That being said, I believe that I can express the point a little bit better. I’ll be more specific: As a webdeveloper I tend to follow a non-trivial number of blogs and publications, but I find that although the main players almost always publish great materials, lots of smaller players publish filler material in between their golden gems. This is a problem for me because I can either unfollow the noisy blogs or bear with filtering the good from the bad. Shaun’s solution requires a webserver with php. Therefore it’s targeted to the power user that 1) has a website or at least works with the web in a way that requires him to have some kind of hosting available, 2) has a knack of liking selfhosting solutions such as email, webDav, etc… and 3) has a real hard time following his/her favorite sites because of all the noise in his/her feed. I’d be shortminded to think that people that selfhost solutions on their machines don’t exist, but they are a minority and, by the way, is something of a characteristic of people that like pirating software (not saying you do, once again) since hosting ftp, webservers, irc bots and torrent trackers is a common occurrence. Again from the discussion here it seems like you’re not the target demographic, and that’s ok. You can say that the domain requirement is what kept you from using the software, but saying that it’s wrong is far from being more than speculation or personal opinion.

One last thing, you say you were ready to buy a 30 dollar piece of software to read your feeds, but requiring a domain put you off? If you’d pay that much money for a feed reading solution, I reckon you could have easily spent 35 or 40 dollars and got yourself a domain while you’re at it. JayTyler.me is available for purchase FYI

For the record, I already had my card out to purchase the software at the time I realised a domain was required. I therefore did not purchase the software. That’s at least one lost sale.

Regardless of how many copies have been sold, the volume would likely be higher if there wasn’t such an unusual anti-piarcy measure in place. I realise the author must protect his work from piracy, as do all developers. However, I would argue that in this instance it’s likely reducing the revenue from the software rather than achieving the goal of increasing revenue.

It’s also not good business practise to artificially narrow your target market as suggested in your ‘Power Users Only’ comments. As the developer is obviously talented, I would seriously doubt that this plays any part of the domain name requirement.

That being said, this tool is meant for the power user, tech oriented blog reader and publisher, and web technologist that manages hundreds of feeds and wants to skip the noise that’s inevitable if you follow the big players as well as a whole lot of small blogs in the industry of your choosing. And you are clearly not such person. Stop whining. If the tool is not for you because you don’t have a domain this is clearly not the feed solution for you. Go use google reader. I doubt you have more than 20 feeds you read anyways.

Everyone this tool is aimed for will gladly play $30 dollars and just self host it in their own personal hosting. You don’t have hosting? You don’t have a domain? You want to install this on your “home” computer? Again, you are obviously not the target audience. I’m so sorry but you come of as the type of kid that pirates all their software because you would rather save your money instead of supporting other peoples efforts. Fever is a great tool, and you’d be lucky to use such great software. If you’re not up to it well go use any of the other tens (hundreds) of free feed reading softwares and move along.

PD: I can assure you Fever has sold more than three copies. And even if it only sold three copies, the joke’s on you since those 3 people are using a great tool and you’re stuck complaining about how the author protects their software from people that want to steal it and avoid paying for his efforts.

I think that somebody calling me an 'insistent fool' is quite rude to be honest. Particularly when I'm right and he's wrong. He's wrong, I'm right and I'm the fool? I don't think so.

You haven't taken the tome to understand the issue at all either Tina so I wonder what that makes you?

Oh, and I don't use Fever. I would have done if it wasn't for this ridiculous copy protection scheme was not put in place. $30 still in my pocket. Fever doesn't appear to have sold more than around 3 copies anyway so the point is moot.