[Pdubbbs]

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.

[mlaggner]

thanks for your thoughts.

We're actually redesigning the license terms to a bit less aggressive style.. The initial thought was: show people what we have (all features) for just a limited set of media... And we see that many users are not happy with that decision. The alternative way is to provide a subset of features for an unlimited amount of entities (the other way around) -> so users cannot _test_ all features, but can use tmm for free if their requirements are met with the subset of features.

Having that said you see that approach a) is better for users testing tmm prior to buying whereas approach b) is better for users which just want to use tmm without any charge. And you may also see that if we switch from a) to b) where are also users which found a) the better way But as I have said in the beginning we're actually redesigning the license module.

But there won't be any lifetime license, because
a) we know from other tools that lifetime licenses are a _security_ risk (piracy!) which only can be avoided by
b) online license checks

we do not like either a) nor b), that's why we don't offer a lifetime license

and just my 2 cents: users which do use tmm spend in 35 years multiple times of $525 for energy/access/hardware which is used to get and store those movies. And a tool which is able to spend numerous hours of manual work (life time which cannot be refunded) should be worth those 10 bucks (which are equal to 3! beers or 2 packages of cigarettes here)

so stay tuned for the next announcement

[Pdubbbs]

thanks for your thoughts.

We're actually redesigning the license terms to a bit less aggressive style.. The initial thought was: show people what we have (all features) for just a limited set of media... And we see that many users are not happy with that decision. The alternative way is to provide a subset of features for an unlimited amount of entities (the other way around) -> so users cannot _test_ all features, but can use tmm for free if their requirements are met with the subset of features.

Having that said you see that approach a) is better for users testing tmm prior to buying whereas approach b) is better for users which just want to use tmm without any charge. And you may also see that if we switch from a) to b) where are also users which found a) the better way But as I have said in the beginning we're actually redesigning the license module.

But there won't be any lifetime license, because
a) we know from other tools that lifetime licenses are a _security_ risk (piracy!) which only can be avoided by
b) online license checks

we do not like either a) nor b), that's why we don't offer a lifetime license

and just my 2 cents: users which do use tmm spend in 35 years multiple times of $525 for energy/access/hardware which is used to get and store those movies. And a tool which is able to spend numerous hours of manual work (life time which cannot be refunded) should be worth those 10 bucks (which are equal to 3! beers or 2 packages of cigarettes here)

so stay tuned for the next announcement

Thanks for responding. Good to know you are trying to improve it. At the end of the day it's your software so you do what you want.

I think it is funny that you go from it being free software, to being worried about piracy, surely if you make a paid-for version with full access, and no gimmicks, enough people would pay for it to support the project. Even V4, I did a quick google search and it is available for torrent. I think people are always going to find a way to get something for free.


All I'm saying is I would love to give what I can, and if I am forced to pay annually, that is a big commitment that I would not make, and to be honest, I would just stick with Version 3 then, it does everything I need it to do, and it will not limit me to 50 entries, or like you said option B) limit what I can do, and that sounds hella fishy, as limited capabilities would not make tmm what it is. Had Version 4 been 10 bucks and not auto locked, I would have gladly paid for it by now, even though I pirate as much as the next guy