Why is a user account required?

8 Apr 2015
   

Posted by Amenel No comments yet

Visitors of this website may wonder why we require from them that they register before engaging into pretty much any activity on the website. I thought I would take some little time to explain the two reasons behind this choice.

We want a safe place

First of all, we wanted to make this website a curated place that was protected from what plagues the Web today, that is spam, advertising and trolls. When only registered users can participate in the website, it means that we trust the users to behave and if they don't, it is possible and easy to stop any misconduct by terminating the user account. No real harm is done since the user can create another account but then it is some, although negligible, work for them.

Software is also work

The software we offer for free needed work, with some products needing less work, and some other products (e.g. Kinetic) needing such an insane amount of hours that, had we known beforehand how many hours would go into the programs, we would surely have never started. However, like just about anyone else, we have families to support, mortgages to pay and a life to live, which does not cost nothing. We get the money from other businesses, by licensing software, offering consulting services or making custom software engineering work.

When it comes to individuals, our payment lies in their actions as a counterpart to our offering software for free. This includes registering an account, reporting errors and suggesting features. To put it simply, our remuneration is that the more users use a program, the more likely it is that the program gets more stable and more robust. It is only natural that most will just take and leave but that's OK. Some will contribute back with a bug report or enhancement request and that will make it all worthwhile.

Your data is safe with us

We don't use your personal information, we don't sell it and it is protected with state-of-the-art techniques. And we don't spam you.

As a general rule of thumb, you should protect your privacy online: avoid using your real name except where necessary, use a disposable address (especially if you have a Yahoo Mail Premium account) and use a password that can be intercepted/guessed/cracked with no harm to your private data. The only pieces of information we require from you is the minimal set of information strictly necessary:

  • a user alias,
  • a password,
  • an e-mail address.

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