Text search

[Susan Bugher]

Guess where I suggest those eula writers should stuff their eulas.

I too believe in civil disobediance of bad laws. I don't agree with your
stance on this particular issue but that's beside the point. Fudging the
facts is a low tactic. Total Commander should be labeled as Shareware.
People can then make an *informed* choice to use or not use the program
according to the dictates of their own conscience.

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Susan Bugher]

Susan, am I using something different?

I regularly update my unpaid copy of Total Commander (I am now on
6.54a).

When I launch my TC, I get a box which asks me to key in 1, 2 or 3
according to what the box says. I do so and I get access to the
whole application.

I am calling that a "nag box" and I am therefore calling TC
"nagware". Maybe others differ from me.

If it were "shareware" I would expect to have to actually pay for
using it after the trial period had expired.

Some Shareware programs don't expire - as noted in our ACF definition:
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/acf/WareGlossary.php

"Shareware: commercial software that can be downloaded. Payment is
required for legal use of the software. Some authors use the honor
system, more commonly code is included to prevent the use of some or all
functions if payment is not made in accordance with the shareware
agreement."

TC's home page calls it "shareware" but that doesn't mean it is or
isn't.

True. Sometimes there are "but if you really can't afford it" or "free
for personal use" etc. etc. clauses. As far as that goes, any app that
is free for personal use/ payware for other uses can be labeled either
Shareware or Freeware with equal inaccuracy.

OTOH Total Commander is 100 percent Shareware - no exceptions. See:
http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm

"Total Commander is a Shareware program. This means that you can test it
for a period of 30 days. After testing the program, you must either
order the full version, or delete the program from your harddisk."

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Susan Bugher]

Susan, we just had a discussion about this, in the past few days, on a
programming forum. The consensus was that about 0.001% of shareware
is paid for. (And only about 5% of $$ware is paid for.) When it
comes to software, the trust of ALL authors has been abused - for
decades. Ever since Andrew Fluegelman invented "shareware".

How did you reach that conclusion. What do the numbers you cite mean?
I'm reasonably certain they DON'T tell how many people pay for a
Shareware app versus the number of people who SHOULD pay for the app.
What's the distinction between "shareware" and "$$ware"?

ISTM that all most Freeware or Shareware authors are likely to know is
how many people downloaded their program. That number is bound to be
higher (probably much higher) than the number of people who actually use
the app.

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Roger Johansson]

This is not the first time an arguement breaks out about whether a
piece of software is freeware. My observation is that as long as you
mention something non-freeware, all those "regular guys/gals" (who are
like jealous freeware protectors or warriors) will pounce on you with
insults and abuses -

The culture we live in, or rather are trying to abolish, creates very
convinced minds.

The type of conviction varies, some are mormons, some are reggae music
fanatics, some are libertarians, some are pure freeware fanatics, but
they all take every opportunity to express their very strong
conviction.

They do not experience the world around them directly, they see the
world through a mind filled with convictions, anger, love, hate, a lot
of good and a lot of evil which they have to keep in balance.

In my country a big news item is the perfectly normal husband and
father of little children who was revealed as a serial rapist and
killer of young girls.
It took 6 years to find him because he lived a perfectly normal life
except when he sneaked out at night and raped and killed young girls
now and then.

Criminologists explained that this is not uncommon at all, many serial
killers or serial rapists live perfectly normal lives for most of the
time. They very often have very good social skills and can fool their
victims into following them practically anywhere before they suddenly
turn into sadistic madmen.

So what we call "normal" is maybe defined as being able to balance very
big amounts of love and hate, and this gives people social strength and
social competence.

Like the leaders of a bully gang in a school yard. They know everything
about being devious, being very sociable and nice when they want to,
torturing their victims without any regards for human feelings when
they want to.

We live in a superhuman culture, women look up to "dangerous" men and
despise weak "boys". To become a man you have to go through an
initiation procedure, become determined, store up anger enough the gain
respect.

All the stored anger and determination you need for social success
creates strong convictions. This causes a lot of problems for the human
race, and it has been going on for thousands of years.

This is a gigantic cultural problems, which causes terrorists to crash
aeroplanes into scyscrapers, it causes religious fractions to fight
each other with all the weapons they can get their hands on, it causes
people to get drunk on alcohol or get extremely fat, or beat their
wifes, or jump on people with the wrong views in newsgroups.

There are solutions to this cultural problem, but people are too
occupied expressing their own conviction and balancing evil and good in
their minds to even listen to serious discussions about this problem.

They prefer talking about anything else, football, fishing, eulas,
music, whatever as long as it doesn't disturb their convictions and the
delicate balance between good and evil in their minds.

So they avoid discussing the most serious problem of all, how we can
free the human mind from these obsessions and convictions, how we can
free the social reality from all kinds of opression and stress, how we
can build a better world.

It disturbs their current state of mind to discuss such serious
matters. They prefer talking about golf, or boxing, football, detective
stories, porn, dissections, food, legal terms, wrestling, etc..

