MIRC ended its lifetime license agreement with all who purchased it 10 years out
pocnetwork.net
pocnetwork.net
Losing support and even updates a decade into a very cheap "lifetime" license is fine. But the same executable that worked yesterday not working anymore is entirely unacceptable.
I agree completely.
But a problem is APIs are evolving. If security vulnerabilities get patched in libraries, and their new version becomes incompatible with the executable, you have to choose between staying safe and the program still working.
I can accept that mIRC made a mistake when they offered free updates to all future versions, and needed to walk that part back. The problem with not accepting this is that mIRC could just be forced to rerelease as mmIRC, which is bad for everybody (users lose updates unless they switch, author loses branding).
However, as you say, it should have just been the right to updates that was walked back, not the perpetual licence for the existing software.
> From approximately 22-Aug-2015 to 07-Mar-2016: The home user license is valid for 10 years of updates.
> From approximately 08-Mar-2016 to 01-Sept-2018: The home user license is valid for "several years" of updates. It is unclear exactly how many years that means.
> And from approximately 02-Sep-2018 to now (March 2020): The home user license is valid for three years of updates.
Support can be an enormous time drain.
This naturally depends on the software type, its quality and the composition of its user base, but I've been on a receiving end of the support firehose for a software with a lot of "simpleton" users and it was a nightmare. This doesn't sound like something that would apply to the mIRC case, but it'd be one rationale for yanking lifetime licenses. You want support - you need to keep chipping in.
Retroactively changing the terms to only give support to people who "renew" their license every X years is a lot less objectionable than retroactively revoking their license to use the software at all and remotely bricking it through DRM.
I read it like the change cut off the access to newer versions and older versions still work as before.
However, if existing versions do still work, I fully support the dev. In a world where billion-$ corporations advertise 50$/m "unlimited" phone plans that aren't actually unlimited, a solo dev revoking a lifetime support and update plan that cost 7$ two decades ago isn't even worth writing about.
I don't see how the statement isn't honest. I'd be more careful about accusations of dishonesty.
As others have mentioned, devs in this situation typically just come out with a v2 that isn't covered by the perpetual license... or stop development altogether.
Here the developer is at least admitting the license was naive and giving a still-generous 10 years and will actually give you lifetime license after all, if you're willing to write an email and wait a little.
> ...I find this to be an extremely fascinating and concerning topic
Because what we really need to worry about in tech is the little guy screwing you over after 20 years?
He doesn't say that you'll get a lifetime licence. In fact, if he now regrets ever issuing lifetime licences, it seems pretty unlikely that he'll issue new ones.
I hate software licensing models. I wish developers would just sell proper support contracts.
Some (dare I say most) users would be entirely fine with staying with old version of most of the tools they use, especially if use of tool is basic.
Which is what makes it one of my favorite programs.
No, it's completely dishonest. He accepted money in exchange for certain terms of service, then changed the terms so that he can keep the money without providing the service. I'm genuinely not clear how it could even be interpreted otherwise. I feel for the guy, but no, it's dishonest.
> As others have mentioned, devs in this situation typically just come out with a v2 that isn't covered by the perpetual license... or stop development altogether.
According to the author of the article, the old license says it's for every version of the software in perpetuity. If he comes out with v2, that would be covered as well.
My takeaway is: don't offer a lifetime license, offer a 10-year license. Or, include a clause in your lifetime license that says "by the way, I can change these terms in the future".
Well this is easy enough... "mIRC pro" comes around and "mIRC" is discontinued. It's kind of strange that the author didn't even bother to do this much.
I can only assume that the user base for a proprietary, Windows-only IRC client in 2022 is vanishingly small, so he may have rightly assumed not enough people would notice or care to cause him any headaches.
That said, this is basically what mobile developers do constantly. When you buy a "lifetime" license the software basically gets abandoned and a new version comes out where you get updates.
If you've been using mIRC since 1995 and the developer has been keeping it up to date, perhaps you should be supporting them.
