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SI - Site Forums : Silicon Investor - Welcome New SI Members! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Teddy who wrote (21697)	11/30/2004 8:08:25 PM
From: Sawdusty	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32917

Teddy, I think the most applicable term is "dance with the one that brung yuh". Cheers,

To: Teddy who wrote (21697)	11/30/2004 8:29:46 PM
From: Bill Ulrich	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32917

Why limit that train of thought to just this site software? I think it'd be great for the entire software industry, which is, after all a humanitarian effort. We could still be using WordPerfect 1.0.3 in 2004, providing all the latest, newest and niftiest features that users such as yourself are willing to pay for. "count me as one of the Grandfathered members that will never send you one penny. My belief is that when you purchased SI you also got all their liabilities... including providing Grandfathered members access all future features."

To: Teddy who wrote (21697)	11/30/2004 8:32:37 PM
From: Bob	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32917

So you are one of the one's who was "lucky" enough to have found SI before it became subscription based. Big deal. You have not paid one penny to this site, the best site on the web for investment chat, but you demand everything free, even a stupid t-shirt. I discovered SI in '99 and paid for a lifetime membership. PAID. MONEY. MY MONEY. If I had the good fortune to find SI before that, I too could have been grandfathered. Biggest whiners on this site besides the 1 & 2 level are the so called grandfathered members who have contributed NOTHING money wise. Just sent them some more money for the great new features.

To: Teddy who wrote (21697)	11/30/2004 9:01:16 PM
From: SI Dave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32917

Actually, I mentioned to Bob earlier today and also someone else that I needed to go lookup the account that had the first post to the new site and comp a year of Premium-Plus. It's done! My belief is that when you purchased SI you also got all their liabilities.. Only the assets. However, Bob has repeatedly stated a commitment to honor the status of grandfathered members with regard to features that existed on the previous site. To my recollection, the only exception pertained to portfolios in the event they are ever reimplemented. An expectation to receive all future feature upgrades and additions free of charge is simply not reasonable, any more than one should expect lifetime upgrades on purchased software, or all new channels on cable/dish, or new services offered by your local or cellular phone company. Certainly there will be some improvements made that will not be part of the Premium feature set, but the survivability and long-term success of the site require at least a modest revenue stream for features that carry additional internal costs.

To: Teddy who wrote (21697)	12/1/2004 10:53:53 AM
From: SI Bob	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32917

My belief is that when you purchased SI you also got all their liabilities... including providing Grandfathered members access all future features. Maybe you are not legally required to do so, but it is the right thing to do. In the past, you have always done the right thing. I hope will you reconsider the current policy. Lifetime membership and Grandfathered status only bought two things in the previous version of the site: 1. The ability to post messages. 2. The ability to read messages in batches of 10. Those features still exist and then some. Whether legally so or not (I suspect legally we could've changed the site name and cancelled all grandfathered/lifetime accounts, but I'm no lawyer and it wouldn't have been "the right thing"), there's no question I feel obligated to make sure those features remain. I feel no obligation whatsoever to make all new features available to Grandfathered and Lifetime members. If I were under any such moral or legal obligation, it's a safe bet the site wouldn't get much in the way of new features. What'd be the motivation? Develop new features while retaining a suicidal business model? The only "liabilities" I consider as ones we inherited are to provide those same two features to those members. You'll note that I haven't limited it to that, though. The site is full of new features the other site didn't have and all but a few of those features have been "thrown in" for Grandfathered/Lifetime members. Those who've known me a long time know I'm very much into "the right thing". However, I was simply the site Admin then (not to make light of Dave's job, which I know is an extremely difficult one very few people can do well) and now I'm not just the programmer, I'm the President and CEO. Meaning I have to factor financial implications into every decision I make. Fortunately, that almost always dovetails nicely with "the right thing" because the primary "right thing" I must accomplish is to see to it that this site continues to exist. And had we not bought it and changed the interface (long overdue) and business model (the old one was suicidal), I seriously doubt the site would exist now. I'll leave it up to Dave what kind of prize we should send you. All we have around here right now are iHub t-shirts and pens, which we give to annual iHub subscribers. I'm not really inclined to buy any other ad specialties stuff right now, as we still have about 1/3rd of the t-shirts we paid a lot of money for nearly 2 years ago. Edit: I notice that you did go ahead and pony up for the upgrade. I thank you for that and trust you'll find it's $19.95 very well spent.