We’ve strived to make your evaluation as painless as possible: no time limits, all the source code, and all the functionality running on your own hardware.  That much freedom is a risk on our part.  Occasionally we’ll talk to someone who loves the system but has fewer than three helpdesk workers and they feel a bit guilty that they didn’t need to buy anything.  First, there’s no need to feel guilty!  We want the free version to actually work as promised.  But if you’re one of those people, especially if you’re in an established company that routinely pays for software expenses when there’s a licensing “gun” pointed at your head, I’d like to ask you to sponsor our project entirely based on whether you find it useful.  We consider your contribution as a vote of confidence in what we’re doing; which enables us to keep forging ahead without having to weaken the project by pandering on roadmap functionality (doing things just because they’ll close a few stuck sales, opposed to doing things because they’ll improve the project for everyone).

Think of it this way: a $499 order contributes about 10 developer hours to the project (including wages, health benefits, space, and tools).  In exchange you’re getting over 6.5 years of software evolution, several decades of combined software and technology experience at your disposal, and a dedicated group of people on our end who are immersed in thinking about how much more you could be getting out of your helpdesk (which is surely more than just a never-ending pile of messages to write back to every morning).  We don’t look at sales as recouping the costs of getting to this point, we consider them as encouragement to keep marching forward.  That’s why we don’t think it makes much sense to hold major functionality hostage as a way of funding the project.

So that’s it for my plea for why you should support the project.  Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit out of it!  ;)  We’re not one of those companies that calls you 75 times just because you downloaded an app to take a look.  We really do mean ‘free’ when we say free version.

Thanks!

-Jeff@WGM