affidavit wrote:how can a free for life, legally be a must pay for latest version software ? Donation request ok but you must pay breaks the contract of past users whom purchased upgrades are free !
This quote goes straight to the pool room! (RD - we need a pool room
Please - everyone, before bothering to post ill considered comments like this, take some time and read the EULA (end user licence agreement) for MWP and all software. The agreement provides all of the answers to most of the ill formed questions, comments and opinions.
BTW - none of us own this software - we purchased a user licence. Somehow some people seem to gloss over this little bit of reality - gets in the way of a good rant.
"Free for life" - means what exactly? At best it's an expression of good will. In reality it is meaningless for several reasons. Firetrust is not a charity and those who work for the company are not like some fairy tale characters who toil all night so that a product is produced when Nick Bolton et al wakes up in the morning. Any person who is too lousy to pay for continued use of a product deserves precisely what they pay for - and not one thing more. As in: the ORIGINAL version of the product that existed when you paid for the licence plus any non-major upgrades at the sole discretion of the developer: online support in keeping with the price you paid (read - wait and wait and wait), no ongoing access to this website, not one thing more than the licence to use a specific version of the software.
Secondly - what do you get when Firetrust goes broke? Answer - what you deserve. All EULA's contain words that resolve to this: "Use at your own risk. If it works, great, if not - bummer. We reserve the right to change things at our sole discretion". The latter words mean - reality: things change / prices change / policies change / technology changes. Don't take my word for it - read every EULA for software licences that you purchased - they are pretty much the same. Now if you did not read it - not my problem. If you read it but chose not to ask questions - not my problem. BTW - we are not talking about the purchase of a new Mercedes here ... we are pissing about over a few dollars ($10) for a brand new product.
@ Old Fart - you do like to write rubbish. Pity none of it is accurate or reasonable (or intelligible in parts). This behavior is called trolling. Saddest thing from my perspective is that you get your money back and we end up carrying you. Great - not.
This is my personal opinion - MWP2010 is actually a completely new product (written from the ground up in .Net code) and Firetrust could easily have presented it as such, called it SPAMGO (whatever) so that there was no confusion that it really is a new product and then charged a fair market price for it. They did not do so - their decision. They could have retired the old version of MWP but chose NOT to because despite claims to the contrary, the company is ethical and most keen to help it's millions of customers subject to the realities of resource constraints. Translation: they are being generous. IMHO - it will not be feasible to support two different versions of MWP because of costs and technology changes. So, enjoy the free ride on MWP 6.x while you can. There are no valid commercial reasons for Firetrust to devote resources into maintaining a dead product.
Firetrust and Firetrust alone are the only entity entitled to make business decisions about product development, marketing and pricing. Customers do have some say - but ultimately their 'say' is expressed in terms of whether or not to buy. All else is considered feedback - often essential, always non binding, sometimes helpful - but feedback.
Not one of you has actually argued why those of us (like me) who are willing and happy to pay a fair price for MWP2010 should subsidise those (like you lot) who are too lousy to shell out anything towards maintaining product support and development. I have no interest in the least of carrying bludgers. And yet, based upon your comments, that is what you expect me (and all fee paying customers) to do. Why should we - what's in it for me?
However, I have backed Firetrust since Nick Bolton developed MWP and will back his decisions and ethical choices - even if I don't happen to like carrying parasites - because I can see ahead and I'm NOT lousy. No Firetrust - spammers jump for joy. My backing is not based upon Nick Bolton - never met him, but on what I know is a brilliant product that rocks spammers for six. If it did not work, then I'd try to help make it better (somehow) or find something else that did what I need.
Do you really think bug fixes appear out of thin air? Did you think a tiny income stream could possibly cover the real cost of things like this forum (upon which you happily pontificate inaccurate puerile comments - from your lips to God's ears)?
$10? There's must have been a terrible worldwide financial crisis when such a piddling amount of money is whined about so passionately (and pointlessly). I can buy a cup and a half of coffee, OR one McDonald burger and a small drink, OR two cans of soft drink OR two meat pies (no sauce). (Can't watch a movie in a theatre but might be able to rent one on a cheap night.) And once these SINGLE things are consumed, I have shell out more to keep alive. What? Shock horror!!
It is called life - deal with it.
If you cannot afford the $10 licence fee ($0.03 / day for MWP2010) then you sure as hell cannot afford to use the internet so i guess, for you the product would be pointless. $10??? With $10 of petrol, I can just make it to the shop - but not back! Some of you poor souls must really be doing it tough if $0.03 cents/ day is what it takes to push you into the poor house. It's clearly sent some of you on a rant.
Maybe instead of suggesting Firetrust operate on a donation basis (unbelievably dumb idea), we should ask Firetrust to set up a donation process to support you poor, hard-done-by unhappy people. Don't hold your breath waiting for me to contribute
RD said this best:
Rustic Dog wrote:Why are you charging for this new version?
MailWasher has been going for 9 years and we've never asked for an upgrade fee for new versions, they've always been supplied free of charge. As you might appreciate, over time this strategy, while popular with users, meant we couldn't throw as many resources at it as we would have liked.
MailWasher was never designed to be the program it became and over time as more features were added it became more difficult to work on, even small bug fixes were taking longer to resolve and sometimes even brought more problems in. Whilst we could have chosen to rewrite aspects of MailWasher using the same technologies, that would not have improved the situation.
We can see the effect that the one off purchase model has had in MailWasher 6.x and earlier, for essentially the last 4 years we did nothing but try to fight bugs, there was no innovation, and little improvement overall to the program. As the saying goes, you can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter.