While I never encountered this (there simply aren’t many apps I use), I regularly encounter this in completely free apps. Like my supermarket’s app. There’s a new version, that’s almost identical, slightly rearranged interface. Only one of them gets updated now. What?
New app [1]: 4.4 stars 13.8K reviews
And they also seem to have enough rights left to actually upgrade the old app’s icon with "old app" in German.
[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rewedigita...
[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.rewe.app.mo...
There are obvious exceptions, but that's just how it is in practice.
I dunno. I think to some extent it is just the result of the change in how code is deployed — in the past, for consumer software, you bought a program for a version of the OS and sort of expected that when you upgraded you’d have to go find replacements or buy new editions of some software. Nowadays with app stores and these sort of rapidly-updated, never quite done operating systems, you kind of expect updates, right?
I don’t think conventions have been universally agreed on for this sort of thing.
Lifetime licenses are just unethical, full-stop.
> If you've been using mIRC since 1995 and the developer has been keeping it up to date, perhaps you should be supporting them.
Why? It was part of the financial transaction at the time to have a lifetime license for the agreed amount of money provided at the time. It doesn't matter if it was $1 or $1,000,000. Changing the terms after the fact is dishonest. Full stop.
But all bios (that I checked) are dead ends (leading to general social media accounts). There is one employee at the company on LinkedIn.
Are these people real? This is now more interesting to me than the article itself. There are 13 years of content, but I can’t tell much more.
In general, I don't care about the people behind the article content. They have their own lives that should be private, and the articles should be able to stand on their own merit.
To be frank, if these purchases are no longer worth supporting, those customers should receive a full refund.
To quote the top few results I got searching online for "law of frustration":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frustration_in_English_law
> it is "not lightly to be invoked to relieve contracting parties of the normal consequences of imprudent bargains"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/frustration_of_purpose
> when a later and unforeseen event impedes the buyer's purpose for entering into the contract
https://www.upcounsel.com/frustration-of-contract-definition (emphasis mine)
> However, frustration of contract is not acceptable in all circumstances nor in all types of contracts. It is acceptable when the law finds it unfair to force a party to comply with the contract terms ___due to events that are outside of or beyond their control___.
Was it naïve of them? Alas, it was. Is their latest decision detrimental to someone's quality of life? I doubt it.
Alao, I don't know the details in this instance, but a lot of unlimited/lifetime products come with a shit ton of fine print which void the lifetime/unlimited clause. For example, a lot of hosting providers used to give you "unlimited" storage, but excluding media files, or apply "fair use" limitations, etc.
mIRC sales are obviously declining. Author wants to continue supporting it, but the business model no longer works. The options now are:
1) Shut it all down. Author takes a job somewhere else. Product lifetime ends. Lifetime agreement honored.
2) Be honest, admit lifetime agreement isn't workable going forward, and come up with new license terms. Doesn't match the letter of the original license, but project gets to continue and author can continue working on it.
3) Create an "mIRC 2.0" out of nowhere that isn't any different than an incremental update, but gets presented as an all-new product. This is functionally equivalent to #2, but also adheres to the letter of the original agreement.
I don't consider "author forced to work on product in perpetuity at a loss" an option, so I didn't list it here. I prefer admitting that the business model needs to change over shutting down the product or doing name-only new product launches to get around lifetime licenses.
What is unethical, in my opinion, is to continue updating mIRC and not honor the agreement you made with some of your earliest supporters, even if you kinda regret that agreement now.
The author could start a new project, not based on mIRC, and sell that separately.
It’s not defraud if he decides to pull the plug and stop development entirely, but then no one will be able to enjoy it. They could also change the name of the product and loophole out of the situation as well. That’s honestly what they probably should have done given the backlash here.
The whole thing is silly and overblown.
Then declare bankruptcy and to their best to fulfill the obligations then restructure and continue. Basically he took out a loan he cannot repay, which is unfortunate but not unusual. What is unusual is telling the people you borrowed the money from “I realized I can’t pay you back and still have as much profit as I want, so I’m considering the debt to be absolved.”
