From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: September 18, 2012 10:05:44 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: No Golden Key, No Future?

Please read the previous posts on here about "donation ware" and  "free ware" and  "open source".  I also explained why I will not be selling license or doing support in the future too - where I will most likely be will not have outside access to phone or ethernet. This has all been hashed out on the list in previous discussions.

And  in your mind the code has no value once I stop selling it. Well it does have value and I have been approached by a few parties on buying the source code. Making it all free ware ends that possibility completely. It also means any other party that wishes to produce a similar product has to compete against free ware. In a big market like windows that's possible - on the Mac it's far less so.

And this crap about "Hating Apple". If I point out issues with Apple and their direction,  I instantly hate them -  in your mind only. Apple has gone it's way and that's works for them or they would not be the multi billion dollar company they are. It does not work for me and the software I wish to create in their increasingly restrictive world. If disagreeing with Apples direction and complaining about is "hating them", then so be it.

Milton Aupperle

On 18-Sep-12, at 8:09 PM, daffyddsant wrote:

There is one thing you could do, and it has many precedents among people who have stopped development of applications--even a few big-time software companies. On the day when you stop selling Astro IIDC and it is no longer possible to download it from your web site, publish a universal license on your web site and make the final version usable on any Mac with any and all cameras currently supported for as long as the Mac OS is capable of running the software. Some may give away copies and the universal license, but you won't lose anything, because you're not selling anything. Ask people to send you $10 on the honor system when they move the software to a new Mac and a certain percentage, including me, would do so. You have nothing to lose by doing this. That would be enough to placate those of us who have supported you over the years--people like me who have bought your software repeatedly (I have four version 4 licenses, if I'm not mistaken) and who are not among the 2/3 of

people whom you say pirate software.

Frankly, given that you have nothing to gain or lose either way, I can think of no reason you would cut off paid, registered users when they upgrade their Macs, except out of spite; a way of punishing a certain subset of Mac users for the hatred of Apple, Inc. that your customers have been hearing about for years.

David Illig

P.S. I'm no Alan Friedman, never will be. But I have been promoting Astro IIDC at <http://www.primordial-light.com/macastronomer.html> for some years with a link to outcastsoft.com and also a link to Alan's Averted Imagination site so that people can see what your software can enable a skilled person to achieve.