Check it out, this very site back in January '97. :-eekhttp://web.archive.org/web/19970619202401/.../pages/main.htm

Hi there,Hmm, they have come a long way. Shame though that this is onlyso friendly a place for a European Airbus fancier.-Niels Christiansen

Interesting stuff.

I followed the link to Project Freeware and this is the introduction:PROJECT FREEWARE was started as a FREEWARE alternative to the alarming proliferation of PAYWARE add-on's, which seem to be killing the hobby. How can PAYWARE kill the hobby? Think back to the days of FS4 when we finally could add aircraft and scenery to our simulations. There was a great deal of information freely shared among the hobbyists. When someone figured out a new way of doing things, it was passed along and the hobby grew at a rapid pace, as the knowledge base grew.Today, it would seem that many hobbyists have turned greedy. Instead of freely sharing aircraft, scenery and techniques, everyone wants to get rich first. Much of the PAYWARE on the market is of inferior quality, but the buyer cannot know that until it is too late. But even worse, there is no longer any sharing of information as any advances in the hobby are considered a "marketable" advantage. Instead of being able to build upon the advances discovered by others, each of us must "reinvent the wheel" so the hobby tends to make much slower progress than what could be possible.Sound familiar? We are still having the same debates about this issue 5 years down the line!:-lol Thankfully, Payware has yet to kill our hobby...