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Ad Muncher 5 will be free

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J-Mac:
After five or six years of promising the vaunted Ad Muncher Version 5 - which would cover almost all of the current deficiencies in Ad Muncher, Murray Hurps has decided to offer Ad Muncher free of charge to all who want it. Also he blogged that V5 will include both Android and iOS mobile versions. His blog post making this announcement is here.

For two days prior to this announcement Hurps blogged about the imminent release of V.5 along with hints about an upcoming "Big Announcement", which is - I imagine - making AM free.

Personally I'm not certain how I feel about this. I can't help but to think that this will mean future development will be very limited, if it exists at all. Hurps claims he will afford this change as follows:

This will be financially difficult for me.  Salaries for three people, along with our usual expenses, will be covered entirely by myself by selling almost everything I have, and taking on some external work.
--- End quote ---

That's scary enough, but his next comment is even scarier:

At some point in the future, I may need to offer complimentary software products to Ad Muncher users (for example, a recommended spyware blocker or antivirus).
--- End quote ---

 :o     :'(

So it remains to be seen how this all will shake out.

Jim

mwb1100:
Yeah - this is a strange announcement.  I hope it turns out OK; I rather like Ad Muncher.

Jibz:
That is quite surprising. I can imagine it must be very hard to compete with the free browser plug-in solutions, which have the added benefit of being able to filter https. But still, surprising to go to the other extreme. I hope he can keep it clean from crapware.

On a side note, when reading the title of this thread I considered for a second if "Free Software Program" meant free or GPL. I am slightly worried to find the meaning of the word "free" has become ambiguous to me.

Ennovy:
Today Murray Hurps announced that version 5 of Ad Muncher will be free:

http://www.murrayhurps.com/blog/ad-muncher-announcement

This is the first public demonstration of Ad Muncher version 5: http://www.murrayhurps.com/blog/ad-muncher-version-5

TaoPhoenix:
But still, surprising to go to the other extreme. I hope he can keep it clean from crapware.
-Jibz (June 26, 2014, 01:28 AM)
--- End quote ---

Well, his next line down is "I will never, ever accept payments from an advertising company to allow their ads through our list, or install any third-party software on your system."

I'll particularly be interested in seeing if the iOS version is pretty good. I don't do much browsing on my phone because there's no ad____ stuff I know of for Safari and I haven't tried too hard to scour for an obscure browser that might have ad blocking in it.

But people are all about the apps these days, and the rash is free versions with ads, to tempt you into the paid versions without them. It would be fascinating if AdMuncher could intercept that "Apple Ad" serving engine or whatever it is called.

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