Ok, the thread has gotten pretty nasty... lets try and take it back to the original complaint (and subsequent follow-up comments) made by Dan.
I can get all of these programs from p2p for no charge. I see updates on p2p that only lag SDC releases by about 24 hours. Free is about the right price for what I'm getting.
You're paying for the legal right to use the programs. Pretty simple.
You are correct. Taking my money every year and ignoring my bug reports (made by email to support@stardock.com) is theft. We agree on something.
While we do try to fix bugs as we can in newer versions of our products, there is no guarantee that your bugs will get fixed in the subsequent version. There are any number of reasons this may happen, but you are paying for the software. You got the software. There was no theft of any kind involved.
The bandwidth for the skin site is supposed to paid for with my Wincustomize subscription. This is a another area where they don't earn their money. When right-click and objectdock libraries were added to the website, it took more than two weeks to make them available to the PAYING wincutomize subscriptors. Besides your forced to use sdc for access and that is one sick puppy.
Your subscription pays a part of the bandwidth and server costs. You also receive several free premium suites (most recent of which was WC Select in December), the WinCustomize Browser, and ad-free surfing.
When a library is added to the site, it's available to everyone. There is no toggle anywhere on a library saying "Paid-only" and "Free-only" If a library is available to anyone, it's available to everyone.
And you're not forced to use the WC Browser. Many people choose to use it and prefer it as an alternative to the website, especially considering stability and speed issues we experienced on the previous site. However, it's never been required. There is nothing on the site that's magically locked away that only the browser can get to. It's an alternative (and sometimes faster) method to accessing the galleries and forums.
In evaluating my resubscribing to OD I decided to use a mild threat to attempt to garner some co-operation from stardock support.
I've never known anyone to respond favorably to threads, even mild ones. How would you react to someone issuing you a minor threat if you didn't do something for them? I bet you wouldn't jump at helping them and might even take an adversarial attitude.
... on this issue of "Stardock fanboys"
You came in firing with both barrels, in a pretty abrasive manner, you have to expect some response from the "happy" customers. Especially with how you led off with the P2P comment. The implication with that was "Why buy if I can pirate?" and around these parts, we take piracy of our products pretty seriously. You certainly didn't help yourself any in winning people over to your point of view.
