Published August 18, 2015
Sometimes in life things do not work as we hope and we have to adapt. Less than a year ago I started Flatangle with the purpose of selling software tools for traditional astrologers. Unfortunately my plan did not work out. Software tools for astrologers are a niche market and only one or two major players can be consistently profitable.
Professional astrologers are few and they are reasonably satisfied with the software they have. The main feature that an astrologer expects from his/her software, the chart, has not changed much. And professional traditional astrologers are even less. By my numbers, in two or three years I would reach less than 100 of professionals who would buy a software tool. I got those numbers by assuming that about 5% of active members, both in a group of traditional astrologers on Facebook as on an international forum, would be professionals, and that I could double that number in subsequent years. So I had to conclude that software tools for traditional astrologers would hardly ever be a profitable business for me.
Therefore I decided to pivot Flatangle. Instead of focusing solely on software tools, Flatangle is now a project aimed at the dissemination of best practices of traditional astrology. With this new project, I intend to provide astrology consultancy and reports as commercial services, and software tools will remain, for the most part, free.
By changing the commercial focus from software to consulting and reports, software tools such as Charts and Flatlib can continue to be used without any restrictions. Many software developers, as is my case, feel satisfied when other people use their creations. Another important thing is that most of the current tools are designed for modern astrology, although traditional astrology has many specificities. It is rare to find specific features such as dignities, temperaments, or predictive techniques like the Primary Directions in modern astrology software packages.
Finally, one of the main purposes with Flatangle has always been to build software tools for data-driven research on astrology, which is another way of saying statistical and empirical analysis. By removing the commercial focus on software, it allows me to continue sharing the source code for tools such as Flatlib. I believe that with motivated people and good tools, there will come a time when astrology will be seriously researched as it deserves. Maybe we are now a small step closer to that, but there is still be much to be done.
See you soon!