My Own Biggest Fan

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Lip Balm and Carrion.

Jun 30, 2009

2.0.2 me in the face.

Linotype has made their formerly free software, the wonderful FontExplorer X, unfree. I have no problem with people asking for money for software, I have no problem with the trial version model, and I even have no problem with most companies changing something from free to pay. When FontExplorer X was first released, they essentially said “Look at what we did, we made something great, and we did it for FREEEEEE! Aren’t we the greatest?” and we all replied “Yes you are!” It was marvelous. They even supplied plugins to work with current versions of Adobe Creative Suite so that it could make our font experience as painless as possible.

Now, though, they’ve switched to a pay model, just at the time most places are upgrading to CS4. They’ve cancelled their support for the old version (although you can still get it from the website, which is a good thing) I know I’m not locked in, and I know they don’t owe me anything, but the whole business seems shady and it makes me angry. I don’t often feel a sense of entitlement for things that are free, but when the original “selling” point of the software was that it’s free, it makes it seem like we were using a “trial” version without knowing it.

I wrote a letter to the FontExplorer X people, and submitted it to their Support page.

My problem is that you create a piece of software which you shout about how great it is (rightfully), give it away for free, and then as soon as people are dependent on it, halt support for it. Now that we have to upgrade to CS4, and you are not making plugins for the free version to interact with it, you expect us to pay for it.

Shove it, you “bait and switch” jerks.

Incendiary? Yeah. A little aggressive? Totally. Somewhat warranted? You might not think so, I believe it is.

Category: NerdyNerdface, Stories

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  • http://www.linotype.com Lorenz

    Dear Mason,

    While based on the concept of FontExplorer X the new FontExplorer X Pro and Server are newly developed products including programming and coding the software. They offer a number of new features and plugins including the CS4 plugin you mentioned but also one for Quark X Press 8 for example. In addition we created a new graphic user interface and networking capabilities for working in teams. A lot of users missed those features in the free version of FontExplorer X and we have put a lot of development effort into being able to offer them now. We are happy that we can offer them now but the resources for developing those features and upcoming plugins made it impossible to offer FontExplorer X Pro for free.

    regards
    Lorenz
    Marketing Director, Linotype GmbH

  • http://myownbiggestfan.org Mason

    Yes, of course all those things make sense. It still doesn’t change the fact that you made a product for free, and then as soon as it became popular, you create a pay-only version and stop supporting the free version.

    If you had made a Pro version only, which you charged for, and created a CS4 plugin to work with the old one, (which I can’t imagine being much of an investment) we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Attempts to Compartmentalize.