After a great deal of thought, we are announcing the end of support for Dad, effective March 31. Throughout this post, "we" means me.
This was not an easy decision. Dad has been part of our roadmap since 1984, and many of us have fond memories of earlier versions. But maintaining him now takes a growing share of resources that we believe are better spent on our core priorities. This post explains what is changing, when, and what it means for you.
What's changing
As of March 31, the following will no longer be supported:
- Sunday phone calls
- Printer troubleshooting, including "it says offline"
- Rides to and from the eye doctor
- Thanksgiving
- Questions about whether I am still at that job
Christmas will enter maintenance mode, with critical appearances only and no new features.
Timeline
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| February 1 | Feature freeze. No new topics of conversation will be accepted. |
| March 1 | Sunday calls become read-only. Dad may leave a voicemail. |
| March 31 | End of support. |
| After March 31 | Dad continues to run but receives no updates, visits or patches. |
Why we're doing this
Usage. Over the past year the average call ran 47 minutes. By our analysis, 80 percent of that time went to four topics: the printer, the gutters, a man named Walt, and whether the car is making the noise again. Engagement on our side has fallen every quarter.
Architecture. Dad is built on a legacy platform (1949). He is not compatible with texting, the patient portal or any app, and he depends on a landline, paper checks and being told things in a particular order. A migration to a smartphone was attempted in 2022 and did not complete.
Focus. Sunsetting Dad lets us reinvest in the things our users are most excited about, including my career and a relationship that is currently in early access.
Migration guide
Users who rely on Dad should plan a move to one of the following.
The family group chat. Dad is not in it, but most of what he would say is.
My sister Karen, who maintains a community fork from her house in Lansdale and sees him twice a week. We thank Karen for her contributions and remind users that community support is provided as-is.
Self-serve documentation. We have published a nine-page PDF on the printer.
FAQ
Will Dad still work after March 31? Yes. Existing installations will keep running as they are. They will simply be unsupported.
What happens if he calls? Calls go to voicemail, which is monitored quarterly.
Is extended support available? For critical events such as a hospitalization, limited support may be arranged case by case. Contact Karen.
Is this about what he said at the rehearsal dinner? We do not comment on individual incidents.
Is this related to his diagnosis? No. The timing reflects our planning cycle. To avoid confusion, this announcement concerns end of life in the product sense. For end of life in the other sense, please see Karen.
Who can I escalate to? Historically this was Mom, who reached end of life in 2019.
Update, April 3
Karen read this announcement to Dad over the phone. On March 30 he left a voicemail, which we log here for completeness: "It's Dad. Your sister read me your thing. I don't know what a migration is. The gutters are fine, Walt came by. You don't have to call. Call when you can."
On April 3 we received a card in the mail containing a twenty-dollar bill and the words "for the printer book." Because it arrived after the end of support, we are unable to respond. The payment has been processed.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Karen. Community fork maintainer. For anyone following along, the fork is now the main branch. Dad asks about you on Sundays and I tell him you're in maintenance mode. He's decided that means you're busy at work, and I haven't corrected him.
The timeline is the part I'd push back on professionally. Feature freeze February 1, read-only March 1, end of support March 31 is about two months from announcement to EOL. Most enterprise customers get twelve to eighteen months of overlap, with both paths working, before anything is switched off.
Extended support is available for critical events, per the FAQ. I'd also note the user base is one.
Karen is providing the same service twice a week without access to the resources you say are being consumed. Have you included the cost transfer in the decision?
Community maintenance was already happening before the announcement. The migration guide makes that existing arrangement easier for users to discover.
Every sunset I've run had a successor product. Here the migration guide points users to a group chat Dad isn't in, a sister who was already doing the work, and a nine-page PDF, none of which replaces the thing being switched off.
Forty-seven minute average sessions with 80% of usage on four features is a power user with a narrow use case. In most products that's the customer you fight hardest to keep, because they're the most engaged.
They're also the most expensive to support relative to what they contribute, which is the core of the decision.
Processing a twenty-dollar payment is a supported interaction. If the response path is unavailable, I'd suggest returning the payment instead of documenting it as revenue.
"Continues to run but receives no updates" is where incidents come from. Unpatched legacy systems are the ones that fail without anyone noticing until late. Who's monitoring?
Monitoring is included in Karen's fork.
I need to know more about Walt.
Walt is a neighbor. He is out of scope.
Did he ever get the printer working?
He did, using the PDF. Karen says he printed it twice.
this is just abandoning your dad with extra steps