And this is why DRM (as with mIRC apparently) is such an issue. People should be able to just keep using their version, instead of being dependent on some license server responding properly.
Sure, him selling perpetual licenses was a mistake, but he probably doesn’t have a pot of gold somewhere to refund those licenses. He spent the money maintaining the software. An honest mistake, not some sort of malicious scheme.
I’d be happy to forgive him. If I were still using mIRC, I’d happily fork over another $20.
Edit: actually, thinking about how much milage I got out of mIRC back in the day, decided to buy a new license just to support him.
There seems to be this strong belief on HN that because they're a small time software engineer, that things we all agree would be unethical under the exact same circumstances from other actors ("some sleazy megacorp") are completely ok.
I don't understand why his customers should be forced to eat the cost from his mistake. If a local small business sold me something at a price a little low (so they still made profit, just less than they wanted) would it be ok for them to take the thing away later and demand more money for it?
I'd love to hear you articulate what the difference here is that Megacorps would be expected to catch with their "MBAs and lawyers", but the author of mIRC wouldn't?
That’s an excusable mistake for a small company. Not for a big corporation.
I'm asking that if they do (for whatever reason), that they make their updates available to those who already paid for them (and static file hosting is practically free nowadays).
For the people who don’t want to pay for a new license, the outcome is the same as if he just shut mIRC down: no more updates.
So from that perspective, they’re no worse off. And the people who are happy to pay another $20, they will be able to continue to enjoy the software.
> If a local small business sold me something at a price a little low (so they still made profit, just less than they wanted) would it be ok for them to take the thing away later and demand more money for it?
If a local small business sold me anything for US$20, provided continuous support for it for more than two decades, and then asked if I could pay another $20 to continue to get support for it, I'd tell them it was still at my parents' house and probably got sold in a garage sale years ago.
Nothing I've ever purchased has gotten 23 years of updates and support from its creator, much less something that cost $20, even in 2015, 2005, or 1995 values of $20. Is it normal to receive this service? I'm thankful for the two decades of updates and support, not upset that the author didn't believe mIRC would still be relevant to anyone after nearly a quarter of a century.
that one person trying to make ends meet is sitting on 1.3 million pounds in cash
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
Don't confuse fixed assets with current assets.
"current assets" under English law is either cash or something that can be easily converted into cash
> That the company has something with a book value of £1.3M does not mean that they should be obliged to spend their rest of their lives maintaining mIRC for free.
this is a strawman
Yeah, like owning stock in another company or some other security that can be sold for cash, but not without loss.
> this is a strawman
So is bringing up the book value of a company when we’re talking about running costs. Sure, he could run the company at a deficit for quite a while. But I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to demand.
the liquidatable value is literally how you define the term "current asset" (otherwise the accounts wouldn't balance)
(and if you actually go and look at his past balance sheets it's entirely cash and callable loans the company has written)
> So is bringing up the book value of a company when we’re talking about running costs.
while you're googling "current asset" look up "strawman" too, because this is another
> Sure, he could run the company at a deficit for quite a while. But I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to demand.
and another
Selling lifetime licenses and then canceling them when you realize you want to make more money is a scam.
Your second sentence is even worse. The pertinent point is that you'd be interfering with his preferred choice to work on mIRC.
Again, this is very debatable.
> One can argue that the original contract is tantamount to a slave contract, thereby null and void at the outset.
"You're shockingly dishonest"
Are your panties truly in a bunch over this thread, or are you just feigning your "shock"? It matters not; either is laughable.
English law generally accounts for the benefit received. For example, if you buy a physical product that works for only half its expected lifetime, the starting point is that you did receive half of the benefit of the product and so you are owed (the remaining) half of your money back.
Or, put another way, if a product is expected to last a year, and fails one day before that point, you don't get to walk away with most of your money, and the other party nothing. That isn't fair to the other party, who did fulfil >99% of their obligation to you.
What proportion of the expected benefit you received, and other issues such as consequential damages, also get factored into that, of course.
