[prepend]

> is that really so bad?

I think in many situations, yes. I grew up with shareware and so I know that prompts are necessary to drive income.

What the prompts in this article are so bad at is that they are perpetual. Is it really necessary to nag a user over and over for something they don’t want and declined? That is probably not going to work in the long run as people associate a bad experience with the product.

Figure out a better way to get income that doesn’t involve perpetually wasting a user’s time and frustrating them.

[ianai]

They could just have an “ad” screen like the about screen. Encourage users to check it out or leave it open for a time as a source of support for the product.

I’m guessing the most innocuous is just a banner ad of reasonable size that doesn’t detract too much from usable space.

Or, you know, people could pay for their software.

[prepend]

I think I bought a ton of shareware that had innocuous purchase ads (eg, id’s commander keen). The idea isn’t that ads are bad, but that having continuous ads over and over is annoying and unlikely to result in me buying.

[Semiapies]

Not giving out a service for free is probably the best option.