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Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.4.1


bigmuscle

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Hypothetically speaking...  Consider that the author might run afoul of Microsoft legally if he tried to directly monetize the product.  Or there might be local laws he must abide by.  It's possible he knows the morality and capability of those in the "file sharing" world better than others.  I only mention these things to illustrate that there could be influences that people here haven't thought of.  Or it could just be arbitrary choice.  In any case, it is what it is.

There are so many other programs by other authors that are made to modify system files, integrate functions into OS but I‘ve never heard of any project whose author would be forced to end it because of the law issues. If Microsoft would really put effort into this then people wouldn‘t be able to bypass copyrights neither by choosing bizarre licensing models, nor by using counterfeited copies of Windows or making any other modifications to the original product.

 

It is IMHO there is only a base lexical issue.

 

Once said that BigMuscle has all the rights in the world (+1) to do whatever he wants with the products of his abilities :), and to sell accept donations in exchange for licenses for it in any way he likes (+1) and conversely to make sure that a proper license is on the PC through whatever technical means he finds suitable (+1) the whole business of "forced donation" and "free version" remains only "nagware" or "shareware" by another name and it smells as sweet or as rotten (smell is in the nose of the sniffer ;)) as the original "properly named" formula.

 

The (nice :)) twist about the guessing game about the minimal amount of donation that will be enough to obtain a license is only marginal IMHO.

 

Still it is curious how *somehow* this particular product attracts so many people whining/criticizing/commenting about the licensing scheme :unsure:.

 

jaclaz

Whoa, whole series of discussions about licensing model in just a single comment!

 

Much software which has a trial version only lasts for 30 days or so.  I think people should be grateful.

It has been said so many times that most of the people can‘t understand forced donations, this doesn‘t mean that they don‘t value Aero Glass project. Anyway, this was not the point at the moment—the original issue was posted by @adacom who was getting license issues because of constantly changed disk drives in his PC. Even though the computer is used for testing purposes, I imagine that getting nag messages at startup can be really annoying whilst watermark wouldn‘t be so much as it would be for regular users. Having a testing computer doesn‘t mean that one mustn‘t use any VS but classic ones—we had a person here who had an idea to bring Aero Glass to Windows Server operating systems just to bring some life to all that old-fashioned greyness.

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This little paragraph probably sums up everything:

 

Acceptance is the answer to ALL of my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation- some fact of my life- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake...Unless I accept my life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

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I'm fond of this philosophy:

 

If you see something you'd like to be better in the world, help make it better.

 

-Noel

Well, in real life this is definitely the way to go but when talking about closed-source software only the original author can legally modify / update their software. The only things users can do in order to contribute to the project are bug reporting and ideas suggestion. In this case, the latter was strictly denied by the author leaving no other solution than cracking to solve the issue.

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Of course, I'm aware that the current model cannot fit anyone but any model never will. At the beginning, I didn't expect so great interest in my piece of software, so I didn't want to spend time with developing some complex licensing model and I just used simple code (which I had already developed and tested before) to have at least some benefits for individual donations.

 

Because users were complaining that it is not so good to have a key locked to HW, I did a helpful step and have allowed to deactivate and generate a new key once a time. I believe that this must fit to the majority users and it is shown that only a few users criticize this. Sure, I could change this model completely but why to do it, when these rare situations are just artificial? Such users do not need the special license at all and they only use their plastic situation to criticize... just ask - how many users will ever need to change HDD/SSD twice a day and will require Aero Glass license just to test disk functionality?

 

Also, there is some criticism about forcing donations and guessing the minimum amount. So, nobody forces anyone to donate, nobody forces anyone to use my software - if you don't like my model then simply do not use my software, nobody is forcing you. Also, guessing the minimum amount is not true - as I said many times - if you don't limit your donation to extreme small value (e.g. 0.001 €), you will get a key for any value. And if still talking about guessing then you should probably look at my website and you can see that there are value hints. So, no guessing but exact values are provided.

 

And the last thing, the most criticism is in a form "I would buy this software but I don't like its licensing model so I will rather use a crack". So I am asking - if such user is really interested in buying my software why don't he contact me directly but he rather spends his time with waiting for and searching for a crack and then criticising (mostly in vulgar form) ? My answer - such user is not interested in buying at all, he would crack it regardless the licensing model and he just need some excuse why he uses the crack... and also my opinion is that the real reason for complaining is that there is still no usable crack for my software.

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 Also, guessing the minimum amount is not true - as I said many times - if you don't limit your donation to extreme small value (e.g. 0.001 €), you will get a key for any value. And if still talking about guessing then you should probably look at my website and you can see that there are value hints. So, no guessing but exact values are provided.

Still lexical subtleties, if someone does not want to "guess" he/she needs to make a little "treasure hunt" on the forum or on your site to get "hints".

