Pegasus Mail to become DonationWare?

[Perry Mowbray]

It seems that not only is development of my favourite email programme going to continue, but it's also going to become DonationWare as well:

On January 3rd 2007, I announced that development of Pegasus Mail and Mercury would be ceasing because of funding problems. The result was an absolute avalanche of mail, phone calls, faxes and other communications wanting me to continue.

In response to the torrent of messages, though, I have now decided to restart development and distribution of both programs. To make this possible, it will be necessary to restructure the way I fund them in some way that will attract an adequate and sustained level of financial support. I and my test team are still working out the exact details of the changes we will make, but in a nutshell, it is likely that Pegasus Mail will become "donationware", while Mercury will become fully licensed based on numbers of mailboxes, with a certain base number of mailboxes provided free of charge. Public discussion (on the Pegasus Mail and Mercury mailing lists) will be solicited before any final decision is made.

http://www.pmail.com/helpus.htm

from www.pmail.com

[tinjaw]

Hmm, I wonder if mouser should approach David and see if he wishes to work with DonationCoder.com to help promote the idea of donationware? What do you folks think? 

[Perry Mowbray]

Hmm, I wonder if mouser should approach David and see if he wishes to work with DonationCoder.com to help promote the idea of donationware? What do you folks think?

David's mentioned the following to the PMail usergroup:

Pegasus Mail will become completely free, manuals and all. It will be possible to donate to support it, though - and indeed, the program will issue gentle reminders to do so. 30 days after you install it, it will pop up one small dialog pointing out that it survives on donations and offering to take you to a site where you can make a small donation. Naturally, you won't have to donate - it's just an option, in an attempt to make the process as simple and painless as possible for those people who want to support development.

The same dialog will have options to issue another reminder in one month, three months, six months, or a year. Many people have told me that they would like to make small donations regularly - the reminder is intended to assist them in doing so. Some people are probably going to start shrieking "nagware!" about now, but frankly, if you think that one reminder each year constitutes nagging, then nothing is going to satisfy you.

Donations will almost certainly be done via PayPal (which includes both PayPal accounts and credit card payments). You will be able to donate a minimum of US$10, or more if you wish. The payments will be completely secure and private (we will not retain any credit card information here at all). We will probably look at making PayPal's "recurring payment" options available as well.

David's concept of DonationWare is somewhat different to what is espoused here, isn't it?

Certainly, I'd think that some moral support would be beneficial, as David also said:

Frankly, I am personally unsure how well donations will work. Don't take this the wrong way, but I believe that whilst many, many people have the very best intentions, only a few actually carry through on them - it's simply human nature, especially in a world as cluttered and busy as this one. Maybe I'll be proven wrong - I would like to hope so.

Pegasus has been going for 17 years apparently, it's interesting to hear some of David's observations of how the software landscape has changed: eg He's sure that it's almost impossible to to sell an email client now. I guess he doesn't just need moral support though...

- Perry