MSGID: 1:229/426 8598D80F   
   REPLY: 1:129/305 7041a9e4   
   On 10 May 22  10:47:28, Jas Hud said the following to Nick Andre:   
      
   JH> if you want to talk about the original conversation, whats wrong with payin   
   JH> for something and having the author drop it.  did you buy a subscription?   
   JH> you expect someone to kiss your ass because you paid a few bucks?   
      
   Many people bought license keys for Irex. I was one of them. There was no    
   question that for a time the software filled a need and worked very well. You    
   would most certainly agree with your 20 years of computer skillz.   
      
   Now I understand if its mentally challenging for you to entertain the idea of   
   "software support" because you love free keys, but Charles was in a fact a   
   very active developer who led people to believe he would support his products   
   that people were paying him decent money for. Sadly that was not the case.   
      
   When he vanished from the scene, he left a 3rd-party gateway in place for a    
   time to accept payments for his software. It looked odd to many Sysops here to   
   continue to accept payments for something that is no longer supported. Most   
   other Fido authors were decent enough to release keys or keygens as freeware.   
      
   The problem was not the lack of support, but the way Charles left with no   
   exit-strategy in place for his popular software. Irex is functionally limited    
   unless you *PAY* for a license key. Its hard to do that now with the payment    
   gateway apparently shut down.   
      
   I know you'll be Captain Obvious now and say "keys are available if you look    
   for them" but that doesn't change the fact that its abandonware which one    
   cannot register in their OWN NAME unless one is a hex-editing Rain Man genius.   
      
   Irex has many bugs that will never be fixed, including a DNS dependancy    
   problem on Linux. Which is why maaaaaaaaaaany people ditched that abandonware    
   and went with the open-source BinkD project or stuff based from it. D'Bridge,    
   Argus, Taurus, MIS in Mystic, Synchronet, MBSE, etc etc...   
      
   Irex has a problem that affects future developers - you know, that "community"   
   you like to bring up - where if you write a BinkD mailer you must take into    
   account the idiosyncratic ways that Irex does handshaking. G00R00 wrote many   
   detailed first-hand accounts of this problem.   
      
   The Irex debacle has been discussed so many times in Fidonet and in the IREX   
   echo which I'm sure TJ carries on his board for you to read up on. If TJ's   
   backlog of mail doesn't go far enough, mine does.   
      
   Nick   
      
   --- Renegade vY2Ka2   
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (1:229/426)