2021-01-18, 18:43
Like everyone here, I love TMM, and am grateful for the people that worked on it and the community that is here to help new people figure out how to use all its features.
Initially, even when it was for free, I had decided this was worth donating or contributing some money to, once I had fully been able to use tmm to organize my collection.
Then V4 came out and with it the new payment requirement. I understand that you need to charge people for it, but I was a bit disappointed by the 0-100 jump from completely free, to in my perspective quite aggressive pricing.
Let me explain. Sure it is only $10 or so Euro/USD a year, for Canadians that's $15. And that is for a 1 year license, thereafter it gets locked to 50 titles which renders it useless for pretty much everyone has an actual collection. So once I pay, I will need to pay every year, even if I don't want to upgrade to newer version that you have been putting work into. It would have been great if you just charged a one-time fee for each upgrade, then people can decide, do I want those new features, well then I should pay for the work done, and If I can't afford it or I consider it a luxury, well then I stick with my current version. Eventually, we would upgrade again and be happy to pay for it at that time. I think some system should have brought in enough revenue to keep the project going, if previously you were able to do it for free/donations.
The incentive, as much as I want to contribute to the project, for me is to stay with Version 3, which will never expire, and not lock my collection to 50 entries after 1 year. And if you only charged for updates, and don't lock older versions after a year, the incentive would have been on the team, to introduce some great features and improvements that people would consider worth paying to get. Or when we upgrade our operating system, and the old one is not compatible, so we need a new version to work on it. (but even then with it java based is this an issue) So I think it would have been better for the project as a whole in the long run.
Just my 2 cents, don't expect anything to change from this post but would love to gain some insight into the decision to structure it this way, when others have done it more open and friendly. I'm only 35, so $15x 35 years = $525, so I am looking at lifetime costs.
Initially, even when it was for free, I had decided this was worth donating or contributing some money to, once I had fully been able to use tmm to organize my collection.
Then V4 came out and with it the new payment requirement. I understand that you need to charge people for it, but I was a bit disappointed by the 0-100 jump from completely free, to in my perspective quite aggressive pricing.
Let me explain. Sure it is only $10 or so Euro/USD a year, for Canadians that's $15. And that is for a 1 year license, thereafter it gets locked to 50 titles which renders it useless for pretty much everyone has an actual collection. So once I pay, I will need to pay every year, even if I don't want to upgrade to newer version that you have been putting work into. It would have been great if you just charged a one-time fee for each upgrade, then people can decide, do I want those new features, well then I should pay for the work done, and If I can't afford it or I consider it a luxury, well then I stick with my current version. Eventually, we would upgrade again and be happy to pay for it at that time. I think some system should have brought in enough revenue to keep the project going, if previously you were able to do it for free/donations.
The incentive, as much as I want to contribute to the project, for me is to stay with Version 3, which will never expire, and not lock my collection to 50 entries after 1 year. And if you only charged for updates, and don't lock older versions after a year, the incentive would have been on the team, to introduce some great features and improvements that people would consider worth paying to get. Or when we upgrade our operating system, and the old one is not compatible, so we need a new version to work on it. (but even then with it java based is this an issue) So I think it would have been better for the project as a whole in the long run.
Just my 2 cents, don't expect anything to change from this post but would love to gain some insight into the decision to structure it this way, when others have done it more open and friendly. I'm only 35, so $15x 35 years = $525, so I am looking at lifetime costs.