Free and Beta

[Marco]

Question for Don, but might be useful for the people who will use the free version too.
Do you plan to release beta builds for the free version too of XY?

[admin]

No, why should I? It's all the same app. Just free has some features turned off. One beta for all is totally fine.

[Marco]

So the stable release comes in two flavours, free and paid, while beta is basically always paid?
I agree that it's all the same app, but their behaviour upon startup is (very) different. Free edition never pops up anything when started. What if an hypothetical XY Free user was interested in following the quick development through betas but didn't want to be nagged upon startup by the trial period countdown?

Or maybe I misunderstood all this and XY 13.60 is just one single free version, and there won't be a free 13.70, 13.80 and so on?

[Enternal]

Well, we can also say that XYplorer paid users have access to beta versions?

Also Don, since there's a free version, would you mind if people make a portableapps.com packaging of it? XYplorerFree is still portable but I'm sure there are many who would love to have it in portableapps format for their thumbdrives.

[j_c_hallgren]

What if an hypothetical XY Free user was interested in following the quick development through betas but didn't want to be nagged upon startup by the trial period countdown?

I suspect that would be their only choice (to get nags via beta) as it would seem that Don would only want to take the extra time to generate a free vers to match Official vers because doing so for every beta would be alot of overhaed even via automated processes...

Or maybe I misunderstood all this and XY 13.60 is just one single free version, and there won't be a free 13.70, 13.80 and so on?

I thought that it would be more than just a given point in time but as above, only on major vers drops.

But that brings up an interesting idea which I've seen done in other software..the free vers (in addition to being feature limited somewhat) is the vers prior to paid current so that free would be 13.50 and paid at 13.60...and if someone wanted a vers more up-to-date, they would have to use the trial vers..and since XY has major vers about every 30 days, the free users wouldn't be that handicapped if they needed a recent bug-fix.

[admin]

Summary reply:
The free versions will be released along with the ??.??.0000 versions. That's enough of extra work for me.
There will be BETAs only for the full version. That's enough of extra work for me.
I would not mind a portableapps format at all, but I don't know what I have to do for it (nor have I the time to do it). More info, please.

But that brings up an interesting idea which I've seen done in other software..the free vers (in addition to being feature limited somewhat) is the vers prior to paid current so that free would be 13.50 and paid at 13.60...and if someone wanted a vers more up-to-date, they would have to use the trial vers..and since XY has major vers about every 30 days, the free users wouldn't be that handicapped if they needed a recent bug-fix.

I see, but that would be harder for me than simply doing it parallely.

[j_c_hallgren]

I see, but that would be harder for me than simply doing it parallely.

It would seem that all it would require would be an intermediate hidden name/place to store the free variant of current vers, and then that would roll over to free distribution name when next vers replaces it...such that when (for ex) you generate full & free for 13.80, the free would go to a "hold" name/file but only after the prior 13.70 that was in "hold" moving to overwrite the free distribution name containing 13.60...does that make sense? A very simple push-down of 3 items...

I see it as a simple but effective way to futher incentivize users to buy but if they want to stay free, they'd be at most about 1 mth behind which for many software would be up-todate due to how infreqently updates occcur.

[admin]

There will be hotfixes. What then? Free users have to wait 30 days for their hotfix? No. Let's keep it straight and simple.

[Enternal]

Oh you don't need to do anything about the PortableApps format. People will just make a version using a wrapper for it to work with that platform. I'm just asking if it's alright for them to do that and redistribute it in a different way. I'm sure that when someone decided to do that, they will ask you permission first and then they will proceed.

http://portableapps.com/

[admin]

Yeah, it's sure fine with me. I see they already had the previous free version.

[serendipity]

Oh you don't need to do anything about the PortableApps format. People will just make a version using a wrapper for it to work with that platform. I'm just asking if it's alright for them to do that and redistribute it in a different way. I'm sure that when someone decided to do that, they will ask you permission first and then they will proceed.

http://portableapps.com/

Didn't someone already try that?
http://portableapps.com/node/21578

I haven't tested this though.

[admin]

That's the old version though.

[serendipity]

That's the old version though.

Yes, I meant someone already tried working on it before, maybe that thread needs a bump.

[admin]

I won't stop you.

[serendipity]

I won't stop you.

Done