Now, what's wrong with that picture? It reminds me of SOME of those
extreme environmentalists who believe only they know how to protect the
environment.

They are all totally convinced that they and only they know all the
answers, that is because conviction feels like intelligence, just like
some drugs make you feel infinitely wise, all seeing, omnipotent, but
if they try to express that enormous intelligence in writing and in
discussions with others it all turns out as a lot of foul language and
invectives.

That's the problem with a religious culture, it makes men feel like
gods, but they cannot express their infinite wisdom without using their
fists and guns and a lot of shouting, or writing millions of totally
useless and incomprehensible texts in newsgroups.

 

[Al Klein]

Susan Bugher wrote:

When the spanish invaders took over south america they did not improve
the land, they took power over it.

When the Spanish took over South America they stole what wasn't
theirs. You steal what isn't yours. There's a connection, but you're
on the honorless end of it.

 

[Al Klein]

Al, maybe that shows that programmers are more dishonest than other
people. Heh heh!

To be serious now, those figures probably shows the ability of
programmers to apply various non-legit access tools.

It's the NON-programmers who download the programs and don't pay for
them. Just read this thread. "It's perfectly okay to download a
program the author requires payment for and use it without payment,
just because the author chooses to not cripple or limit it in any
way". IOW, "It's perfectly okay to steal something if there are no
real consequences". Which is why more and more shareware authors just
don't feel it's worth putting the effort into writing shareware of
commercial quality any more. If you want to release it as freeware,
okay, but if you release it as fully-featured, not time limited
shareware, be prepared to be told that it's freeware.

 

[Al Klein]

OTOH Total Commander is 100 percent Shareware - no exceptions. See:
http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm

"Total Commander is a Shareware program. This means that you can test it
for a period of 30 days. After testing the program, you must either
order the full version, or delete the program from your harddisk."

I guess it depends on what "must" means, to misquote a former
president.

To some it seems to mean "if you so choose".

 

[Al Klein]

They do not experience the world around them directly, they see the
world through a mind filled with convictions, anger, love, hate, a lot
of good and a lot of evil which they have to keep in balance.

Much as you do - you see a world filled with greedy people, all out to
hurt you and those you consider somehow "worthier" than others.

So what we call "normal" is maybe defined as being able to balance very
big amounts of love and hate, and this gives people social strength and
social competence.

Or it merely means "usual". Which is what it's always meant. Not
good, not bad, just usual. "Normal" isn't a value judgment, any more
than "brown" is.

We live in a superhuman culture, women look up to "dangerous" men and
despise weak "boys". To become a man you have to go through an
initiation procedure, become determined, store up anger enough the gain
respect.

You live (possibly only in your mind) in a strange world, Roger. I'm
far from dangerous, yet my wife looks up to me in certain areas. (I
look up to her when it comes to cooking, though.) I don't find
worship attractive.

This is a gigantic cultural problems, which causes terrorists to crash
aeroplanes into scyscrapers

Religious belief is what caused those particular people to do what
they did.

it causes religious fractions to fight each other with all the weapons
they can get their hands on

That's merely due to the fact that human beings (all anthropoids,
really) have an innate recognition of "us" and "them", and "them" is
bad. We evolved that way since pure limitless altruism is its own
Darwin award.

There are solutions to this cultural problem, but people are too
occupied expressing their own conviction and balancing evil and good in
their minds to even listen to serious discussions about this problem.

One of the solutions is to stop your knee from moving and learn what
are actual problems, as opposed to symptoms, and what the causes of
those problems are. Then try to address the causes, not the symptoms.

They prefer talking about anything else, football, fishing, eulas,
music, whatever as long as it doesn't disturb their convictions and the
delicate balance between good and evil in their minds.

This is alt.computer.freeware, not
alt.lets.save.the.downtrodden.from.corporate.America, so we discuss
freeware here.

So they avoid discussing the most serious problem of all, how we can
free the human mind from these obsessions and convictions

Your obsession is my observation. The fact that you're convinced that
something is true isn't evidence that it's true.

how we can
free the social reality from all kinds of opression and stress, how we
can build a better world.

Subscribe to alt.how.can.we.build.a.better.world and discuss it there.

That's the problem with a religious culture, it makes men feel like
gods, but they cannot express their infinite wisdom without using their
fists and guns and a lot of shouting, or writing millions of totally
useless and incomprehensible texts in newsgroups.

You mean *aside* from the fact that religion is a mental illness?

 

[Al Klein]

How did you reach that conclusion. What do the numbers you cite mean?
I'm reasonably certain they DON'T tell how many people pay for a
Shareware app versus the number of people who SHOULD pay for the app.

When the numbers of downloads increase, and the number of positive
comments about the program increases, and the number of registrations
decreases, it would appear (it's not evidence at all) that more people
are using the shareware without paying for it.

What's the distinction between "shareware" and "$$ware"?

$$ware is commercial software. Payware.

ISTM that all most Freeware or Shareware authors are likely to know is
how many people downloaded their program. That number is bound to be
higher (probably much higher) than the number of people who actually use
the app.