I don't live in England, so maybe it's different there, but in the US you would not be able to claim partial completion of a contract in that case.
You generally need low maintenance and support costs, but if you setup an investment to generate consistent returns for minimal dev/support costs or have a recurring stream of new customers it is possible, or charge for new features and add ons.
Do you really think that Adobe Photoshop CS purchases or video game purchases don't generate enough revenue to cover the costs and the only solution is recurring revenue?
And now they are charging extra for colours people already had (Pantone fiasco).
The idea that mIRC has been around that long and is still being used, let alone still updated, is in many ways shocking.
This is in stark contrast to the other major players in the field that charge a similar amount to upgrade to the next major version.
I think in the case of mIRC the lifetime model may have continued to work had IRC continued to grow, but it didn’t and the users went elsewhere.
Now the mirc developer is claiming he updates the software so much he needs all the people who already paid him to pay him again, meanwhile slack and discord remain free (ish).
So backward.
Discord is funded by VC money and the users they've managed to convince to pay for emoji. How much of column A vs column B is unclear at this point
However, I think KMB made the lifetime agreement in good faith as a (mostly?) solo developer. I don’t see a huge amount of growth in Windows IRC usage, so this would otherwise likely be abandoned or largely unmaintained. If someone is big on him keeping his word and he sends the key, I don’t see a huge problem.
The main concern I would have is in the extremely unlikely situation there was a ‘important’ deployment of mIRC that suddenly stopped working without warning, but that would have been three years ago.
I'm not. You don't get to unilaterally revoke a contract just because it turned out to be unprofitable or unfavorable to you.
But regardless of that, discovering legal trickery to weasel out of a deal is morally bankrupt.
(EG, most licenses lay out... "v1.x updates only")
I have not seen companies saying "Lifetime updates to Bord, forever!"... then calling a same product "Zdft" to get out of updates.
I do wonder though how sympathetic a court would be to the plantiff if mIRC was brought to court? How enforceable is a lifetime contract? No answer needed just my own curiosity.
In 1906, the Canadian National Railway Company signed a contract for upkeep of a bridge, in perpetuity(forever):
https://www.ontariocourts.ca/decisions/2018/2018ONCA0517.pdf
When CN refused to reopen the Bridge for vehicles, Thunder Bay brought an application for a determination of its contractual rights under the 1906 Agreement. Two provisions of this Agreement are central to this appeal: s. 3, in which Grand Trunk Pacific agreed to give Fort William “the perpetual right to cross the said bridge for street railway, vehicle and foot traffic”; and s. 5, in which CN agreed to “maintain the bridge in perpetuity”.
If a mega-corp can't weasel out of a deal to maintain a bridge forever, I don't see how a software company can weasel out either.
CN tried all sorts of arguments, too, which essentially boiled down to "things are different now!", and "how could we have known!", which of course are meaningless arguments.
Especially if they hand out promises that last 80 years and more.
Really? Given that the product has died when the warranty is called in, that suggests that any such warranty is worthless. "This gadget is guaranteed to keep working until it stops working."
There's also no marginal cost in allowing lifetime licensees to download updates.
What if he puts a bunch of printed license keys on the top of a mountain, only to be granted after you answer his riddles three? It's still technically available, but not really.
But seriously, just pay the man.
What do you suggest, or are you even suggesting anything?
Why is HN always so damn against developers facing their hubris, or mistakes, or consequences for their actions?
Now, the consequences here could be as simple as stop supporting things after ten years instead of infinite. This could directly open them up to legal challenges but who is going to take you to court for a few tens of dollars after ten years, for IRC.
None of that makes the developer someone we should root for. They sold an impossible deal, probably out of naivety, but that's how life goes sometimes.
Because it's clear what will happen. Software he supports will die off. And because we can empathize.
Empathy is lost on internet, hidden behind entitlement.
If they were asking nicely, I assume there would be no pitchforks. Instead they reverted the license, and you can find a FAQ on their website that tells you that you can email them, and eventually they’ll un-revert the license.
