From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: September 19, 2012 10:20:52 AM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: No Golden Key, No Future?
David;
On 19-Sep-12, at 9:09 AM, daffyddsant wrote:
David:
Will I be able to move my Astro IIDC from an old Mac to a new one
without a golden key?
Milton Aupperle:
No you won't.
The rest of this--your decision to go out of business &c.--is your affair.
But this policy of canceling the eight licenses I have bought from you over the years when I buy a new Mac is unfathomable and virtually without precedent in the software industry. You're surprised it hasn't caused your customers to stand and cheer? Even the money-grubbers at Adobe will let me move--not copy, but move--the license for their software to two new Macs. And two years later to two new Macs again--because Adobe provides a deactivate utility for the old Macs. I ran CS3 on three generations of Macs without violating my license agreement before I upgraded to CS5. When my wife needed Adobe CS, I bought a license for CS6, entitling me to install Adobe CS on four Macs (2 x CS5, 2 x CS6).
Software Bisque charges me $30 per year for a Multi-OS and Six License Add On. I'm not certain about this, because I have never tried to abuse their license, but I believe that they have no protection; one *could* run TheSkyX Pro on multiple OS's on multiple machines without paying that $30, I think. Bisque's annual fee is justified because they provide a valuable service for that money and I think that it works for Bisque because there are a sufficient number of people who wouldn't steal software regardless of how easy it might be to do so. If the service weren't worth $30 per year to me I would revert to my two basic licenses (1 Mac and 1 Windows) and deinstall the software from other machines
I just checked my records.
Since 2005, you have purchased four licenses for Astro IIDC 4, two license licenses for Astro IIDC 3 and one license for Astro IIDC 2. However you upgraded those earlier licenses along the way, used our "reduced price second copy" too and used our cheap upgrade costs ($40 for 14 updates including complete re-writes) too. You have only purchased two full price copies, the first one in 2005 for $50 and the last one this year when you replaced your hardware.
Your total cost for those licenses is $340 USD for 7 years of use, 3 major upgrades and 13 major free updates since 2008. That breaks down to $48.50 per year that Astro IIDC has been running on basically two devices or $24.25 per device.
So your cost to purchase Astro IIDC over these past 7 years has bee the lower than what Software Bisque is charging you per year as a fee, and excludes the purchase cost for The SkyX Pro (which is $349 per copy).
Lastly comparing me a Mac only single man company to Adobe or Software Bisque whose lion share of sales comes from Windows is absolutely asinine. Why not compare me to Apple then, or IBM. Software Bisque would not be offering the Mac version if the Windows version did not subsidize it.
I'll give a chance to have your rant response to my post on this subject, but after that if you raise the topic again I will bring down the ban hammer and remove you from the list as being disruptive. If it happens, you will be the second person that I have had to remove in 8 years - I really do not want to do that - but it's your choice.
Milton Aupperle
List Ogre..