Rich Siegel

Rich Siegel is an American software developer best known as the creator of BBEdit, the Mac text and code editor, and as the founder of Bare Bones Software. He has led BBEdit's engineering for more than three decades, making it one of the longest-running independently developed Mac apps.

BBEdit began in 1989 as a bare-bones editor Siegel wrote as a proof of concept, built to handle files larger than the 32 KB limit of the Mac's built-in TextEdit control. It was first released for free on April 12, 1992. On May 11, 1993, Bare Bones Software shipped version 2.5 as a commercial product, the date the company still treats as its birthday, alongside a free BBEdit Lite. The app's creator code, R*ch, is a nod to Siegel.

Over the years Bare Bones sold several apps, including the BBEdit-based email client Mailsmith, the free editor TextWrangler and the information organiser Yojimbo, but it has steadily refocused on BBEdit. TextWrangler became freeware in 2005 and was folded into BBEdit's free mode in 2016 and 2017. BBEdit was one of the first apps available for Mac OS X and has since moved through PowerPC, Intel, 64-bit and Apple silicon, adding Language Server Protocol support in version 14 (2021) and reaching version 16 in May 2026.

Siegel works from a home office in Rhode Island, where he has worked remotely since 2006. He has argued for a business built on fundamentals such as plain text, speed and scripting rather than trends. BBEdit sells perpetual licences with paid major upgrades directly, while the Mac App Store version uses an optional subscription; when a subscription lapses, the core editor keeps working for free. The company's long-running motto is that BBEdit still doesn't suck.

Siegel matters to indie makers as proof that a tiny software company can sustain one product for over 30 years by serving demanding users well, staying Mac-only and resisting growth for its own sake.