Not worth the money - Strider72

So you link to a discussion involving a disgruntled user (presumably you) berating the author and demanding a free upgrade? I don't get it. Some shareware authors give free updates for life, some for x years, and some, like this one, charge an upgrade fee every major version. There is nothing in the definition of shareware that says you get free upgrades any more or less than commercial software. In fact, shareware is commercial software, with a modified distribution method -- that is, you get to try it for free before you buy. Insisting that he is obligated to put a big disclaimer on his site saying "My program doesn't have free upgrades" is absurd. Nobody advertises what they don't offer. Those authors who do offer free upgrades advertise the fact -- usually quite heavily, so if you ASSUMED something that is stated nowhere on his website, that is YOUR FAULT, not his. I myself have had issues with shareware authors before -- once with a guy who did offer Free Updates For Life -- and explicitly said so in the advertising copy and program description. I had been considering the rather pricey program and finally one day went and bought it, only to find that he had silently dropped the free updates part the day before. In such a case you would have an argument. A temporary (a couple weeks, maybe) disclaimer stating that the heavily advertised upgrades were no longer part of the package would have been appropriate. In another case I bought a Free Updates For Life program, and the developer promptly stopped developing it and offered me a paid upgrade to his "*same program* Pro" with minimal new features but bug fixes I had been waiting for. Both of these constituted a bait-and-switch such as that which you accuse this author of doing, but this author NEVER PROMISED OR ADVERTISED the updates that you are insisting you paid for. Give it a rest. You made a poor assumption, and now you're trying to take it out on an innocent party. Personally, I generally only buy shareware that offers free upgrades (for at least a couple years), so I will not be buying this one for that reason.

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Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 03:02 PM PDT