This is not about dollars, it is about ethics.
Nobody wants to be your customer with the expectation that they are cheated out of value. However, who has been cheated out of value in this case? Noone. The app provided more than $1/year of value for its users. Whoever paid for mirc got their money's worth and more.
I'd love to see a poll about what percentage of people complaining about ethics have ever run a small business. I stopped developing iOS apps, because it's not possible to write the software once and charge once. You have to grind through bullshit API changes every year, and users want something for nothing.
Good. You did the honorable and ethical thing.
Or, you could have changed to a paid support model for new customers only.
But you're arguing for a very different approach --- changing the license after lifetime support was sold. This is not good --- or ethical.
It doesn't even make sense from a business perspective. How many people will pay again after they were lied to? They have no reason to believe the new license will be honored any better than the old one. Credibility has been lost.
The only reason they wouldn't do it is if they want business to actually upgrade equipment that's still working. Which brings us back to the real topic of this entire thread, why offer "lifetime" support if you're really not going to do that?
We all know the answer. It's because you want the money that promise brings.
IANAL so I don't know how legally sound that is.
And for everyone else, don't give me push back for "old timey" - there's people out of college now that were born after 2000. Plenty of people weren't there.
The adage of interaction on the internet: others are younger and less sober than you assume
Why would someone seriously say that? I dunno, genZ is weirdly open about stuff and I really don't understand them. Best to not assume
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
It just also doesn't grant you access to newer versions.
It's not particularly difficult to just retire and cease supporting the old product with the "lifetime license", and release a new one, that's substantially the same, but with a different license. Give it a facelift or something.
Emailed asking how to fix the "error".
A fair way to do this would have been: when activating an old licence have a dialogue that explains the situation and asks if you mind contributing again, or links to a page where you can automatically renew your licence for free but again explains the situation and asks for a contribution - or email all the licence holders explaining the situation and asking if they mind chipping in.
If any of these had happened I'd have gladly proffered another $20.
Unilaterally killing it off isn't any way okay. I'm not going to give another cent to this prick.
1) Augmentra made a mobile phone app called Viewranger which is useful for walking. It presents topological maps, and uses GPX files to plan a route or record a trail. I bought the 1:50000 maps for the whole of the UK for about £200, plus various other maps over the years. All of these were lifetime licences. Augmentra decided that they wanted to be rent-seekers, and brought out some similar software with a periodic licence fee. No problem there. But they also pushed out an "upgrade" to Viewranger which disabled it completely on a certain date. That's theft, to my mind.
2) TiVo in the UK used to sell one PVR. You could pay a subscription for the TV schedule which you needed to make it work effectively, or you could buy a lifetime subscription. A few years later they wanted to bring out a new model, and they shut down the data feed for the old model.
3) Garmin satnavs can be bought with lifetime map updates for particular areas. The problem is that with older models they used a proprietary protocol to get the data in and out - and that stopped working. Look it up on the web site and they claim that the problem is the increasing size of the map data, and that the older models don't have the space. No, there's plenty of space, you're just not honouring the deal. And we're talking about an expensive weather-sealed motorcycle model here, not bargain basement.
Articles 671 and 672 of our Civil Code say basically that if there is a manifest disproportion between duties of each party due to one party's need, recklessness or inexperience, or if over the course of time the burden of one of the parties becomes too onerous, the contract might be resolved or "equitably modified". This move would fall under one of these cases and the guy could offer newer, more equitable terms.
Anyway, even when I was a heavy IRC user I used mIRC sparingly. Today, I would use Konversation or Hexchat for GUI clients, and weechat or epic5 on console.
The day my registered and paid for, ten year old Adobe software stops working, I will personally pay for and print t-shirts and hand them out to anyone in front of the SF building. Its not going to be pretty, Adobe!
Let me pay for that old software then.. without BS cloud marketing traps. I will give some reasonable amount of USD and you do NOTHING and it all works. deal ?
