Transparency In Company (and App) Direction

This is absolutely in response to the email that just arrived - at 3 PM my time - about the barcode scanner being switched to a paid feature.

What the actual heck? In my time using barcode scanner apps, and so on, I've never once had to pay for that feature. It's practically a basic feature, built into all sorts of apps, and as quite a few people mentioned, other apps already provide this sort of lookup. Combine with the fact that I can't manually enter UPC codes on the app or the website; I have very little understanding why, of all features, this will be moved under "paid"...

C'mon, MFP - we need some transparency here! What is the idea behind this choice?

There couldn't have possibly been a meeting that provided absolutely no ideas as to features that could add value to the app and motivate people to pay for a subscription, could there? Please, tell us if that actually happened. Even if it sucks, or seems embarrassing, perhaps letting input from the community (some of which gives you money no doubt) could provide insight when your team of engineers fail to come up with anything good.

Do you spend money hosting a database of UPC-product matches? Is there a substantial overhead to this database (if it exists) that no longer can be subsidized into the free app or supported by ads?

Are you planning on making substantial upgrades to this feature by making it paid, allowing text entry on the website and app? If so, does such an update really require a substantial amount of money and resources to implement? I'd imagine it shouldn't take that much to add a textbox that hooks into a function that already exists; it appears that a text string is already sent to the server when you scan the UPC - skipping the use of the camera and going right to entering a series of numbers doesn't seem like the biggest change to anything, app or web-page. I've done it before. 5 hours, tops, and that's as a hobbyist programmer that still regularly hops onto StackOverflow for help and has to wait for answers.

Like seriously, is this LITERALLY just a grab for money or are you going somewhere with this and just haven't revealed it? I'm assuming it's the former - and I'm sure the more frustrated members would assume that as well, but I'd love to see an official response that doesn't consist of generic words that were made in a board room by the investors. How about actually explaining the reasoning for things instead of "hey this is what's happening OKAYBYEEEEE XOXOXOXO".

This comes from someone that really can't see any point to stay faithful to most companies, whether I give them money or not. I get it. It seems that investors, board members, companies in general - they want nothing more than to increase their numbers. They don't care about retention. All they have to do is keep shoving features and changing the coat of paint on their product, and more people join, and some deserters return, further increasing their numbers and potential (and actual) income.

But I'd appreciate some transparency. I think we all do. Maybe if you can make a good argument for why things are happening and let your userbase know, you won't just be able to get more people to join (and no doubt make your investors happy), but you'll get your userbase to be loyal, and refuse to leave for other services! They might even drag people to this platform over another! I know I dragged a couple of friends into using MFP, and right now, I don't know if I need to start urging them away to another service.