Kagi Sparks Controversy With $5 VisualHub Lion Update

Strange story, and I think a very poor decision by Kagi.

Update: To be clear, I don’t think Kagi stole anything, or ripped anything or anyone off. (Arguably, perhaps, they shouldn’t have treated the customer list for VisualHub as theirs, though.) Their mistake, to my eyes, is betraying the trust of the developers who use their payment services. Tyler Loch is the developer of VisualHub, and he chose to use Kagi as his payment processor. He was Kagi’s client. Now, Kagi is selling something based on Loch’s work against Loch’s wishes. Other developers see this and think they can’t trust Kagi. Trust with developers is a primary asset for a service like Kagi.

And now to make things worse, Kagi CEO Kee Nethery is criticizing Loch’s business decisions. Maybe you personally agree with Nethery that Loch handled the discontinuation of support for VisualHub poorly. That doesn’t matter. It simply isn’t the place for a payment processor to turn against a developer client like this.

★ Tuesday, 16 August 2011