Is BazQux clinically dead?

[3fr]

I have been a lifetime user for years now, but since the war started I think that at any moment I will try to login into bazqux, will find an error and that will be the end of it. After each outgate, every single time I said to myself, let’s give it a week before declare it finally dead. It is working now, but for how long?

Knowing that the owner is alone, that he is just supporting it only after his real work, that he moved in a hurry to Germany fleeing from war and left the server in maintenance mode indefinitely and after that it migrated to some other place that keep failing constantly, that he is not even checking the comments, let alone develop any new feature at all, and most probably will take him days or weeks to read this (because it is the only thing keeping in contact with him, as other post says) does not help.

I have been holding until now to at least amortize the initial investment in the account and I think by now is far covered, the only reason I am not jumping back to inoreader is because I don’t want to start paying again (that’s why I bought the account in first place) but I know that maybe next outgate will be the final one.

So can anybody give me a reason to keep sticking with bazqux and not forget about it right now?

Thanks

[fedbaz]

I don’t know man, I started using last September and so far so good… I haven’t been experiencing any issue so far.
Though, I kinda feel you regarding the actual absence of updates or anything since lot of time… But then again, the web app and the service in general seems pretty complete to me. You know, in September I asked the maker if he could add the bottom navigator for the web app, a thing that probably would have been added in days if it was years ago…

I’m sticking with this service mainly because there’s not a valuable alternative in terms of ease of use and completeness for the price (full article right within the feed, Fivefilters feed creators included that are incredibile, ease of setting up the filters…)
For the price and the service offered, up today, I cannot complain at all.

Anyway, I really feel your concern and a more active development and “presence” of the author would be indeed very much appreciated… But I don’t think (or better, I really hope) that he doesn’t want to let its creature to die (it’s really one of a kind, and complete all-around RSS reader-creator).

[vshabanov]

There were server issues last year, but there are no issues since the last June:

504 Gateway Time-out

BazQux now runs on new servers. And these are really new with new drives. And I switched from buggy zfs-fuse to a standard ext4 (probably there are better filesystems, but ext4 is a safe default from the stability point of view). As a nice bonus, new servers have faster CPUs (almost 1.5 times faster), so the reader should be faster now.

Have you experienced any errors recently? It could be a browser extension.

I didn’t move to Germany, I moved to London and I’m still there. It’s the servers that are in Germany.

I see no reason to shut down BazQux. I use it myself, it requires little maintenance (especially after moving to new servers), it gives me additional income, and there are first users who are still using it since 2012-13, whom I still remember and don’t want to let down.

[3fr]

• no, I didn’t have issues recently

• no, I never said it should be shut down, on contrary it needs to improve and grow

but I see now bazqux is just a “fire and forget” only touching it when is broken, if not never, it is just “an additional income” for you, ok, I respect that, but therefore I could never take it seriously and to me is like a coma patient living on a wire, at some point it will be behind everything or just beyond repair.

Anyway I will keep using it until collapse or find a better option, now I know for certain that will never be other thing than “additional”.

Thanks for your reply, I am not replying to anything else after this.

[Malcolm_Cook]

gotta chime in - I’m a relatively new (last year) paying bq user - so happy with it - moved from paying Feedly (where I landed when Google Reader shut down) but I was unhappy with their efforts to turn it into something else - I just want a solid RSS news reader with good keyboard shortcuts - bazqux is it - even mobile rocks which I think is pretty incredible…

[Steven]

I’m really not sure what issue OP has with the way BazQux operates. Aside from a couple of server issues last year, which got permanently fixed, @vshabanov has provided a great service since I started being a user back in 2013.

Nothing is forever but @vshabanov has never given us any reason to think that BazQux is on life support (as suggested by OP). The fact that BazQux just runs with little to no intervention is a credit to the him. Suggests this service is pretty complete overall, why make changes just for the sake of it.

Maybe I’m missing something but what features are people wanting if they are not happy with a “fire and forget” product?

[Pat]

Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried a number of services including Inoreader, Newsblur, feeder.co, FreshRSS, Commafeed, Miniflux. I am convinced BazQuz has by far the best balance of features, usability, performance, and cost. Of course it’s not perfect, but at least for me it seems better than the rest. I think the reality is that all the competition (with the possible exception of Commafeed) are mature products that are not getting much investment, which is fine. Of course, there will always be things I would do differently if I were the developer, but I’m not. A small change I would like is on the dark theme I would make the star, share, tag, unread buttons be a little brighter. A larger change (I imagine) would be to have the full article text automatically downloaded, but only for some feeds - not a deal breaker but would be a nice to have. That said BazQux is being maintained (recent fix for Reddit feeds for example) and I don’t see anything better coming along anytime soon.

[Mxx]

@Pat

A larger change (I imagine) would be to have the full article text automatically downloaded, but only for some feeds - not a deal breaker but would be a nice to have.

You can achieve that using https://ftr.bazqux.com/

[Pat]

That is too cool! Can’t believe I missed that, Thank you.

[Steven]

It’s great. Most of the feeds I subscribe to I’ve put through that.

Here’s a use case that I think highlights some great features of BazQux.

I have a couple of feeds that each have a post a day that I want to never miss. So here’s what I’ve setup:

1. Put the feeds through http://ftr.bazqux.com to get the full text feed.

2. Set up a smart stream to pull out the post I want to see.

3. Then I use the public feed for that smart stream to use in an RSS to email service (in my case IFTTT) to send me those posts to my inbox each morning.

[clorgie]

I kind of understand where you are coming from: I wish things were different and that BazQux were in active development with a constant stream of improvements. But that’s not how things are, nor does it seem likely to change anytime soon, so I am satisfied with an application that works not just well enough, but better than any of the competitors I tried before deciding to move here from Inoreader.

[Alex_Z]

I’m one of those oldtimers from 2013. Still using it, still happy. Have a lifetime license, but donating almost every year because this is the best tool that is fit to my needs. Thank you for the continuous dedication. And please don’t hesitate to reach if more support is needed.

[lingchenzi]

I purchased a lifetime subscription in 2020 and hope that bazqux will always work.