The death of Active Captain

[CFS Klopas]

That's fine for you, but if there is anything most people are eager to do without compensation, it's give their opinion.

[CarlF]

I expect that less than 10% of AC users would care if AC was open source anymore than they would choose OpenStreetMap over GoogleMaps for car directions or Yelp for restaurant reviews.

I also don't believe that there has been any falloff in AC users since the sale to Garmin. The many people I know who used AC data before the acquisition still use AC data. Sure they've probably switched from BlueChart Mobile to Aquapmap as the charting app but it's the same AC data.

The problem of "old" AC posts is a design problem with AC that seems difficult to solve. As with many crowdsourced data there is no good way to tell which reviews are accurate. But while a seven year old restaurant review in Yelp isn't worth reading, a rock in a channel in 2011 is likely still there in 2019.

This is the reason I only make about 25% as many AC reviews as I used to make when I started in 2010. It has nothing to do with the Garmin acquisition. Rather, in most situations the existing posts fully describe the current situation. It seems unhelpful to repeat it with another one saying the same thing.

The very first review I made was in 2010 (which helped me earn one of the original design AC caps from Jeff and Karen which I still have). It was about a sandbar off Bassetts Island on Buzzards Bay. The post is still there and still accurate. I grew up there - I've been pulling grounded boats off that bar since 1967 when I did it in a 13ft whaler with an 18hp Evinrude (those were the days before SeaTow when a 10 year old boy with a Whaler could do some good)

As proof, look up a new places - like Marker 8 Marina in St. Augustine Florida. It opened in late 2017-- after the Garmin acquisition of AC. There are eight well written reviews - most written within a year of it opening. Unless something changes at the marina, there isn't much else to say. Is this a "problem"?

And if all you want is a constant flow of new crowd sourced reviews - you could just hand out free caps like Jeff did in the early years. It worked.

But to afford to buy all those caps, you need a monetization model like Jeff's to charge marina's for ads. And that sort of monetization seems very hard to implement in most open source businesses.

[NorthernMac]

Originally Posted by CFS Klopas

That's fine for you, but if there is anything most people are eager to do without compensation, it's give their opinion.

Actually didn’t I just do that, doh!!

Lol

[CFS Klopas]

That was going to be my next post, if necessary.

[Jeff - RED HEAD]

Originally Posted by NorthernMac

If it’s not all about money make it open source.

There are so many reasons to not go that way especially when the value of the product is data. The way it played out for me is testimony to the value of not making the data open source.

Originally Posted by NorthernMac

IMHO unless it’s for my own gain, or the good of all, or a good charity, you’re going to have to pay me if I’m going to be making money for you.

Thankfully, about 25% of users were willing to contribute data in the ActiveCaptain example for free. Typical contribution rates for large crowd-sourced info sources like TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc. are much lower. So that you were part of the 75%...really didn't matter at all. In fact, what the 75% of non-contributing ActiveCaptain users never realized was that just using the data contributed to its success even if they never added details or reviews, ever.

[OneHullPaul]

If it's not open source, it's about the money. Period.

There is no sustainability to a system where your contributions are sold to another corporation that will charge you to access your own reviews.

Nobody wants to repeat the AC experience.

Originally Posted by Jeff - RED HEAD

The "return" is the sustainability of a product that you like. And of course, if the product is community driven like ActiveCaptain, adding data prompts others to add data for your own future use too.


That goes far beyond software too. I was just at a marina that I like a lot. I thought their features were well beyond their current pricing model. When the owner got together with me one evening, I told him that he could easily increase his pricing by 25%. Maybe more. For personal, selfish reasons, it might seem like that was a dumb thing to say. But the way I look at it, I want that facility to continue. I want them to be successful and to continue providing the capabilities they provide. I want them to be profitable for my own selfish needs in the future. That's plenty of "return" too.


It's not always about money.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by OneHullPaul

If it's not open source, it's about the money. Period.

There is no sustainability to a system where your contributions are sold to another corporation that will charge you to access your own reviews.

Nobody wants to repeat the AC experience.

