Everyone has experienced it. Slysoft went out of business. We are Redfox now. Please support the project. ( please do not post in two threads about the same issue, its confusing) Thank you
You just said it. "We're RedFox NOW." And you were Slysoft before. But even if you weren't, it doesn't matter. You could be totally different people with nothing at all to do with the people that ran SlySoft and it doesn't matter, and that's not the actual point here. When a business, any business, for any reason, goes OUT of business - because it's shut down, because it goes bankrupt, because the owners just decide not to do it anymore, or because it gets sold to someone else - if the original organization's product and business is continued under a different or same name, by different or the same people, the honorable thing for the new organization to do is honor the obligations to the customers of the product that the prior business made.
Businesses get shut down every day, by the government, by bankruptcy courts, by market forces. That doesn't mean their products die or stop getting made and sold. Their patents, and copyrights don't go away. Or they sell parts of themselves off. A pharmaceutical company can sell off the licence to, and all the employees and production resources of one of its drugs, to a totally different company. And that company now also owns all the debts and liabilities of the old company, for that drug. If it turns out two weeks later that the drug kills people, the first company is scott free. The second company gets all the profit or all the lawsuits - EVERYTHING, for that product they decided to undertake.
RedFox is sitting there pretty, after Slysoft went out of business, with allllll of Slysoft's assets, code base, and all the work Slysoft put in, and is selling its product (and yes, improving and updating it), but assuming none of the obligations SlySoft had to the customers of that product. THAT is an unethical business practice the world over - in any country that has an economy, to any first year college student studying for a business degree, that would be recognized as an inequitable and unethical business practice. And any company that was doing business legitimately and within the law, that tried to do what RedFox is doing, would be amassing lawsuits and prosecutions from various consumer protection agencies, for it. It's only because the product and the business is outside the law in the first place, that its customers have little recourse or protections from this particular practice. That STILL doesn't change the fact that it's an inequitable trade and unethical business practice that double bills the customer and rewards the new business without it earning it, for a product that was 90% produced by the old business and 100% already paid for by the current customer..
Sure, you're different people and a different organization, but you're selling the same product as the original organization, which it put the work and resources in to make but you're asking all the customers of the exact same product (not a piece of software, but a LIFETIME subscription) to have to buy again, what they've already bought. And then you tell them "support the project." Hey, who do you think FINANCED and paid for the entire project - which left RedFox sitting so pretty with all the software development of SlySoft to be able to sell to new customers? The ORIGINAL Slysoft customers - they're the ones that financed that thing, that put the money in the bank for the paychecks of the people that produced it. And now, because of their financing, you have a good product, with which to attract MORE customers to sell it to - were you not to busy showing all those potential new customers, how it is you treat existing customers. THEY are the FOUNDATION of "the project." It wouldn't exist, without them.
And I'm not trying to make you or RedFox out to be villians. I can imagine how you're struggling. To pick up the pieces. The pressure, the workload it's probably just crazy. How you believe in the product and the project, and are trying to keep this thing alive. And that's great. Thanks. But it's a whole different world, with a completely different angle to examine as to what's fair, when you decide to monetize something and enter the market. It's not a safe or easy place for production side people to operate. That's what competent marketing and product managers that people on the production side love to hate, are for.
The best product in the world, that thing that everyone wants, will put a business, any business, OUT of business, if they trade in it, with bad business ethics.