Hi :) Most products have numerous well-known competitors. Normally an offer of a free trial-period is marketed to state that after just a short time of using their product you will see how much better it is than x, y, z because of a, b, c. So they even name some of their competition, drawing attention to the alternatives you could try instead.
When MS offer a free trial it is not made clear that people could choose an alternative. The only option seems to be to either buy their product or not use any word-processor or office programs. There is no crap-shoot because none of the other choices are known. It's not akin to the shareware idea at all! However, I think people (incl me) have been too heated about this. It's not the same as a drug-dealer giving a freebie to get someone hooked. People are not held hostage. There is no immediate threat of swift physical harm. It is something similar to those ideas but even native-English speakers can't find the more precise words. Even if we could it might not mean much to anyone else. Everyone online has probably seen hostage scenarios and/or the drug dealer scenario on tele or at the movies (or online) so it's the easiest way of getting the idea across. Regards from Tom :) On 30 November 2013 00:20, Virgil Arrington <[email protected]> wrote: > James wrote in response to John: > > >>> I didn't know we considered trialware "cunning". > > >> They let people create & edit documents for a while and then hold them >> hostage, until the users coughs up for MS Office. > > > > I wouldn't consider it either cunning or holding people hostage to provide > them with a free trial of software that is otherwise only available for a > price. That, indeed, has been the essence of shareware -- try before you > buy. Anybody obtaining a trial version of MS-Office is clearly told that it > is a trial version; no cunning, no deception. > > If you don't like it, don't buy it. > > The creators of the shareware concept (I recall Bob Wallace of the PC-Write > days) realized that buying software is often a crap-shoot. You don't know > until after you've bought the program whether it will do what you need, or > whether you will appreciate the manner in which it does it. This is > especially important in the case of an office suite as users will tend to > use them on a daily basis, eventually becoming married to their program. MS > allows some users to try their program before making such a commitment. > > For my part, on my last computer purchase, I received a free "starter" > version of MS-Office, with some limitations on features, but without any > limitation on time. I can use the starter version forever. > > I'm no fan of MS, and I'm sure I don't fully understand all of its business > practices, but I truly hope that disdain for Redmond is not the primary > motivation for LO and other forms of FOSS. And, yet, it's a theme that > recurs on nearly every FOSS related forum I read. > > IMHO, it's better to focus on what's good about LO than what's evil about > MS. > > Virgil > > Software > > -- > To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be > deleted > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
