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More On Policing Shareware

Posted by timothy on from the right-to-be-annoying dept.

RHW22 writes "Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro looks at shareware, focusing on the question of whether or not this industry can survive if people never actually cough up $$ for the product. He mentions Ambrosia Software, 'a developer of Macintosh games and utilities in Rochester, N.Y., could stop guessing after it revised its payment system last year. The new system aims to stop people from using pirated registration codes in two ways.' Read his column here." We mentioned this several weeks ago, with a link to Ambrosia's description of their system and what led to its adoption.

1 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. I *TRIED* to buy shareware.. this is the problem.. by takochan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is an interesting debate.

    I think shareware authors should be paid for their work. Shareware is cheap, shareware is great..

    But...

    In fact, I tried on 3 instances to buy/register shareware.. and this is what happened.. I think this is part of the problem...

    1)Trumpet (a TCP IP stack from several years ago).
    Buy the program, registration never shows up in m ail.. wait.. email back and forth..wait some more.. in meantime, trial expires, re-install wait somemore. Client I am billing hours for is getting unhappy.. Calling to Australia to get it sorted out was not fun either.

    2)DFX (an sound effects addin for winamp)
    Liked it, and tried to buy a copy with their VISA card purchase screen... then.. nothing happens.. no registration comes.. nothing..wait days... nothing happens, no reply, no program... nothing.. I write email to them.. nothing happens..no reply..

    Finally I *CALLED* the company, to ask them what is going on. They said that my visa transaction was rejected (but they never bothered to inform me of this, even though they collected my email address (just to send me spam I guess?). When I asked the sales rep at DFX what is wrong, they told me that my destination address and billing address were different, (I am an expat overseas) so.. transaction just gets automatically rejected, bin'ed.. period. No mail, no reply, no followup, nothing.. rejects just goes to /dev/null..

    They didn't email me when the Visa was rejected (or ask where I live.. or anything), nor did they even bother to reply my original emails.
    The answer the DFX rep gave me on the phone to all this was... "well, it is just a $15 program, so we can't spend too much effort (ie any!) to deal with things that might come up".

    3)NJstar
    It is a great program. But they wanted me to send checks to Australia or something in AUS dollars.. gee.. how to I do that.. the bank will charge me $50 in processing fees (after waiting in 3 lines at 20 minutes a pop because no one would know how to draw up a foreign denominated check), for a $25 program..

    Those are my stories..

    ..and people wonder why they don't register their shareware...?!. ..

    ...because it is too complicated
    to pay for it, thats why.. fix that, and then
    I am ready to buy lots of great stuff.. but
    right now it is just too much hassle I discovered,
    so I just stay away from it..