DeskRipple: desktop folders that open on hover (Windows) — is one-time pricing the right call over subscription?

DeskRipple keeps each group of desktop shortcuts in a single folder icon that sits with

your normal icons on Windows 10 and 11. Hover or click one and it opens into a panel of

its shortcuts (Grid, Column, Row, Fan, or a 360° Ring), then closes back to a single

icon. There's a browser version if you want to feel the interaction without a Windows

Here's the part that ate the most time. Each folder is pinned into the desktop's own

z-order, just above the shell layer that hosts your real icons (WorkerW / SHELLDLL_DefView),

so it sits behind every other window and acts like it belongs to the desktop instead of

floating on top like a normal window. Keeping that stable across Explorer restarts,

wallpaper changes, and mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups was most of the Win32 and shell-COM

work. Matching the folders to your real icon size was a second rabbit hole: Windows 11

leaves the registry icon-size value stale, so DeskRipple captures the live desktop, finds

the rendered icon glyphs, and measures them instead of trusting the registry.

The part actually up for debate is the money model. Plan: free during the public beta; a

one-time paid version is planned later (not a subscription), and beta testers get a founder

discount. No price named yet, on purpose. The bet is that a utility people glance at dozens

of times a day is something they'd rather own than rent. The obvious counter: one-time

revenue doesn't fund years of maintenance, plenty of software has drifted to subscriptions

for exactly that reason, and "buy once" caps what each user is worth.

So, two genuine questions for this crowd: (1) for a desktop utility like this, would you

actually pay once, and can one-time realistically sustain ongoing solo development, or is a

hybrid (one-time plus optional paid upgrades) the honest answer? (2) does a founder discount

for beta testers read as fair, or as a gimmick? Solo dev here, still deciding — posting it

here because this crowd argues pricing more honestly than most. I'll be around to reply.

Everything else (download, help): https://deskripple.com/