The Speed Download - Macheist saga

A while back we posted on the release of Speed Download 5, and that set off a firestorm in the comments. You see, Speed Download 4 was included in the recent Macheist bundle, but the developer Yazsoft was not offering free upgrades for the Macheist purchasers. This despite the fact that anyone who purchased SD 4 directly from Yazsoft between Jan 01, 2008 and Feb 12, 2008 (during which time Macheist ran) was eligible for the free upgrade. Further, Macheist purchasers were led to believe that they were getting full versions of the software included in the bundle. Yazsoft offered Macheist purchasers the same $15 upgrade price that users of SD4 who purchased before Jan 1 are eligible for.

In the aftermath, Yazsoft has twice offered a rationale for their actions, basically arguing that the Macheist deal was only for SD4 which they continue to support. Yazsoft insists that they only promised free updates (within a version number), not free upgrades (to a new version number). When this didn't work they originally tried to placate the Macheist customers with a 2 for 1 deal offering them two licenses of SD5 for the same $15 upgrade price. The brouhaha also brought a response from MacHeist Director John Casasanta accusing Yazsoft of "malicious intent." Perhaps most surprising of all is that there apparently was no contract between Yazsoft and Macheist, the entire thing being settled in informal emails.

Now I purchased the Macheist bundle with my own money and when SD5 was released I did not feel in any way cheated. I figured that I got a good deal on the bundle; I liked SD4 and did not really see the need to upgrade. However, there are aspects of the entire mess that call for some sort of rectification.

First, the SD5 update was pushed down via the automatic updating system, apparently catching many people by surprise when they discovered it was a paid upgrade. Second, the Macheist site made it very clear that purchasers were getting the full versions of the software they were buying, not time-limited or non-upgradeable versions. That being the case, Yazsoft's chief sin in my mind is not in making SD5 a paid upgrade, but treating those who purchased SD4 from Macheist differently than customers who purchased SD4 directly from Yazsoft on the very same day. That just seems unfair. At the same time, it seems a bit of a leap to accuse them of "malicious intent" (though obviously all the relevant details have not been made public).

In their most recent statement Yazsoft has now offered Macheist owners a free copy of SD6 whenever that ships well in the future. I'd also like to see Yazsoft make available a very easy way to downgrade SD5 back to SD4 for anyone who mistakenly upgraded. The lesson of this entire episode is that it's important for everyone to be clear about what they're selling and for customers to be clear about what they're buying. And for this, I place some of the fault on Macheist as well, as their website did not make the mechanics of the sale entirely obvious, particularly about how the sales thresholds worked. At the same time consumers can't expect to get hundreds of dollars worth of software for cheap and then be surprised when the developers want to recoup costs on paid upgrades.

This entire mess was generated by a lack of transparency on the part all the parties involved. In the end, however, I think the charitable conclusion is that these were honest mistakes. Yazsoft themselves could have avoided the problems just by waiting a little longer to release SD5 and thereby not treating the Macheist customers as second class citizens. It will be interesting to see if this tempest in a teapot ends up scuttling future bundle deals of the sort. That would be a shame, since I do think these bundles provide a genuine service to the Mac software community.