Evernote for free as Giveawayoftheday

Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Nov 15, 2007 at 07:12 PM

I’m not sure I understand your question. GAOTD is functioning as an agent of the third party developer. Are you thinking they offer third-party software without the third party’s approval? The non-commercial use term is for the third party’s benefit, so that some incentive remains for the user to upgrade. Same with inability to upgrade. The consumer’s dilemma is what’s the point of having software you can’t upgrade. If you like the software, you probably want the latest version.

For Evernote, it’s a particularly tough decision. Do you want to use a paid version that can’t be upgraded, in place of the free version that can, where the free version has all the features you find relevant? The paid version basically adds ink and nothing significant more (except permission to use commercially). You’d think the decision is an easy “no,” yet of course, I couldn’t resist. Perhaps fortunately, the program failed to install, as some other downloaders have complained.

The GAOTD programs I have found lasting use for are utilities—e.g. “Actual Window Menu” and “In Control Startup Manager”—where I am less concerned about having the latest and greatest.

Thomas wrote:
>on GAOTD web they say Strictly personal usage
>in readme they say Strictly
>non-commercial usage
> >it’s highly controversial, since some software titles they
>featured, I can’t even imagine to be used non-commercially given the nature of the
>software
> >I’m not a lawyer so can’t comment much about legal validity and
>consequences of such kind of terms/appendix from a Ukrainian company registered on
>British Virgin Islands offering third party software for download.
> >However as a
>user, my opinion is that their main intention is to rule out possible legal problems
>from commercial sector (eg. if some company will download and deploy software from
>GAOTD to hundreds of their computers, and then demand compensation if some problems
>occur, cases like that), not to rule out people to “store their five invoices in the
>Evernote database” (for the lack of better example).