Charter Membership

[Aoshi]

...empty things like Charter membership...

Its a trick to beg for money, and personally i dont like such styles...

I believe statements like that are causing aggrevation.

[Roosa]

Looks here is more "shortnosed" people, did i said sorry allready   

[[Unknown]]

Well, the only way I can take the shortnosed comment is that you're saying I don't lie, because my nose isn't long like Pinnochio's.  But that doesn't fit in context... so...

We're not shrouding it in any falsehood.  Here, let me lay it out for you:

  - there are bugs in the current beta.
  - people, by and large, do not check for already-reported bugs.
  - if we release now, people will experience a lot of the bugs there are, more often.
  - this means, we will get lots of reports, of the same bugs... over and over.

Now, since we know this beta of SMF is buggy, but there are still people who want to look at it, we make a deal.  We will:

  - give you the beta.
  - provide support for it.  (better support than you'd get for free.)
  - install and upgrade for you, if you so want.
  - etc.

Again, this is an very sound economic strategy.  As the suppliers, we are willing to only supply a very limited amount of the beta for any given price.  Demand, of course, goes the opposite way, so we have to find the intersection.  However, we're weird in that unlike a normal firm, we're willing (when it's ready!!!) to offer an unlimited number at the price of zero.  We simply are not willing to do this YET.

See?  There's no secret or mystery here - just sound and faithful capitalism .

-[Unknown]

[RoCKeT-88]

Dont get flip with us...........weve been more than helpful in explaining stuff and how to get started for free on YaBBSE.

[Ben_S]

Now, since we know this beta of SMF is buggy, but there are still people who want to look at it, we make a deal.  We will:

  - give you the beta.
  - provide support for it.  (better support than you'd get for free.)

As says, it still has bugs in it, as such when people have installed/converted their boards, quite a few have had problems that they have needed his and other dev's help to fix, if the beta was public already, then they would not have had the time to help everyone who encountered problems and hence there would be a lot of broken boards.

If there were no charter membership, it has been stated many times over, the current betas would have been unseen by anyone not on the team, the charter members obviously think its good value to be able to pay a small fee and access the SMF betas now rather than wait.

The server this website is hosted on also doesn't come cheap, the money raised from charter member's no doubt goes into helping cover those not insignificant costs.

As others have said, if you don't like the ideas behind the charter membership, then don't buy one, you will be able to get your hands on it when its considered stable and released to everyone.

[Roosa]

Yees thanks for that!

And software looks nice, i like it and wait for release 
This software here seems to work very well, haven't observed any bugs so far, wonder what bugs you talk about 

[Ben_S]

This software here seems to work very well, haven't observed any bugs so far, wonder what bugs you talk about 

Buy a charter membership and you will be able to see the charter member boards and read the posts about the bugs

[Owdy]

I'm very happy with my smf. Bugs are no problem anymore