On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 23:14:49 -0400, John T wrote:

Nobody's begrudging your covering expenses or even making a profit. The
problem arises when you make the claim of "free" then tell us that we have
to pay to get current data. That's like the TV ads that claim the product
is "FREE!!" - all we have to pay is a "nominal shipping & handling fee".

Thanks John for seeing it my way.

Had Dean said trialware, shareware or "otherware", I wouldn't have even
responded to his post.

What got in my crawl was the word free, followed by a cost of $5.00. Cost
and free didn't compute.

I bring up his quote again from the original post.

"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.

Using Dean's words, "respond to the trend toward free basic flight planning
services" sure contradicts charging for his flight planning services.

In one sentence he says AOPA has free basic flight planning software, yet
when I called him out on the carpet, all of a suddenly, the flight planner
is "subsidized". Yes, he is correct, it is subsidized by taxes and
membership fees, but that is not said in the meat of his post. He said
"free basic flight planning services" (see above quote).

I have absolutely no beef about Dean wanting to make a profit, that is the
nature of his business, but soliciting business through newsgroups surely
is not good newsgroup netiquette. (UCE).

Signature or tag line should be sufficient with him making positive
contributions would be the way to go. Instead he, sorry to say spammed all
the aviation newsgroups that I had subscribed to.

Allen