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Twice is a Charm
I first discovered your site doing a google search on various screencasting tools and stumpled upon your review about a week after it had been released.. Later I was searching for free alternatives to Approcket (and the likes of Quicksilver on Mac) and again I ended up on your site finding Find and Run Robot.. I have also followed some of the activity in the forums and it really seems like a nice community that has developed around the site and the forums in particular. I'm also impressed with all the time you seem to be spending both keeping the site up-to-date and writing in the forums. The reason for my donation is a combination of the programs, the reviews, the nice community and the whole idea of donationcoder. But especially the usefulness of Find and Run Robot.
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Don't be a free user?

Screenshot - 12_14_2011 , 11_36_37 PM_thumb.png
This thought provoking essay addresses some important concepts that may be of interest to DonationCoder readers.

I think the key message here is sustainability -- charting a path that is sustainable.  And that's something we have always been very big on here.  We try to avoid embarking on projects that we can't sustain, and don't bite off more than we can chew.

These projects are all very different, but the dynamic is the same. Someone builds a cool, free product, it gets popular, and that popularity attracts a buyer. The new owner shuts the product down and the founders issue a glowing press release about how excited they are about synergies going forward. They are never heard from again.

Whether or not this is done in good faith, in practice this kind of 'exit event' is a pump-and-dump scheme. The very popularity that attracts a buyer also makes the project financially unsustainable. The owners cash out, the acquirer gets some good engineers, and the users get screwed.

To avoid this problem, avoid mom-and-pop projects that don't take your money! You might call this the anti-free-software movement.

If every additional user is putting money in the developers' pockets, then you're less likely to see the site disappear overnight. If every new user is costing the developers money, and the site is really taking off, then get ready to read about those synergies.

To illustrate, I have prepared this handy chart:


http://blog.pinboard...on_t_be_a_free_user/



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