On 19 Sep 2004 10:10:46 -0700, Dean Wilkinson wrote:

Dean,

The DUATS planner is subsidized by the government, I am not.

AOPA and EAA planners are subsidized by the membership, I am not.

No problem with what you say here.

Not charging a penny to download, install, and use the software for as
long as you want, that is free.

Still no problem EXCEPT, what good is outdated software?

Charging a small fee for the database update service? Yes, that is
fair and the only way to guarantee that I am around to provide them...
You don't have to update if you don't want to.

Charging a fee no longer makes it free.

Yes it is fair to charge for updates, but to advertise it's free is very
misleading and unscrupulous

I'd suspect you wouldn't fly with outdated software yourself and to
encourage your users to use your software with outdated databases is a
disservice to your company.

I am copying from your original post below for further emphasis:

"We felt that we needed to respond to the trend toward free basic
flight planning services that are currently being offered via AOPA,
EAA, and DUATS.

You are not responding to the trend toward free basic flight planning
software when you are charging for updates.

The difference again, being an AOPA member, the software and updates are a
benefit of a member. My membership fee did not go up as a result of the
flight planner.

What you are doing is charging for the updates, which invalidates the
"free" part of what you said above.

Yes, I have choices of what flight planning software I will use.

Just as an FYI, I do use AOPA flight planner at home, and when I am away, I
use DUATS or pick up the ole telephone and call FSS. I have tried the
CIRRUS program (now a new program, forget the name), but that required a
lot more computer horsepower then my 500 mhz pentium. I am the first in
line to try different things to ease the burden of flight planning, but one
thing I won't do is knowingly use outdated software for something as
critical as flight planning.

Using outdated flight planning software would be just as bad as flying with
outdated charts. It would make for a bad day to find out while in the
crag, there was a tower built after your outdated chart was printed.

Since DUATS is from what I know the only official internet briefing source
(AOPA interfaces with DUATS), I make the assumption your software does
not??? I have not downloaded it, due to the outdated database.

Bottom line, what you are offering is not free, and should not be
advertised as such.

Allen