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Comment by mikl | Hacker News Reader

mIRC isn’t some sleazy megacorp trying to cheat customers to fund new gold toilet seats on their private jet fleets. It’s one person trying to make ends meet by selling his life’s work.

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.

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This is the weird blind spot I'm referencing in my post.

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?

It’s not a blind spot. Its an acknowledgement of the fact that small time operations are often run by people without MBAs and without lawyers checking everything. Megacorps should be held to a higher standard, because they have the resources to meet them.

What's the higher standard? "Megacorps are expected to actually honor their agreements"?

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?

MBAs and lawyers would have prevented the sale of perpetual licenses to begin with. Supporting software is a recurring expense, so selling lifetime support for a flat fee is a timebomb that will inevitably end up as perpetual a financial burden, so the more such licenses you sell, the more you set up the company for future failure.

That’s an excusable mistake for a small company. Not for a big corporation.

"Ongoing cost" has nothing to do with it, if that was true the author would have just cut support but still allowed users to use the software and receive updates.

Making updates is also an ongoing cost. For software as old and complex as mIRC probably a significant one.

I'm not asking for the author to write updates if they don't want to.

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).

…and given this choice between continuing to work for free, or abandoning his life’s work, it’s not entirely unreasonable that he decided to go for the option of reneging on the perpetual license mistake, even if that is distasteful.

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.

It's possible to acknowledge that the act is equally unethical and also relatively much smaller in impact. Not all offenses against humanity are equal. I've had friends who still owe me more money for something two decades ago than the author of mIRC does for my "lifetime" license, and they don't give me anxiety either.

> 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.

> mIRC isn’t some sleazy megacorp trying to cheat customers to fund new gold toilet seats on their private jet fleets. It’s one person trying to make ends meet

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 assets with 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.

> Don’t confuse assets with cash.

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

> "current assets" under English law is either cash or something that can be easily converted into cash

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.

> Yeah, like owning stock in another company or some other security that can be sold for cash, but not without loss.

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

Strawman strawman strawman.

A scam is a scam, it doesn’t matter if it’s a mega corp or a single person doing it.

Selling lifetime licenses and then canceling them when you realize you want to make more money is a scam.

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