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Latest activity by tsiegfried
The price is fair but that is not the point. When you offer software for free, the intent is that it is free forever. Not that it will be supported forever or even downloadable forever, but that the version that I download will remain intact.
The current offer is that you pay $35 and you get the software forever. But again, there is nothing from keeping redgate from publishing a 'patch' that deactivates the software and forces a new version to be purchased. Of course this would not happen now, but several years down the road, when everyone has forgotten this, the money is going to look really good.
I have seen this with other software products in the past, specifically with not to be named financial planning software. Which retroactively converted perpetual license software to annual license software under the argument that it costs money to support. It costs NOTHING for me to use my local copy of unsupported software.
Charge for support, charge for upgrades, charge for new versions, but do not change for old versions.
The most frustrating part of the whole thing is the condescending attitude behind the statement 'we just couldn't make the free model work'. The 'free' model is not charity, it is a gamble by redgate to attract people to their other products and gain familiarity within the dev community. It is a business decision that was made in an attempt to make more money.
Good luck making the pay model work. / comments
The price is fair but that is not the point. When you offer software for free, the intent is that it is free forever. Not that it will be supported forever or even downloadable forever, but that ...