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The ever increasing unpopularity of freeware becoming payware

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During the past year this hobby has seen an increase of freeware apps go the payware route. And many a simmer have voiced their opinion against the practice.Take Peter Dowson and his decision to take FSUIPC the payware route. Peter made a statement earlier in the year that simmers would have to start paying for his incredible app. A majority of simmers were outraged that Peter would charge for his hard work. Some of us forget that those who spend "their" own time and money to develop these tools, scenery, aircraft etc, do so out their love for the hobby. Now some of you may beg to differ about the "their love for the hobby" statement, as being contadictary, but if someone has a deep devotion for a particular hobby, spends many hours putting together a tool such as FSUIPC, or anything else for that matter has every right to charge for their work.I used to setup networks for friends for free until they started asking for more complex projects. I told them, I will have to start charging them for my time. Is there anything wrong with that? No, and neither is it wrong for freeware developers to start charging for their products.Over time as the sim becomes more and more complex, the coding for these add-ons becomes more complex, and eats up the developers time. They get their accolades for producing their wares, but there is more "why doesnt it do this, and why cant it do that" instead of "thank you"Let me ask those in this forum, how many have spent any time actually trying to develop an add-on, be it scenery, aircraft, panels, gauges, or whatever. It takes more time than many think. There is nothing wrong with add-on developers who produce quality products to charge for their hard work and time.

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Guest Barney1

""There is nothing wrong with add-on developers who produce quality products to charge for their hard work and time.""Who decides whether the product is 'quality' and thus deserving of a charge to use? The answer becomes obvious as you read on. As a designer of scenery in the past, I consider my time and effort every bit as important as the next developer...yea, even those who produce 'quality' products. Should I therefore begin charging? I wouldn't sell much, but that isn't the point. Simmers would still flock to those products that sell now; but how about those who, for whatever reason can't afford to buy the add-ons they'd like? Up until now, they've been content with the freeware that's been available. The point is that if _all_ the authors began charging, as is their considered right, how long before the current broad popularity of this sim nose dives and becomes strictly elitist, and reserved for only those who can afford to purchase any and all add-ons?? I wonder how many of those who now charge for their product also use freeware add-ons? Do they offer to barter or trade with the freeware author as a sign of recognizing his or her contribution? Something to ponder.

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In my opinion the person who makes the addon has the right to do whatever he wants with he. But he has to understand that if it isnt quality no one is going to buy it. If its freeware people will atleast download it and try it...

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Hi Barney,>Who decides whether the product is 'quality' and thus deserving of a charge to use?< The customer does, as with any other product. It would be quite reasonable to suggest that a payware product should be of higher standard than a comparable freeware product, in order to justify the charge. There are a lot of freeware developers out there who have no intention of going payware, such as POSKY, MelJet, ISD Project, to name but a few. And they are consistently setting very high standards.If a payware product doesn't live up to those standards, it will get bad reviews, and consequently suffer poor sales.As to those who can't afford payware, the FS add-on market isn't some kind of charity - they'd just have to wait and save up or make do without. It's not really a revolutionary new concept. There are a lot of posts on the hardware forum from people seeking advice to upgrade their computers. They simply want to know the best components they can get for their budget - I haven't seen anyone demanding that for $200 he should be able to get a Pentium 3.2GHz CPU and a Radeon 9800 to go with it. It's not going to happen, so why should it be any different for software?Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

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Some time ago, a flight sim magazine had a column interview with Peter Dowson. His health had deteriorated somewhat under the stress of losing a full time position but remaining on as a consultant. I recall that position has now ceased to exist.For the time and effort he puts in, as well as the costs involved in development and communications, he can no longer assume the financial burden. He therefore, in my opinion, came up with a reasonable scheme to allow his flight sim interfacing engineering prowess to continue.Restating, the key for the basic interface portion of FSUIPC 3.x is available at no charge to bonafide freeware developers. Those users wishing to utilize other enhancements regarding control mapping and other issues, are required to obtain the full payware license unless arrangements have been made with the commercial add-on vendor.FSUIPC offers a unified interface as a .dll that is shared by all apps using this interface. It means that the user benefits by a reduced amount of resources being taken up by vendor provided similar interfaces each performing the same basic functions and each consuming memory and processor time.His schedule is a small price to pay for gaining this efficiency and reducing vendor development time where they would reinvent the wheel and duplicate asynchronously each other's efforts.

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>Who decides whether the product is 'quality' and thus>deserving of a charge to use? The answer becomes obvious as>you read on.Actually the question should be who decides that YOU have to buy anything any payware developer puts out? That's the beauty of the capitalist system - no one has to approve something as "deserving of a charge", the market takes care of that on its own. If the product isn't good, no one buys it.Ryan


Ryan Maziarz
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