Generally speaking, the recent changes are welcome and the tiered pricing structure was inevitable. The vast majority of Cocooners probably don't need any of the Silver/Gold/Platinum advantages (larger attachment size, more PMs, etc) so its business as usual for most of the community and they can continue to use Cocoontech for free. There's rarely a need to post more than 100K/message.
Unfortunately, for the Premise users that migrated from Yahoo Groups to Cocoontech, the pricing structure amounts to a developer tax. Premise users, like myself, represent the few Cocooners who post large attachments (in the Downloads forum). These attachments are documented drivers and applications and developing them takes time and effort. For this expenditure of energy, Premise users charge nothing. Having to pay $100/year for the privilege of posting one's work, which generates no revenue itself, is an extremely unattractive proposal.
The natural reaction to this new arrangement will be what has already started, namely that the files are posted elsewhere with only links appearing here. That's a shame because it loses the benefits of a having a central repository.
123:
I’ve read your post and am quite surprised at its tone. I was expecting some rebuttal on membership pricing, but wasn’t expecting this kind of response.
Premise is a dead program. It’s not supported by Motorola (they even stopped making the files available for a short time) and it seems they have no future intention of supporting it.
The small user base that does exist gets support only from individuals that are members of home automation forums such as CocoonTech. Dan and I pondered over your request for a dedicated Premise forum and have decided that it would serve some of our members well.
We did this without cost to the (Premise) membership and even endured the growing pains of seeing a plethora of new Premise related postings whenever the “new posts” button was pressed (by our general membership).
Only a very small amount of our nearly 5,000 members are Premise users, yet they have their own dedicated forum.
Considering that increased publicity via a forum user base is the ONLY means by which Premise will become a community supported product it seems to me that having this free dedicated forum would be the single greatest advancement for the cause, especially due to CocoonTech’s increased popularity.
Also,
Dan just recently stated that he is trying to find a solution for hosting the files, and will perform this investigative effort
just for the Premise forum!
What did we get in return for this support effort? Words like “
Amounts to a developer tax”, “
Having to pay $100/year for the privilege of posting one's work” and “
an extremely unattractive proposal”.
The staff of CocoonTech remains dedicated to all campaigns related to home automation, security and theater and will continue to serve our membership with the best support efforts possible. The release of CocoonTech 2 (which we are very proud of) stands as proof of these efforts and commitments. I'm truly sorry that you are not happy with our latest endeavors.
Kindest regards,
BSR, CocoonTech Moderator