Activity overview
Latest activity by NickCraver
JDelekto wrote:
Was the word 'promise' ever used in any of their communication or was it all implied by a community who made such an assumption because they said they would continue to provide a 'free' version of Reflector?
So you're arguing that since they never explicitly use the word "promise" it's all ok? That just turns it into a lie to the community, I'm failing to see how that's any better.
There's absolutely nothing stopping them from taking the time-bomb out of v6 and keeping their promise, it would likely take the investment of commenting out a few lines of code. Yet no one from Red Gate will respond here saying why that isn't an option, funny how that works. This isn't a choice they're giving people, it's a lack of options. If v7 was a choice to upgrade to that'd be one thing, and I'd certainly buy it if they added the features they're touting. As it stands I will avoid Red Gate products as much as possible, and encourage others to do the same.
Let's be clear on something, .Net Reflector was free for 8 years before Red Gate got a hold of it. Yes there has always been a time-bomb, but why was it there? It was so that Lutz Roeder didn't have to support many versions at once, not used as a ransom device to extract money from as many as possible whenever Red Gate chose to.[/b] / comments
JDelekto wrote:
Was the word 'promise' ever used in any of their communication or was it all implied by a community who made such an assumption because they said they would continue to provide a...
jeremy.parsons wrote:
'Perpetual license' is just a common term: you buy a license to use the software, and the license never expires. Which is pretty standard - certainly for Red Gate products.
"For free" is an even more common term. You guys seem to have missed the point here, nothing you say can be trusted now, you've broken that.
Think of it from the developer's point of view, why should I trust your statement? Because other Red Gate products have historically been licensed that way? Reflector has historically been free. More important, should I trust it because you said so? well that one's out too, you broke that trust when you went back on your word about keeping it free.
If you want to make it commercially viable that's fine, improve it, do whatever you want to make a product people will pay for. But let's be clear here, that's not what you're doing, you're removing the time-bomb after people pay the ransom for the upgrade.
Face it, you guys made a mistake, you took reflector and added "features" many people didn't want, if they did, we wouldn't be here, because people would actually be paying for the pro version that exists now. Obviously not enough people are doing that, so you're using the time-bomb to ransom sales.
Was the time-bomb feature always there? Yes. Was this ever Lutz's intent? No.
I can only speak for me personally, but if you ever have a chance of me using or buying a Red Gate product again, you'll do the right thing and remove the time-bomb from v6 (strip out all the pro "features" while you're at it) and let people choose. / comments
jeremy.parsons wrote:
'Perpetual license' is just a common term: you buy a license to use the software, and the license never expires. Which is pretty standard - certainly for Red Gate products....
I registered just to say your current installers are unacceptable. Any add-ins for a product that is not yours should be optional, not automatic. I don't want to trust your option menu to cleanup anything, nor should anyone have to take an extra step to make do so. If I can't trust the Reflector installer to keep it's hands to itself when it installs, why would I trust it uninstalls correctly, or didn't install something else I don't know about or want?
Visual Studio has crashed twice due to your reflector add-in that I didn't ask for, and didn't have the option of refusing, costing me time to figure out how to uninstall it.
I'm using your profiler and would be much happier without the Visual Studio integration as well. You've lost another customer unless this is corrected, I'd love to see what Refactor Pro does, and would probably end up getting a few licenses, but not with your current installer. It's intrusive and unbelievably arrogant to believe all your customers would want this.
Try this: Name one other piece of software I pay for where add-ons to other products are not optional. / comments
I registered just to say your current installers are unacceptable. Any add-ins for a product that is not yours should be optional, not automatic. I don't want to trust your option menu to cleanup...