Hi Albert,
Thanks for your feedback on this. I always appreciate your valuable insight on these things. You have a very good track record on your comments and suggestions having an impact on the NCrunch project :)
I realise that the notification for releases being outside the 12-months free upgrade period for a license is not as a good as it probably should be. I've tried placing date range notices on the download page, but it seems (quite reasonably) that most people can't remember the date they last bought their license .. and a stronger check needs to be in place somewhere to avoid frustrating them by installing a release that their license won't work with. I have a feeling that placing a date inside the license details window will help, but probably won't solve the problem .. as I don't think many people will check the license details window before trying to upgrade the product. Probably the best place would be in the installer.
It is also possible to turn off the installer nag - there is a global configuration setting ('Check for updates').
Now .. about the lack of published information on future features ...
This is an area that is tough to win on, as there is so much uncertainty involved. NCrunch is an extremely high risk project in terms of its development. Almost all major requested features require some level of integration with other products over which I have a very limited degree of control (or none what-so-ever), or they involve huge steps into uncharted territory where no example or precedent exists. I've lost count of the number of times I've progressed partway through a major feature only to find that the final implementation wouldn't meet the quality expected of it or simply wouldn't work at all.
I understand this is normal in innovation, and this problem is reflected in the long line of broken promises left by similar developers attempting to provide high-risk features they have advertised either proactively or through response to user request.
A good example of this was my promise to implement Silverlight support. By the time I was able to free up the bandwidth to implement this, the market had already shifted in a way that made the promise completely unfeasible. Many people were disappointed over this. Likely the only reason I didn't need to process a wave of refunds was because I'd never promised when the feature would actually be delivered, so no one bought in advance in expectation of the feature.
So it is my choice to sell the product on the basis of substance rather than promises. If before buying a license, you felt it was important to know whether a key requested feature would soon be delivered, I would suggest that you hold off buying. The intention of the NCrunch licensing model is to empower you to choose if and when you want to upgrade. If you choose not to upgrade your license because you see nothing worth paying for right now, just hold off and upgrade later if you see something you like. The 12 month maintenance period that comes with the license is always effective from the date that the license was issued - not the date the previous license maintenance period expired.
