Sebastian,

It seems like you're mixing up "Commercial-friendly" with "Proprietary"

Proprietary means that it's generally a secret and not open to the public review.

"Commercial-friendly" means that more companies are willing to touch it. Many companies are fine with using permissive licensing, but won't touch anything that's GPL'd.

MIT/BSD are about as liberal as they get, (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer), I have read most of the open source approved licenses more than once, and I think they pretty much spell out that you can use the code for whatever purposes you wish. The only more liberal licensing is "Public Domain" - I think a move away from the GPL (because *I think* most lawyers are unwilling/unable to draw the line of where one set of GPL code stops and code written with a different license starts).

Going to the site linked produces the same video and announcement signup that has been there for a week or two (it's 2/28/2009 today). Should the headline read "announces" rather than "releases?"

I am a developer, but that is beside the point..

If you're using this app, you're not just stealing from Apple, you're stealing (for the most part) from small shops where this is a big chunk of their livelihood. Something I have noticed since switching to Mac 6 years ago, there are tons of free, cheap apps that can solve your problem. There are also some slightly more expensive apps that are worth every penny. (OmniGroup.com & Panic.com, I am talking about your products). This is also entirely true for iPhone apps.

My single complaint is that there should be a 2-3 day grace period in which you can evaluate and dump an app if it isn't working for you.

If you think it's worth cracking, it's worth buying. High quality software doesn't get written without a huge investment of at least time and in many cases money.

(I'm also a huge F/OSS advocate, but even that isn't written without cost, so don't go there).

The developer of this app should be shunned from the community.

I think it depends on what the item is, for battery-type stuff, I am not sure that the warranty is a full year.

Also, keep in mind that when you use certain credit cards, they often double the manufacturer's warranty, so you might be getting an extra year of warranty from that.

Next, keep in mind that the 3 year equation really only works if *you* keep the device that long, and you don't have faith in the products you're buying - if that's the case, you might want to think about some other device. I pretty much run machines through their paces is the first few months, and outside of physical negligence, they don't usually break after the first few months (there are always exceptions).

Finally, with $25bn in the bank, it seems like Apple is *able* to replace things and provide a better quality of service than any other company out there. This is exactly the reason you want to buy from a company that doesn't NEED your business, because then they can afford to do the *right* thing, even when it cuts into their short-term bottom line.

no, the question really is, 'Why?'

I would actually like a way to pay, at least something, for the copy I received, it's worth $15 to me, but it's not worth $40 to me... These guys put themselves out there, and honored the giveaway, even though it might have killed short term sales... The thing is that I don't think that all 750,000 downloads were all by people that would/will use it , but grabbed it while it was free (this is not a dig on CrossOver, the product is great, just worth different amounts to different people).

Having some issues in Durham, NC

I love GMail, and I am glad it isn't plain old open registration.

A gmail invite is like a business reference. It says, "Hey, this is a real person, let them use the system too." Same reason the cell phone is another registration method. It's a simple, effective throttling mechanism to slow down false registrations.

Why do we need this? Because most gmail accounts are valid, more-than-once-use email addresses, we tend to trust them more. Do you block most of the crap that comes in from hotmail/yahoo accounts? Probably.

I rest my case.

EngadgetTV (if it existed)

Since it doesn't, Ohio State Buckeyes Vs. Anybody!

I was out in San Diego and ended up at a little lecture in the Data Visualization Lab.. they had a nice screen done like this.. but they used white Spandex.. It doesn't wrinkle, and you can rear-project with it.