>Well Ernie, I think that just highlights the difference in our>outlooks. I don't see payware as something to be lamented. >I prefer to pay for something worth paying for, and then I>have the right as a consumer to purchase or not, and also to>expect that the product is properly supported. I think you misunderstand me.I'm already on the payware side, so why would 'I' be lamenting it ?But freeware authors efforts still need to be appreciated, and yes some of the them do need a 'nice job' or 'I really enjoyed your work' email or forum comment every once in a while. (Again see my previous posts about the different motivations of each author).And if that's all someone asks for all his efforts, I really don't see what all the fuss is about.Regards.Ernie.

Hey "Bud", thanks for contributing to the community by attacking me. I am not going to defend my "attitude". My points have already been argued by others in this forum.What if everyone sent a thank you to the author whenever they downloaded some freeware? The authors would be inundated with "thank yous". I guess according to you everyone should just make some generic "thank you" e-mail, and send it to every author of every piece of freeware I download. I'll construct this e-mail right now.Hello [insert author's name],Thanks for creating [description of author's freeware]. I really enjoyed it! Keep up the good work!That's real personal. If I were an author, I would get rather annoyed at receiving all of these thank-you's after awhile, like another person posted. This is not to say I have anything against thanking an author, I did just such a thing yesterday which had nothing to do with this thread for the author of the great Louisville, KY scenery on this site, and he said he greatly appreciated my e-mail.I have myself contributed freeware although not to the FS community, and my motivation was solely to add to the community and share my work with others. It made no difference one way or another whether people thanked me or not, as long as I knew they were downloading and using my software.

How is he supposed to "just be happy that people are downloading and using his scenery" if no one has e-mailed him to let them know they are? Just because people download it doesn't mean they like and use it. I download stuff to try all the time some of which I remove almost immediately. Without feedback the author has no idea.I never said it should be a generic e-mail just one to let them know you enjoy it and perhaps how it has enhanced things for you.I think Tom made a good point about communicating the desire for feedback in the readme file to let people know the author welcomes the comments. Bud

well,having pondered over this,i can only say i'm on the Lou Betti side.knowing someone is flying my paint,enjoying it,and sometimes even showing it on a forum,( i saw one a week ago enjoying a really old repaint,and i just loved the fact he had obviously had loads of fun)is more than thanks enough for me.i must say,i'd really like to loose the whiners though,but as it's a mostly free world...oh well :-hahcheersJP.

all i can say is a "thank you" NEVER hurt ANYONE except FLIGHT Simulator developers. if i ever download any of you peoples addons i'll be sure NOT to say thanks.:-wave. what a heartless bunch. william

I just wanted to say that I do receive "thank you" emails for my freeware, and I appreciate every one of them. I didn't write my software for praise or glory; I wrote it mainly for myself and decided to share.

So many posts in this thread...I'm also surprised by how many people don't bother to write and say "thank you". It doesn't bother me, and that's not why I make scenery, but I just thought people were more proactive. I save all my scenery-related emails, and I calculate my write-in rate to be about 1 for every 1000 downloads.However, I don't worry about it too much. I make scenery of places that interest me, and I only upload it on the chance that someone else may have the same interests. I can be pretty selfish too; if someone says "I like your scenery can you make XXXXX for me", I polite tell them "no". So, if I'm selfish sometimes, I try not to be too hard on people who don't email me. I admit that when I first started, I thought that a nice form of recognition would be to win a Developer's Award over at Flightsim.com, but now I realize that this is really just a popularity contest, and for whatever reason, my sceneries are much more popular over here than there - I'm not sure why this is, but I still upload at both places anyway. Eventually, recognition came in different forms. Other smaller websites emailed me asking for permission to upload my works; Aerosoft included some of my stuff on a CD included with their "Flugsimulator Jahrbuch 2004/2005"; a PC flying magazine included my PC-9 on their cover disk. These are little things, that represented different people from different backgrounds, that shared an interest in my work. I decided that was a better measure of my achievements than how many emails (or awards) I got.- Martin

Didn't you people learn any manners when you were little?If someone gives you something, especially for free, you should at least say thanks.I can't believe some are trying to say they've no obligation whatsoever to say thanks... Being "busy" is no excuse for lacking manners.If you choose not to thank an author for whatever reason, fine... But don't tell him he shouldn't expect gratefulness, because he should be entitled to expect whatever he wants, just like some expect money in return.Daniel P.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpgMember of SJU Photography. [A HREF=http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?userid=9004]Click Here[/A] to view my aircraft photos at JetPhotos.Net!The official psychotic AA painter. :)