That software was essentially done, I have no idea why they "waste" money on it. They could keep it as is and just sell licenses with no support
Another is a web hosting service that offered "lifetime" webhosting, which seemed legit, but then after couple of years, the company folded or at least what they claim... I suspect they've moved on and started another company in place.
Oh it looks like it's free. https://files.catbox.moe/01i8mm.zip
Never pay for software. They always do this crap to you.
It seems he realized that the lifetime license did not work out for him as intended, and he started looking for a way out. Possibly there are more users on those lifetime licenses than those on newer licenses, or maybe just enough to, in his mind, warrant this step.
He obviously does not want to abandon the project.
He might have no other way of communicating with some/enough/many/all of his lifetime users, so he chooses to use the one thing he has---the (re-)registration process. Or maybe this is the way, in his mind, to get their attention. Maybe because of GDPR.
He seems to reason that after all this time, asking for another contribution is only fair (even though it goes against the original license). He does offer lifetime users the option to email him and get around the need to pay again.
I can understand both sides, actually.
While in principle I disagree strongly with one-sided changes to agreements such as this, at the end of the day we are all only human, and we have to somehow find a way to make life work for us. It has to be sustainable and worthwhile. I see Khaled trying his best, even though I would probably have recommended a different course of action.
This is not Big Corp effing us over. (Which, sadly, happens a lot, and has much more serious consequences.) This is a single developer with, I believe, no ill intentions, possibly making an understandable but questionable move.
The author of the article seems to look more at the principle of the question that this specific case illustrates. I agree with the principle. We need to be able to trust agreements we entered into.
most of us are devs and as a result, pretty well off to varying degrees. pay other devs for software you find useful.
Selling lifetime licenses are terrible for your business; they bring in a load of money upfront, but your revenue stream will start to dry up as your customer pool gets saturated.
It's a small fee for many people, but I'd argue it's an unnecessary one.
Lifetime licenses for anything that is related to a service is a terrible idea, in the same way that not linking cost to usage can also be problematic.
For a standalone application, it can make a lot of sense along with bringing customer loyalty as they are treated well.
FL Studio is another example, and they also demonstrated how you can add new revenue paths, whilst still providing excellent value to your original customers.
I suppose that’s another option for the developer.
For an ongoing concern, it is often the case that microtransactions, or additional paid features, are offered - some more 'strongly' than others - but if the core value proposition that was initially paid for remains intact, that seems reasonable.
The excessive marketing of Minecraft monetisation by Microsoft, is certainly not something to praise, but it has not reduced the ability of original owners to continue playing. I can download the latest Java version (and server) and play completely offline on a LAN, with no problem, all as part of the price I first paid back when it was in alpha ~12 years ago.
Realms need to be paid for, as they are the ongoing 'service' which needs to be funded.
Also, I wonder how they plan to reimburse users for the days they weren't able to use the software they paid for. Note how they pointed out that replying to the emails begging for a renewal will "take time" during which the software is unusable.
That seems like exactly the right behavior for a solo developer to do in this situation. Everyone here is opining how he should be ended mIrc and making nirc as a licensed hard fork that people have to pay for instead. That’s really not in spirit of the original license, but folks somehow find it more tasteful than honoring the original license but caveating it for users as being a financial difficulty for the developer. I feel like I’ve stepped into moral bizarro land. The fork and rebrand to get out of the license agreement is sociopathic to my mind.
The right thing to be would be the dialogue saying “mIRC as a business isn’t doing so well and your licence was bought 15 years ago. Do you mind chipping in again? If not click next to continue sorry for bothering you.”
Instead it says “This registration has expired. Please see the mIRC website for more information on renewing your registration.” which projects a very different message.
>... realize what a tightwad you’re being...
C'mon now. If you call something "lifetime", you can't be shockedpikachu.jpg when you change it to something else years later and people are surprised.
A tightwad isn’t necessarily a bad person, they’re just unwilling to yield a thin penny in the face of someone’s need unless they’re contractually obliged to.
