BRENTB  With all due respect to everyone, let's all take a step back, and take a deep breath. While I can understand people's unhappiness, I think that this discussion has gone from civil to uncivil in far too short of a time. Because of that, instead of having a dialogue, the developer didn't have a chance to start out with anything but defensiveness--which I can understand.

I really appreciate developers who offer software for free. I'm also a capitalist, who understands the desire to make a fair profit from a desired commodity.

Learning how young the developer is has given me even more respect for his aptitude for writing software. I'm more than twice his age, and I wish I could write my own applications like this. It's also the reason that I think we should extend and some grace over the way things transpired.

Which leads me to offer my /suggestion/ as to how this could have turned out. IMHO, software listed as "free" at the time of download should remain free indefinitely. But now that the developer realizes he has a good product on his hands, what's the best way to transition? I think the developer could have first notified the user base of his intentions, and offered discounts for people already using the software. The discount could be something like, "the list price on the next version will be $30, but if you purchase a license now, you'll only have to pay $10. $15 will get you a license for the next two versions. After that, everyone will pay the list price." I think that giving your user base advance notice, along with a discount opportunity, can go a long way.

As users, we want to encourage developers to continue writing great software for the Mac. In this case, and even though I'm in agreement with the other users who spoke up, I think that this went from us dialoguing with the developer to us versus the developer too quickly.

Just one man's $.02.  (Version 2.6)

BILLIFER  I had previously installed 2.4, but now that I know the developer had put into place backdoors allowing him to turn off software already installed on my computer, I cannot trust ANYTHING about this piece of software which purports to be for security purposes. I'm zapping it as quickly as I can!  (Version 2.6)

WFM  Great bit of software !!

With this I can use the Leopard built in screen sharing to get remote desktop access easily, plus tunnel apple file sharing etc.

Much simpler than setting up SSH tunnels etc.

Will  (Version 2.5)

MU FREQUENTER  What the heck developer? Version 2.45 doesn't work because it tells me a new version is avalable, then presents a pop-up within the application for serial number or a Buy button.

This stinks. You had to have known you'd charge for this, and I bet your recent updates put in place the lock-out mechanism for the free version.

Everyone on MacUpdate should know what a sleazy move this is.  (Version 2.5)