ConnectedText 3

Posted by JohnK
Mar 19, 2008 at 07:16 PM

I finally succumbed to Manfred’s gentle persuasion and tried CT. I was so impressed I registered it within a few days.

In doing so, I broke my self-imposed rule of never, ever registering shareware based on a single-machine licence. In an age when most of us use two or three machines on a daily basis (I use three), single-machine licences are clumsy and confusing to manage. Every time I add a new computer to my collection, I don’t want to worry about whether I need new licences for my software.

So why did I break my rule? Well, CT is very promising, and I want to use it for an extended period in a serious test. And I figure I’ll only be using it on one machine, so I can live with it for now.

But that doesn’t mean I’m happy with the licence terms. Far from it. So Eduardo, thanks for posting here, and please re-consider your licence terms. A slightly higher price for a single-user licence would, I feel sure, be preferable for most potential customers.

To everyone else who objects to single-machine licences—don’t just accept them. Explain to the developers that adopting single-user licences would be a benefit.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here, but I started a thread on this subject over at DonationCoder (http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=12161.0). In the course of that thread I mentioned that I had suggested to the author of PageFour (http://www.softwareforwriting.com/) that he should consider changing to a single-user licence. He agreed, and changed the licence on the next version. I bought it immediately the licence changed. So it’s always worth raising the subject.