Yes, it did. The original agreement[0] was for "a one time, life-time registration which will work with current and future versions of mIRC". The new agreement[1] "entitles you to three years of free updates to new versions of mIRC. If you are a business user, you will need to renew your licenses yearly at a discount".
>A tightwad isn’t necessarily a bad person...
Delivery matters, though. And for what it's worth, I'm not getting the sense that a lot of the people in this thread who are frustrated by this are simply never going to pay. You can simultaneously be annoyed by this change and also understanding of why.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20091230075527/http://www.mirc.c...
>That’s only if you relicense.
I mean, sure, but I don't know how else I was supposed to take, "Literally nothing changed with regards to the license". "Literally nothing" is pretty specific.
Like any other software company that have done similar things with free / lifetime software, he could have just dropped support for the original branded mIRC client, respun it into another program with most of the code base, add a few entirely useless features (maybe you can slap other people in channels with things other than large trouts!) and sell it under his new license model. He's still branding and selling it as mIRC. That's problematic.
He could have, you’re right. But he’s honoring the lifetime license instead. And all you have to do is read his appeal and email him to get the renewal key. And if you decide that’s what you want he will give you your key and you continue to enjoy your lifetime license.
How is this worse than ending mIrc v1 development and requiring a relicense for the next version? I’d argue “life time license is honored” is more honorable than “relicense the same product so I don’t have to honor the original deal.”
Am I missing something?
So how do you avoid this? Well use a different type of speed bump. Make an automated site to issue new keys to these people (because they are entitled to it) and then use that website to explain the situation. Inform the user how many years of use they have had out of their initial purchase, then offer them a “pay what you like” purchase / donation to the next key.
You could even set it up that if the user choices “free” for their next key, that new key will stop working in 6-12 months time and they will have to repeat the process.
This will prevent people on hard times having to beg and wait for a new license on something they already have paid for, and will still allow those with means and value the use of the software to continue to support the software if they so wish. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave more.
For me personally I stopped using mIRC years ago when I moved to a Linux based desktop for a few years, at which time I swapped to Hex Chat and just never swapped back when I returned to a Windows Desktop.
For me I just use ircII.
My first thought on that was that it was to add a delay to getting a new code and feed into the instant gratification to just paying up (if able and value paying again) and getting a new code there and then. Making a user email is "effort", low effort but still effort, which could disway some people asking for new codes.
I also repect that they opt'ed to honor the license then opting to release "mIRC2" on new terms, I like you just felt that there are better ways to handle the process then the "email me and wait" option, which could lead them to recieve nasty emails during the process where an automated system could remove that (because while a user might be pissed off, its quickly resolved).
In a world of googles facebooks and amazons calling this guy dishonest is…dishonest in itself. As others have said he could have simply created a new mirc or just abandon it. Instead he was _honest_ about it. Instead of making all sorts of dodgy deals that sell our data he states his intentions and his reasons. I applaud this move even if i am affected by it.
I don't see how you can ever call that "honest" unless we have fundamentally different ideas about what honesty is.
It can be honest to say: I made a term I can't support - I am going out of business as a result.
It can be honest to say: I made a term that is no longer worth my time - I am going to stop working on this as a result.
It's sure as fuck not honest to say: I want the marketing from the current name and user base, but I made a bad deal so I'm going to break my terms because I want more money.
It feels like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Frankly - I'd much rather he own by just going out of business or by end-of-lifing the product and launching a new one.
If the developer chooses to end a lifetime license after 25 years.. he has already basically fulfilled his end of the bargain IMO. Especially since he isn't even terminating the license, just asking people to personally renew.
If you choose to remove what I paid for or at least put a passive aggressive requirement for me to email you after posting your sob story in order to continue to get what I paid for, that isn’t a a square deal.
Look it isn’t that much money, and I’m sure the developer could use more, but the right thing to do is to grandfather those people in, instead of now guilt tripping them into paying more. You can post the appeal and explain the same way without suspending current lifetime licenses. It’ll do a lot more for goodwill than going the other way for it.
You're right about the expectations placed on trade. I just expect a different set of requirements from large corporations and small devs.