It's the constant (and it's been pretty constant) change in the ration
of those numbers - payments to downloads.

Of course when someone who never paid for the program asks for tech
support because, "in the 5 months I've been using the program, I
haven't been able to ...", that's pretty good evidence that he's been
violating the "30 days and pay for it or stop using it" EULA for 4
months. And that's becoming more and more a not uncommon occurrence.

 

[Yrrah]

This is not the first time an arguement breaks out about whether a
piece of software is freeware.

That will happen as long as there are morons who persist in posting
off topic msgs. There are plenty of newsgroups for discussing $ware,
so go there, take your braindead pals along with you and leave us
alone.

Yrrah

 

[Yrrah]

Total Commander should be labeled as Shareware.

Total Commander _is_ labeled as Shareware but its author.

Susan, perhaps you'd better stop casting your pearls before the $ware
swine for now.

Yrrah

 

[Craig]

Craig, you are sort of stealing the use of it. Almost all software
is never sold but you pay for the right to use it. It is licensed to
you.

Hey Franklin;

We agree on that. It is a sort of stealing. But you attributed Roger's
comments to mine. I'm in your camp on this.

regards,
-Craig

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

Read my other posts on usenet and you will see that I work all I
can to abolish capitalism, the creationist culture, the creation
of men, the gender roles, the traditional values, the totalitarian
rule in social life which makes individualism and free thought a
joke that look real only for the rich.

In this world only angry men are free, and their rule for
thousands of years, our history of slavery, violence, social
domination, torture, wars and wifebeating is nothing to be proud
of.

This is my favorite defense of stealing software, ever. I'm off to the
warez groups to join the struggle against wife-beating.

 

[meow2222]

Roger Johansson wrote:

How-some-ever, we're not talking about a scammer ATM. We're talking
about the author of a highly regarded software program who makes the
requirement for payment very clear up front.

Is it though? States requirement to pay, yet chooses to permit unpaid
use, knowing perfectly well ahead of time that most end users will
indeed use it without paying..

IMO most authors could easily add a time limitation to their trial
programs. IOW some authors *prefer* to use the honor system and trust
people to pay.

I cant imagine anyone that has enough ability to write useful software
would so naive that they trust that any significant percentage of end
users will pay. Its too far from reality.

Authors who include a time (or number of uses) limitation
may do so because they feel their trust was abused. . .

More like they're for real about the payment required.

Whatever the wrongs and rights of this type of software and its use,
Roger is quite right to question the many assumptions implicit in many
folks' responses. What might look initially like a simple legal and
moral case is in fact a good deal more complex than has been discussed
here so far.


NT

 

[meow2222]

It's the NON-programmers who download the programs and don't pay for
them. Just read this thread. "It's perfectly okay to download a
program the author requires payment for and use it without payment,
just because the author chooses to not cripple or limit it in any
way". IOW, "It's perfectly okay to steal something if there are no
real consequences". Which is why more and more shareware authors just
don't feel it's worth putting the effort into writing shareware of
commercial quality any more. If you want to release it as freeware,
okay, but if you release it as fully-featured, not time limited
shareware, be prepared to be told that it's freeware.

Lets play This view is in fact enshrined in some countries' legal
systems. It has legal backing in this world just as the American
capitalist model does.

Its also what the majority in the US think. It may be right or wrong,
but if its what the majority think, and this is democracy...


NT

 

[meow2222]

OTOH Total Commander is 100 percent Shareware - no exceptions. See:
http://www.ghisler.com/order.htm

"Total Commander is a Shareware program. This means that you can test it
for a period of 30 days. After testing the program, you must either
order the full version, or delete the program from your harddisk."

Susan

So if you use it, delete it from hdd, then reinstall, is that compliant
with the eula? Of course thats clearly not the intention of the author,
but is it compliant?


NT

 

[Susan Bugher]

Susan Bugher wrote:

Is it though? States requirement to pay, yet chooses to permit unpaid
use, knowing perfectly well ahead of time that most end users will
indeed use it without paying..

The victim was asking for it? Where have I heard that line before. . .

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Susan Bugher]

Susan Bugher wrote:

So if you use it, delete it from hdd, then reinstall, is that compliant
with the eula? Of course thats clearly not the intention of the author,
but is it compliant?

Can you count up to 30?

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)

 

[Al Klein]

Is it though? States requirement to pay, yet chooses to permit unpaid
use, knowing perfectly well ahead of time that most end users will
indeed use it without paying..

Does failure to lock the door excuse burglary?

I cant imagine anyone that has enough ability to write useful software
would so naive that they trust that any significant percentage of end
users will pay. Its too far from reality.

Then you have a limited imagination. Log into some programming fora
and read how the authors really feel.

 

[Al Klein]

Its also what the majority in the US think. It may be right or wrong,
but if its what the majority think, and this is democracy...

Democracy? You mean that system that's supposed to protect the
minority from the excesses of the majority? That democracy? Or some
other system that goes by the same name?