Linda's Family of Nutz: August 2017

Changes are coming!!!

On Aug 3, 2017, Legacy and My Heritage announced that their companies were merging. Shock rippled across the Genealogy community, especially with the loyal users of Legacy. Feelings ranged from shock and disbelief, to feelings of being duped, betrayed or cheated and every emotion in between.

The Legacy users are scared, and rightfully so. Just 2 years ago, Ancestry dumped FTM, then announced that Roots Magic would sync with Ancestry at Roots Tech. Then later announced that FTM had risen from the ashes of being scrapped and was being sold to MacKiev. Two years later, both software companies released the "sync" feature, but still issues exist with both programs.

Legacy explained the pros to the merger, and that every employee currently with Legacy will stay with Legacy at their new home under My Heritage's tutelage.

The following 4 bullets are directly from Legacy News as well as the email sent to Legacy users.

A host of new features in Legacy software – we will be developing future versions of Legacy together. We have already started working on the new Tree Sync feature (to optionally have your Legacy file in a private or collaborative tree at My Heritage)
Improved webinar platform to surpass the 1,000-virtual seat limitation we currently have
Significant discounts on My Heritage services and DNA kits for Legacy users and webinar viewers not available anywhere else
Most importantly, you can expect the same high-quality support and service that you have come to expect from us. The entire Legacy and webinar teams will continue on at My Heritage in our existing roles.

Questions were asked and answered by Legacy staff:

Do we have to have a tree on My heritage? No, It is optional.
Do we have to sync when that becomes available? No, it is optional.
Do we have to subscribe to My Heritage? No, just like you don't need to subscribe to ancestry to use Roots Magic or FTM.
Will our data on the legacy cloud be used by My Heritage? No, even Legacy doesn't have access to your back up on the cloud

Legacy staff has mentioned Legacy will remain independent. Which is a good thing, and the current 50% off (until Aug 13) on both the software and the webinars was My Heritage's idea as an act of good will. My Heritage also realizes there are issues from the past they are working through and are hoping to gain our trust back.

A few other bloggers posted today, making observations about Legacy's merger, and while most of what they say is good news, one thing that has the community back up in arms; is the opinion that Legacy will be absorbed into My Heritage and will be made into a web based app to replace their own web based app called Family tree builder.

I personally hope that doesn't happen, as Legacy is a robust program and there would be so much functionality lost by making it web based. I mean look at the current functionality of other web based programs (ancestry's online tree builder, Wiki tree, and even My Heritage's tree builder)

The genealogy community wants to keep their trees on their PC's, for several reasons:

to protect living relatives

to prevent others from changing trees

to stop genealogy "vampires" from taking someone's hard work and claiming it as theirs

One only has to look at the mess on Ancestry (their trees) where there are numerous trees for the same family, all who cite an ancestry tree as the source, but hardly any with an actual source as to where the info came from. Parents with children born before the parents, mothers having children after they died, and men being married to 3 women at the same time in 3 different states. What a mess online trees have made.

This same complaint has also been made about My Heritage trees.

My Heritage would be better off scrapping their online tree builder, and just use Legacy's sync option to showcase Legacy's capabilities, and help promote proper sourcing and not just follow the shaky leaf hints.

I see this merger as a good thing for Legacy to impart their GREAT customer service skills into the My Heritage infrastructure, and for My Heritage to utilize the POWER of Legacy to improve the Genealogy community's way of researching and their footprint on the internet as a subscription database worthy of our time and money.

Only time will tell......