You can access Garmin's AC website for free. The Garmin AC app is free as well.

https://activecaptain.garmin.com/en-US/

The problem arose when Garmin pulled support for apps that required the purchase of charting like Bluechart, and stopped providing AC to other paid apps like PolarNavy, SEaiq, etc.

[OneHullPaul]

Question: How can I feel sure that my boats identity, route and travels is safe from identity theft if you won't let people look at your code?

First Do No Harm is my favorite new licence...

https://firstdonoharm.dev/version/1/2/license.txt

[Jeff - RED HEAD]

Originally Posted by OneHullPaul

There is no sustainability to a system where your contributions are sold to another corporation that will charge you to access your own reviews.

Can you point to a single place where someone was charged for ActiveCaptain after (or before) the acquisition? I'm the one who set it all up at Garmin and when I left, there was no mechanism to charge anyone. If you know something different, please let me know.

Originally Posted by OneHullPaul

Nobody wants to repeat the AC experience.

Except for the removal of BlueChart Mobile (which had nothing to do with ActiveCaptain), where has there been a problem with the AC experience? I mean, now it's held by a multi-billion dollar company with the resources to keep it going forever.


And for what it's worth, I'd gladly repeat the AC experience another 10 times! So "nobody" is a bit overstated.

[NorthernMac]

The issue, at least with the AC thing and Garmin, it ether won’t make enough $$ for Garmin and they’ll abandon it, including all the time people spend contributing to it, OR they will start charging people or advertising on it to such a point it won’t be worth it anymore. It seems to be garmins way, I’m still waiting to see how they mess up fltplan.com which they just acquired.

[Jeff - RED HEAD]

Originally Posted by Exile

The problem arose when Garmin ... stopped providing AC to other paid apps like PolarNavy, SEaiq, etc.

Nope, that never happened. I personally know the developer of PolarView quite well - I tried to get him to license the Garmin version myself. Total cost to him: $0. I thought SEAiq was going to move ahead too but I lost track of him. It was a very minor product - I'm not even sure if it still exists.



Gene from PolarView was never happy with the sales level he achieved. He had a very nice product but had no idea how to market it and wasn't willing to accept suggestions. He'd admit himself that his weakness was the business side of things. I had many late night conversations with him over the 7 years I knew him. He's still interested in selling the product outright (Windows, MacOS, Linux) although running a nav systems on a laptop is sort of past its sell-by date today (IMO).



Take away one fact - no one was ever charged to use ActiveCaptain or license the data for their own product including direct competitors of Garmin. Furuno today still has ActiveCaptain on their flagship chartplotters. Their cost: $0.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Jeff - RED HEAD

Nope, that never happened. I personally know the developer of PolarView quite well - I tried to get him to license the Garmin version myself. Total cost to him: $0. I thought SEAiq was going to move ahead too but I lost track of him. It was a very minor product - I'm not even sure if it still exists.



Gene from PolarView was never happy with the sales level he achieved. He had a very nice product but had no idea how to market it and wasn't willing to accept suggestions. He'd admit himself that his weakness was the business side of things. I had many late night conversations with him over the 7 years I knew him. He's still interested in selling the product outright (Windows, MacOS, Linux) although running a nav systems on a laptop is sort of past its sell-by date today (IMO).



Take away one fact - no one was ever charged to use ActiveCaptain or license the data for their own product including direct competitors of Garmin. Furuno today still has ActiveCaptain on their flagship chartplotters. Their cost: $0.

Interesting. I have no reason to doubt any of what you say, but why would a failing product like PolarNavy opt to no longer provide AC? And if Garmin never charged for the license, what was their financial incentive for purchasing AC from you? Maybe the revenue for it comes from marinas, etc?

Also, any idea why Garmin stopped supporting BlueChart Mobile? (If you're able to disclose that is). Seemed like a popular one, and also well ahead in its day. But of course that doesn't mean it was necessarily profitable. I was actually drawn in part to Coastal Explorer for the PC and AquaMaps for devices because they offer AC, but I'm reluctant to invest too much in charting because I don't know if they'll continue to offer it. All of these apps seem to be a bit of a moving target, except for Navionics I suppose since Garmin now owns them. Maybe that's now the safest bet.