 

If you were selling something you would publish a price list :yes:.

 

Since you are accepting donations the amount is in the conscience of the donating party :w00t::ph34r:.

 

Knowing how people tend to behave I would guess that the large majority of the donations are near the bare minimum you "hint" *somewhere*, of course I may be wrong but I doubt that you received many US$ 50 or $100 donations :(.

 

jaclaz

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nobody forces anyone to donate, nobody forces anyone to use my software - if you don't like my model then simply do not use my software, nobody is forcing you.

 

I have one possible insight on this point.

 

Big companies, like Microsoft and Adobe, are starting to push things to the point where they have to iterate, "hey, if you don't like the licensing model, don't use the software", and generally speaking people don't like those big companies nor those policies.  It might be that they feel in some sense that your policy resembles those.

 

In short, people don't like to have to pay as much as something is actually worth, and with those companies actually selling software for a premium and people having to sweat over the choice.  It's about feeling you've gotten a good deal.

 

As a hypothetical comparative example...

 

1.  You walk into the market where you buy your food.  In a bin right in the front is a "Two for the price of one" sale of exactly the item you went to the store to buy.  Say it's Olive Oil.  You can buy two bottles for $8, where the regular price is $8 for one.  Even though $4 a bottle is still not "cheap", you feel really good about having found that sale and put two bottles in your cart.

 

-or-

 

2.  You visit the market and find olive oil on the shelf and find the regular price of Olive Oil has gone up since last time you visited from $3 to $4.  You grumble and put a bottle in your cart anyway.

 

-Noel

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As a hypothetical comparative example...

 

1.  You walk into the market where you buy your food.  In a bin right in the front is a "Two for the price of one" sale of exactly the item you went to the store to buy.  Say it's Olive Oil.  You can buy two bottles for $8, where the regular price is $8 for one.  Even though $4 a bottle is still not "cheap", you feel really good about having found that sale and put two bottles in your cart.

 

-or-

 

2.  You visit the market and find olive oil on the shelf and find the regular price of Olive Oil has gone up since last time you visited from $3 to $4.  You grumble and put a bottle in your cart anyway.

 

 

 

As a hypothetical comment ;):

You must be using/buying pretty cheap olive oil (or rather smallish bottles of good quality extravirgin olive oil). :whistle:

 

jaclaz

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It seems Microsoft has changed something on the leak build 10558. AeroGlass doesn't produce the blur effect. I know you don't work on leak builds which is understandable. But I'm wondering if it gonna be the same when Microsoft releases Windows 10 th2 later this year.

 

Screenshot%201_zpsjnivdxrb.png

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am I right in assuming everyone gets thiserror message popup when you run AeroGlass under Windows 10 or is it only in certain instances?

 

 

What version of Windows 10 are you talking about?  What error message?

 

I don't get any pop-up at all from Aero Glass with Win 10 build 10240.  And the product works perfectly.

 

If you're expecting it to work perfectly with the very latest pre-release build, well that's a bit optimistic.  See this page for info on that:  http://www.glass8.eu/win_future.html

 

-Noel

 

I was talking about the post from dhjohns on 14th Sept  - can't do this clever multiquote thing but he said 'Yea, it is a bummer to have an error message pop up on log in, but how else would we know that Aeroglass failed to hook.  I suppose just so long as it works it is ok.  Whether it hooks or not is basically irrelevant' 

 

So it read as though there is always an error message popping up in Windows 10 every time on boot up but perhaps I am wrong. Please also go easy on me - I really don't understand what these build numbers mean - I've bought a retail copy of Windows 10 Home 64 bit & will be installing it in the next week or so when the rest of the bits for my new PC arrive. Would though appreciate a final word as to whether I will have to put up with an error message after installing Aeroglass.

 

Thanks

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It seems Microsoft has changed something on the leak build 10558. AeroGlass doesn't produce the blur effect. I know you don't work on leak builds which is understandable. But I'm wondering if it gonna be the same when Microsoft releases Windows 10 th2 later this year.

 

 

Yep also the case with 10565. Perhaps Microsoft deprecated the API DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow. They did just release a new SDK today that features build 10563 so perhaps they changed and/or deprecated some APIs. That would suck since these builds are the foundation for what will be the th2 RTM in November. 

 

Anyway, a good way to mitigate this issue is to use a glass reflection image and set the intensity slider to the max. 

Edited by Rfire
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An even better way is to just not choose to use an OS where the OS vendor breaks the very things you find important every single time.

 

Seems like kind of a no-brainer to me.  If no one chooses to run Windows 10 (and the 100 million or so folks who were duped into installing it just revert), Microsoft will just have to do something different.  Something good.

 

-Noel

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