Almost ten years to the day, we launched a free service called Ta-da List: A simple way to manage and share to-do lists online. It’s funny to read the announcement now. You need a MINIMUM of Internet Explorer 6 to run it! Ha.
Well, we retired Ta-da List in May, 2012, as it had run its course, and we weren’t looking to update it to keep pace with progress. But what we didn’t do, was to kick off everyone who was happy to use what they had. Ta-da List is part of our legacy, and the courteous thing to do is to respect your legacy.
If you have a Leica M3 – a camera produced between 1954 and 1967 – they’ll still fix it for you in Germany. Half a century after they stopped selling it! That’s legacy, and an inspiration.
In 2014, there were just under 5,000 people still happily using Ta-da List to track their todos. That makes me smile. No, it’s not the best to-do tracker in the world. There’s no mobile app. It’s antique software. But it’s our legacy, and it feels good to be there and be dependable for the users who are happy with what they got.
When we Became Basecamp that was a theme we talked about a lot. The internal phrase is that we want to produce software that’s around #UntilTheEndOfTheInternet. So much software and so many services these days are unreasonably flaky and undependable. Not in the sense that they crash (well, that too), but that they simply disappear from one day to the next because of whimsy, acquisition, or worse.
I don’t want to be a digital landlord that evicts people who placed their trust and their data with us, just because “our priorities have changed”. At the same time, we also don’t want to continue selling or offering antiques to new customers. This is the compromise: No new users, but the ones we got we’ll take care of forever.
So cheers to Ta-da List and the 5,000 people still using it. We’re glad you’re still here, reminding us of who we are and where we came from.
Don Schenck
on 13 Jan 15WHOA!
It being retired, I assumed my lists were gone. But I just signed in …
Cool. Thanks.
casper
on 13 Jan 15Respect.
Steven
on 13 Jan 15You had me scared there for a while. I still occasionally use it and still love it. Who needs an app? It works fine in Safari on my iPhone.
Abdu
on 13 Jan 15More like till the last customer leaves and turns off the lights and probably the company hopes this happens sooner than later.
Wilson
on 13 Jan 15Thank you.
DHH
on 14 Jan 15Abdu, I actually kinda hope that there’s still someone using Ta-da List in 2030. Purveyor of vintage software sounds pretty cool.
Ka Wai
on 14 Jan 15One of the happy 5,000. Keeping me organized since 2006.
Emil
on 14 Jan 15tada was my intro drug into a 9 year old long basecamp addiction.
Danny
on 14 Jan 15I was evicted from Basecamp Breeze…
MR
on 14 Jan 15@Danny, usually when landlords evict tenants, they keep all the rent the tenant had paid for their time renting. Breeze customers were paid back in full.
Marcos
on 15 Jan 15An impressive stance that is very nice in the age of oft-disappearing services.
I’m curious to hear your take on maintaining an aging codebase. For example, does #UntilTheEndOfTheInternet internally mean continued upgrades to the latest versions of Rails? Applying the latest OS patches? For products I’ve worked on, it has always been hard to draw the line between between “is still online” and “is properly maintained & secured for our user.”
Gunnar
on 16 Jan 15Also thank you guys for still providing writeboard :-)
This discussion is closed.