Talk:Free Studio (DVDVideoSoft)

Relevancy discussion

Are the older versions still available and fully free?

If not, then ultimately the decision to move from a fully free model, to a 'free demo' model does not really feel anti-consumer, as the consumer did not pay anything for it in the first place. Keith (talk) 13:00, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

While it’s true that older versions (e.g., 6.6.33 and earlier) can still be found on alternative sources like the Internet Archive, the official version currently distributed by DVDVideoSoft is heavily restricted. From the company’s perspective, the shift to a 'free demo' model represents a systemic change in the product experience compared to the fully functional versions previously available. GujaStudios (talk) 13:13, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

I suppose the difficulty with including this here is that all they're doing at the moment is selling a product for money. They haven't deactivated the products of existing users, you can still get old versions free if you go looking, they (presumably) have not inserted malicious advertising or anything, they're not misleading the consumer or infringing on the user's ownership of the product, it's essentially the same as if they just stoipped maintaining it for free, then went off and sold a new bit of software that does the same thing.

It's a systemic change in how they sell the product, but from what I can tell the only 'anti-consumer' element is that you now have to pay money for it, which is not really anti-consumer. and providing a buggy demo is just a product quality issue, which is also not really relevant. Keith (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense in the way you framed it. My perspective was more along the lines of: if a developer releases fully functional free software primarily to build up a user base, and then later turns it into a limited demo, effectively making the free version unusable compared to before, that feels anti-consumer to me. Not so much because they started charging, but because of the shift from genuinely free to intentionally crippled, which creates a kind of bait-and-switch dynamic. But I understand that might be more of a gray area under the wiki’s scope. Should I take down the page on it GujaStudios (talk) 18:56, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

I think that might be for the best - it's one of those things where it can feel bad to have happen to a product you use, but it doesn't reach the threshold of the kind of behaviour the wiki is focused on.

It would also be another thing if they were running an open source repo with lots of community contributions, then took it closed source in a way that violated the license or something like that, but from what I can tell that's not what's happened here.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I hope to see you around on some other articles!

Best wishes, Keith (talk) 21:39, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

That does makes sense. GujaStudios (talk) 09:31, 20 August 2025 (UTC)