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Change to Official License Key Policy

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mouser:
the tricky part about all this is there are different kinds of people:

* some are freeware purists - they wont download anything that has even the smallest thing that deviates from norm.  if the software was designed so that after 100 years of daily use it popped up a single message once that said "please consider a donation", and never came up again - these people would boycot the program loudly.  they'd rather use a program 1000x more inferior that causes them to spend an hour extra a day fighting with bugs in the program than use the other program.
* others are, just as bad, payware purists - these people will not use any software that they don't have to buy, and the more expensive the better.  they would sooner pay $400 for a never-updated, zero support piece of junk than use a freeware program that has the best reputation for support and is 100x more reliable and powerful.
* and most people are donation-phobic.  these are the people we are trying to reach.  people who are open to the idea of donating to support good software, but are reluctant and need a little convincing/motivation.

Carol Haynes:
Personally I would favour the idea of a none expiring license just for website registration, with obvious comments about donation support needed included in the help files and the 'About' screen. On that basis it would make sense to make registration at the website mandatory to use the programs. You aren't actually asking people then to do anything other than consider contirbuting to the community here - if people don't want to they don't need to do anything more and they can opt out of newsletters if they never want to hear any more.

I do suspect, however, that if people find programs useful they will at least return for updates, so why not include an optional update notification system into the programs, then at least people who never come back to the site will have a reason.

Maybe the need for donations could be spelt out a bit more on the actual download pages ... eg. "During the last year there have been x new releases of this software and y new features (see program history for details). To continue this level of support we need some financial help in the form of donations etc.... ). Maybe this should be seen before actually hitting the download button and maybe an antileech type system should be introduced to stop direct links without going via the proper pages ??

Sorry - shooting from the hip slightly.

I do think a survey to see if licensing has actually made any difference to donating would be useful. For me it hasn't because I would donate occasionally even without licenses.

If you make surveys too long and involved people give up (at least I do). Something short and snappy is what's needed, and no more than one page - I really hate those surveys that you never know if it is going to end ...

nudone:
poll, yeah, needs to be done anyway - otherwise it's just guessing all the time.

licenses, i'd get rid of them. just so that it completely shuts up those whinging bastards that can't be bothered to spend a few minutes obtaining one. i'd rather they be silent and satisfied that they are getting 'free'ware rather than listen to any more of their complaints - maybe after a period of time they'll have a change of heart and donate. if not, then let them stay in their selfish little world - they deserve it.

people will keep making donations, surely, won't they? if they won't then i guess it's time for a rethink. i really haven't got any bright ideas other than things that don't sound like donationware.

brotherS:
I won't throw the existing system away just because some people don't like it. When it would be "just freeware" many, many folks would just download and install it, they won't even have a look into the forum and won't sign up to the newsletter, nor would they donate since they are not forced to think about the concept of this site.

longrun:
Am I the only one who thinks things were fine as they were?

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