[Jeff - RED HEAD]

> why would a failing product like PolarNavy opt to no longer provide AC?

He wasn't making enough money and didn't want to do any additional development to support the new ActiveCaptain. PolarView and the website are gone on 12/31/2019. The product is gone. It was a part time thing for him - he had/has a lucrative real job.


> And if Garmin never charged for the license, what was their

> financial incentive for purchasing AC from you?
There are many. When a company views themselves as the market leader, they do things that are beneficial to the market. I would imagine they also like their competitors having some part of Garmin in their products. I also suspect that Garmin didn't want another company owning ActiveCaptain. Multiple large companies were interested.


> Also, any idea why Garmin stopped supporting BlueChart Mobile?
They needed an app with an expandable architecture that could run on both iOS and Android. Their new app is the obvious replacement. I'd imagine that they didn't want to support both.


> All of these apps seem to be a bit of a moving target, except for
> Navionics I suppose since Garmin now owns them.
If you cruise along the US ICW, you're out of your mind to not use Aqua Map with their Master option. For the Bahamas, they also offer Explorer Charts which is the only legitimate chart option but not digitally available everywhere. There is nothing else close to the Aqua Map app. Note that I have absolutely no financial interest in Aqua Map in any way although I've helped with feature suggestions, testing, and even contributed some code for their use. I also helped the Explorer license happen. I admit the Aqua Map guys sent me a case of wine last Christmas for my help but I won't take any money, stock, or anything financial. The wine, from their village in Italy, was exceptional.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Jeff - RED HEAD

eBoatCards was all part of the strategy. Some people didn't like it although 40,000 boats were signed up and about 10,000 were using it more than once per week, every week. In this cruisers market, 20,000 is critical mass. What eBoatCard provided was a model for expanding ActiveCaptain. I liked to think of it as the icing on the cake showing how important the community could be.

Yep, I understood your reasoning... and yep, I knew many would use the cards. Just like many use Facebook. Another useless platform... for us.

Originally Posted by Jeff - RED HEAD

> All of these apps seem to be a bit of a moving target, except for
> Navionics I suppose since Garmin now owns them.
If you cruise along the US ICW, you're out of your mind to not use Aqua Map with their Master option. For the Bahamas, they also offer Explorer Charts which is the only legitimate chart option but not digitally available everywhere. There is nothing else close to the Aqua Map app. Note that I have absolutely no financial interest in Aqua Map in any way although I've helped with feature suggestions, testing, and even contributed some code for their use. I also helped the Explorer license happen. I admit the Aqua Map guys sent me a case of wine last Christmas for my help but I won't take any money, stock, or anything financial. The wine, from their village in Italy, was exceptional.

We just came down the ICW from Annapolis, and we used Aquamap as our main backup at the helm. Yes, very useful. The software is still a bit quirky; some unexpected crashes, Waterway Guide and AC marks may or may not update (or remain visible) properly, etc. Still, it's been working well enough to be useful.

Occasionally I've had to mentally translate the Italian-rendered-as-English that their tech support guys use into American English... but so far that hasn't been impossible. And I've been thinking about offering them some English language paragraphs they could maybe use in their "help" system to make it easier for new English-speaking users...

-Chris

[Jeff - RED HEAD]

Originally Posted by ranger42c

We just came down the ICW from Annapolis, and we used Aquamap as our main backup at the helm. Yes, very useful. The software is still a bit quirky; some unexpected crashes, Waterway Guide and AC marks may or may not update (or remain visible) properly, etc. Still, it's been working well enough to be useful.

That just sounds like you’re using an Android version. The iOS version is rock solid. I never see crashes and have 2+ devices always running it at the helm. I have 5 iPads and 2 Android tablets so my feelings about it all aren’t based on loving one camp more than another; they’re based on extensive experience. I’ve developed for both platforms too.