bit through google, you'll find that it's venture capital backed (which means through investments) as a start-up. It's not entirely clear who backs it, but it's listend on SpeedInvest, a venture capital fund. Further, PitchBook—which lists data on companies and startups— has this data on Ellipsus:

Now, none of this is inherently shady. But it tells you that this is a for-profit company, that together with its investors will eventually expect to, well, you know. Make Profit. And the aforementioned paid tier is, in my opinion, probably not going to cut that. Which too would be fine, but taken all this in the light of how they market incredibly aggressively to fandom, present themselves as just "writers and nerds" with "dachshunds" etc etc. is... not trustworthy, in my opinion. So—what if the paid tier does not pay off enough? What's the plan now? Why, if none of this is An Issue, do I not find any of this information transparently and easily on their own goddamn website? I'm not saying anyone should run a writing program for free. I'm saying if you pick your market in fandom, I don't think it's too much to expect very straight-up information beyond a lot of promises ("we won't sell your data/we won't use AI/we won't do anything weird just trust us broskis").

I said this various times before but: if you don't know how a service pays for itself, and you're not paying, then you're the product. And beyond a "oh we're so fandom family uwu" messaging with no substance or proof, Ellipsus has given me literal subzero indication to trust them of this not being the case.

Which isn't to say that gDocs or whatever is better. But I'd deeply, deeply recommend using LibreOffice for a free alternative, or Scrivener, which is a one-time/lifetime purchase. It's also not to say not to use Ellipsus at all; use something else as your main software, then use it if you need something for on-the-go, or for easy draft-sharing or whatever. Like, all I'm saying here really is: don't just trust it blindly. Historically, things marketing themselves this aggressively to fandom with any lack of transparency are. Well. yk. Pretty often Not That Great.

well, that happened much faster than even I anticipated, I hate being right about these things. Also frankly, I do not think that this is enough to financially sustain them long-term, although I suppose that remains to be seen.