4 ms·

> You accept, sit on the table and the food arrives but to let you eat the food they ask you for your contact details address and a copy of you key for your ho

> You accept, sit on the table and the food arrives but to let you eat the food they ask you for your contact details address and a copy of you key for your home. You say, no thanks, would rather pay and they say no, it's only free meal in this restaurant. The correct analogy would be if you ate the meal for free but didn't want to provide your contact information so they can upsell their catering services to your business in the future. All they want is a contact information to sell you stuff in the future for not paying today. You can use a anonymous email address and hide your identity. But, since this is a Terminal emulator, there is always a risk of privacy. This is all pretty obvious. The argument really is "I want to have this thing for free, but I don't want to give anything back including contact details to further contact me". Well, then how do you suggest a good business plan for building a commercial product if not having some ability to contact your users?

mrtksn 5y ago
I hadn't any meals. The autocomplete app doesn't work without my e-mail. The contact details requirements are mentioned for the first time after install and just before start using the software, this creates a pressure to give my details. Probably that's the idea anyway(a dark pattern). This makes me trust them even less.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Ehh, I guess if this is a launch, give them a benefit of the doubt, hope they read your feedback.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    See, we are no longer in the age of nerds making great software and giving it away for free. We are in the age of high profit software, be it through sales of product(x$ to use y), sales of extra features (x is free but this specific feature is y$), sales of services(x is free and your life can get easier if you use it with y for only z$/month), land grab(x is free for you because it's paid by y, who hopes to make money later somehow), data grab(x is free for you because we use the data collected here to build y), sales of access to people(x is free but we let other people reach you) or straight up criminals(you pay us x$ or y happens to you). We can no longer talk about thankless customers of free products. There's even no longer free text on the internet, people write stuff only to show ads or influence your decisions(political or consumerist). The customer must understand how they are paying for it. To give someone the benefit of doubt, they need an explanation for it. Clearly, contact details are irrelevant for the apps' primary function. They can ask for a license after a trail, I guess(free license obtained by signing up). They can let you use the app and offer you extra functionality(like syncing history between devices) through an online account. It is not O.K. to make people install your app and only then require this one thing, irrelevant to apps functionality, to let you use the app. That's a known dark pattern.

mrtksn 5y ago

I hadn't any meals. The autocomplete app doesn't work without my e-mail. The contact details requirements are mentioned for the first time after install and just before start using the software, this creates a pressure to give my details. Probably that's the idea anyway(a dark pattern). This makes me trust them even less.

systemvoltage 5y ago
Ehh, I guess if this is a launch, give them a benefit of the doubt, hope they read your feedback.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  See, we are no longer in the age of nerds making great software and giving it away for free. We are in the age of high profit software, be it through sales of product(x$ to use y), sales of extra features (x is free but this specific feature is y$), sales of services(x is free and your life can get easier if you use it with y for only z$/month), land grab(x is free for you because it's paid by y, who hopes to make money later somehow), data grab(x is free for you because we use the data collected here to build y), sales of access to people(x is free but we let other people reach you) or straight up criminals(you pay us x$ or y happens to you). We can no longer talk about thankless customers of free products. There's even no longer free text on the internet, people write stuff only to show ads or influence your decisions(political or consumerist). The customer must understand how they are paying for it. To give someone the benefit of doubt, they need an explanation for it. Clearly, contact details are irrelevant for the apps' primary function. They can ask for a license after a trail, I guess(free license obtained by signing up). They can let you use the app and offer you extra functionality(like syncing history between devices) through an online account. It is not O.K. to make people install your app and only then require this one thing, irrelevant to apps functionality, to let you use the app. That's a known dark pattern.