The new upgrade policy

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Timotheus
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 285
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:36 pm

The new upgrade policy

Post by Timotheus »

Today many of us received an email in which the Redlers let us know that their lifetime-free-updates policy has come to an end. From now on, every two years we'll have to pay an upgrade fee in order to get new updates. So we'll go back to the situation existing until 2011.

When in 2011 the lifetime-free-updates policy was introduced, I was among those who considered this decision a clear mistake, and now time has clearly told the company that this was indeed the case. No problem, such is life; we all make mistakes and learn from them. And personally, I'll be happy to pay the upgrade fee as soon as I'll be asked to.

But within the new policy, an exception is made for those who purchased a license between 2011 and 2014, when Mellel was advertised as an application with lifetime free updates. They will continue to receive free updates forever: "a promise IS a promise", the above mentioned email tells us.

But I don't think things are that simple. The central question is, indeed: was it in 2011 (2012, 2013 …) the intention of the company to give lifetime free updates only to new license holders, or to extend this policy implicitly to all license holders? Personally, I have no doubt that the last thing was the case. I paid my last upgrade fee in 2008 (!!), and since then I was never asked to pay anything. And I guess the same holds true for many others who bought their license in the first years of Mellel's existence. And indeed it would have been very strange to continue to ask upgrade fees to the old guard, after having them abolished for new license holders. So the explicit promise to one particular group clearly included an implicit promise to all the others.

In other words: in my opinion, in order to correct a mistake made in 2011, with the best intentions of the world the company now has made another mistake, exempting from future upgrade fees one particular group of license holders. It would have been better to say to all, old and new: "sorry, we have made a mistake, from now on every now and then there will be modest upgrade fees for everyone".

And to conclude: I know no other example of a company with an upgrade policy similar to the one that has now been announced for Mellel.
redlers
Site Admin
Posts: 196
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:19 pm

Re: The new upgrade policy

Post by redlers »

Timotheus wrote:Today many of us received an email in which the Redlers let us know that their lifetime-free-updates policy has come to an end. From now on, every two years we'll have to pay an upgrade fee in order to get new updates. So we'll go back to the situation existing until 2011.

When in 2011 the lifetime-free-updates policy was introduced, I was among those who considered this decision a clear mistake, and now time has clearly told the company that this was indeed the case. No problem, such is life; we all make mistakes and learn from them. And personally, I'll be happy to pay the upgrade fee as soon as I'll be asked to.

But within the new policy, an exception is made for those who purchased a license between 2011 and 2014, when Mellel was advertised as an application with lifetime free updates. They will continue to receive free updates forever: "a promise IS a promise", the above mentioned email tells us.

But I don't think things are that simple. The central question is, indeed: was it in 2011 (2012, 2013 …) the intention of the company to give lifetime free updates only to new license holders, or to extend this policy implicitly to all license holders? Personally, I have no doubt that the last thing was the case. I paid my last upgrade fee in 2008 (!!), and since then I was never asked to pay anything. And I guess the same holds true for many others who bought their license in the first years of Mellel's existence. And indeed it would have been very strange to continue to ask upgrade fees to the old guard, after having them abolished for new license holders. So the explicit promise to one particular group clearly included an implicit promise to all the others.

In other words: in my opinion, in order to correct a mistake made in 2011, with the best intentions of the world the company now has made another mistake, exempting from future upgrade fees one particular group of license holders. It would have been better to say to all, old and new: "sorry, we have made a mistake, from now on every now and then there will be modest upgrade fees for everyone".

And to conclude: I know no other example of a company with an upgrade policy similar to the one that has now been announced for Mellel.
Hi - this is Ori from RedleX.

I would like to make a few comments here. To start, and just to be completely accurate, no one have (or had) to pay an upgrade fee - the only change re-instated here is the rule that free-updates will be available for two years since a purchase/update. The offer was made to people who've purchased Mellel via our store and our store only from feb. 2011 to feb. 2014. This is just to make things clear.

Regarding your other comments - which are thoughtful and insightful - the problem is indeed a problem. If to adopt the distinction between explicit and implicit - we had a choice between being implicitly 'unfair' some, and being explicitly 'unfair' to others. We could, of course, go with the numbers (those who got the promise of lifetime of free upgrades account for about 6 per cent of those who purchased a license), but we couldn't bring ourselves to act in such a deceitful manner. This is also one of the reasons we've added this comment to the newsletter. We could have by-passed the whole conundrum by releasing a "new" product (e.g., Mellel 2016 or something like that) - but that's just as dishonest, I believe.

In the long-run, I believe, what people remember is less that they did not "win" a prize and more how someone got robbed of their prize, intentional, by error or by any other means. I get extremely annoyed myself when someone suddenly changes the rules of the game after giving us their word (which happens all too often in the realm of software). Being honest, I believe, will serve us (and you) better.

My belief is that at the end of the day, we'll all feel better choosing the longer, more complicated way.

Ori from RedleX
Timotheus
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 285
Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:36 pm

Re: The new upgrade policy

Post by Timotheus »

Ori, thanks for the clear and detailed explanation. This point of view deserves full respect (though if the company had decided to extend the upgrade fee to all license holders, in my opinion it would have been wholly inappropriate to speak of deceitful conduct).

But there still are some questions which both the recent newsletter and the blog leave unanswered:

- May we deduce from newsletter and blog that the next version will indeed be 4.0, and that it will not be preceded by intermediate versions (3.6, 3.7 …)?

- What will be the upgrade policy with regard to those who bought their license in the Apple Store? As far as I know, in the Store upgrade fees don't exist; or did this change in recent times?

- What will be the upgrade policy with regard to Mellel Light and Mellel for iPad?

(N.B. in the Store there is an error to be corrected: under the heading “Mellel” there is the description of Mellel Light, and viceversa!)
redlers
Site Admin
Posts: 196
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:19 pm

Re: The new upgrade policy

Post by redlers »

Timotheus wrote:Ori, thanks for the clear and detailed explanation. This point of view deserves full respect (though if the company had decided to extend the upgrade fee to all license holders, in my opinion it would have been wholly inappropriate to speak of deceitful conduct).

But there still are some questions which both the recent newsletter and the blog leave unanswered:

- May we deduce from newsletter and blog that the next version will indeed be 4.0, and that it will not be preceded by intermediate versions (3.6, 3.7 …)?

- What will be the upgrade policy with regard to those who bought their license in the Apple Store? As far as I know, in the Store upgrade fees don't exist; or did this change in recent times?

- What will be the upgrade policy with regard to Mellel Light and Mellel for iPad?

(N.B. in the Store there is an error to be corrected: under the heading “Mellel” there is the description of Mellel Light, and viceversa!)
It's Ori again,

You can certainly deduce that the next version will be 4.0 and probably nothing between here and there except minor bug fix releases. We have most of 4.0 ready, and in view of the major new features, it fully deserves to be a 4.0 version.
Regarding the upgrade policy for Mellel on the App Store, Mellel Lite and Mellel for iPad we do not have the final word yet. It is, of course, a problematic issue, as Apple does not allow for upgrade fees (which was partly responsible for our policy back then). We'll announce what will happen ahead of time, of course.
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