Well said Daniel,Like Martin said, so many posts...Didn't people ever learn the first two rules of human interaction. 1. If you don't have anything nice to say keep your big stinking trap shut or else one day someone is going to shut it for you. ;) (That was how the lesson went in my house growing up)2. Do unto others as you would want done to you. This includes speaking to others with the same respect you would want others to speak to you. (Even I have made this mistake in the past and fortunately a few other members called me on it and I quickly realized I was wrong and sent an apology to the forum admins.)What gets me is why so many posts come across with such an edge to them. Larry was obviously feeling a bit under-appreciated, hey it is his right as he is the one putting the hours into it. Maybe a thank you would not be so bad every once in a while. Rather than trying to give a freeware author some support though, right off the bad people are telling him see you later... Immediately, it is a launch at full speed into negativity. What, we don't NEED freeware developers anymore? Have we grown to ggod for them so we can dismiss them now? Why is there SUCH a lack of respect in the forums lately? Soon we will have nothing left but payware (I love payware, have no issues with it at all) but then people will wonder where all the freeware authors have gone and complain because they have to pay for add-ons. We are attacking those we should be thanking and praising for their efforts. What is wrong with us? Again, why do people have to respond with such animosity in their responses? Why do so many people get bombarded with such mean responses. Quite frankly though, like Larry I think a lot of us are frustrated for our own reasons as the whole temper and nature of these forums and this hobby has taken a real turn for the worse in recent years. (Not on a whole, there are still so many wonderful aspects to it but the human interaction side of it) I never remember it being so hostile in the forums, and I am talking about all forums, payware developers, these forums, FS.com, all of them. The moderators can only do so much but when people start getting such frankly "mean" responses to their posts, no one is going to want to post anymore and then what will we have? What will we have accomplished? What is accomplished with a purely sarcastic comment with nothing but animosity in it? Then, you take it even further and when members are permitted to send hate e-mails to other forum members for posting in a thread, we have just let things go to far. Such things should never be tolerated and until things like these are enforced, unfortunately, it is not going to get any better. It is time to take back the forums and make this an enjoyable place to post again. Can't we all just get along and stop being so da** hard on each other. Everyone has enough issues in real life to have to deal with this type of animosity in a hobby that is supposed to bring us all pleasure.Just my .02, I have my guard up so go ahead and fire away :)-Paul

Well said, Paul. Civility and consideration seem to be at a premium these days.

Apparently a lot of advice has been offerred on this subject already, but having done quite a bit of freeware myself, all I know is that I create things for my own pleasure. If i can share them and make somebody else happy, then thats a bonus. However, I also have some stuff that never leaves my hard drive. You might think of this attitude as a good way to go if you decide to stay around. I do ok with my repaint work, but Im not perfect. There are those easily better than me.Otherwise, take a time out from development...enjoy the simulation and any downloads you yourself like, and reevaluate. One thing I do know, is that if your work is exceptional, you'll get all the downloads and kudos you could ever hope for. if its good, but not great, you'll be more in the middle of the pack. The fact is that FS9 is an older sim nowadays. Its innovations mostly now come from addons. Since so many developers are also very familiar with how it works and its structure, the quality of addons keeps going up. If your work isnt stellar, frankly you arent going to get a lot of recognition. Thats just how it is.Eric

Thanks Bill, appreciate the support. Civility and Consideration are like gas around New York City right now, very very hard to find and then when you find it, all of the super and premium is gone and you are lucky to even get regular...-PaulLiquid CooledAMD 4000 San Diego2 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2Dual 7800 GTX 24 inch widescreen dual 19 inch LCDRaid-0

Your thread generated 1600 views in a few hours, that kinda makes up for the downloads doesn't it? People are obviously concerned, and or amused, but that's the FSfam, what are you gonna do? I blame the name FREEware on this pandemic. It implies you are giving something of Monetary value away, when you could be charging for it. for a limited time only ...FREEEeee... !WHERE! :-outta People like to interact on their own time, be more visible in the forums and you'll meet more people of your like mind. BS'ing on an open forum is more fun than email anyway. maybe you'll find a group of people that are all interested in a certain project and each person contributes in different ways. plus it's a good way to progress as a designer.but, variety is the spice of life.later,

I've been painting and repainting for a while and altogether the stuff have been dowloadad several hundred thousands times at different sites. Im just happy that i haven't received a mail from 1/4 of those people....or less. Happyly i just receive ocasionally a "Thank you". This is more than suficcient.Forget about what you think is lack of gratitude and keep on making sceneries, painting or other stuff...:-hahH.W

Reading posts like Pauls it makes me realise how we all have different values and morals that dictate how we look at things in life.Your post is all about how we should be more sympathetic and less "argumentitive", even less realistic with our responses to Larry and others, but from some of your past posts you are sharper than a razor with posters. You talk about "taking back the foums" and making it a "nicer" place to be. This reminds me of a child that is sheltered from the world and only interacts with sugar and spice, which isn't realistic and damaging for the child.As for your 2 rules of human interaction, constructuive criticism is far more helpful than being silent and I ALWAYS put myself in the others shoes before I comment or act. It's apparent to me that in our world, many are starving for any kind of recognition (see attention), which is partly human nature, but taken further by our social environment as of late. Too many posts in screenshot forums, to where if you don't comment in 3 seconds you get "guess my screens suck" or" noone likes my screens", etc. I see this in other areas as well, both here and in real life.I agree that he was probably feeling unappreciated, but don't agree with this way of finding it in the forum. I feel Lou hit it on the head with his response.I participate on 14-20 forums in different communities and you think the FS ones are bad, try some others, LOL.Bottom line, Larry, I don't have any of your work directly on my HD, but I am aware of it and probably have some indirectly, so THANK YOU! Hope you can find the satisfaction and enjoyment out of doing it from within and continue to be a part of this community.. Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International