Let me give you a specific example that I remembered this morning:

About 3 weeks ago I got an email from someone who made a fairly lengthy list of changes they felt needed to be made to JoeUser.com to make it "decent".  When I responded that I didn't agree with most of those changes or that the changes would be very difficult to make his response was (to quote):

"Didn't they teach you that the customer is always right."  I looked up the guy in our database, no as a customer only as a user of JoeUser. 

His original email, while haughty, was not unwelcome. But his attitude on response was exactly the type of attitude that makes people who make free things not want to continue to give out those free things.

That is the type of thing that makes people like Steven Den Beste not want to keep blogging. Hundreds of daily email nitpicking what he's written. Most of them fine. But how many emails per day does it take that make rude demands as "customers" before you don't want to do it.

*I* am not frustrated btw.  My skin is long thick and I am not nearly as generous as Den Beste.  When confronted with the situation Den Beste ran into years ago on WinCustomize we came up with the 50 megabyte solution.  That decision lowered WC's traffic growth rate relative to other sites (if you look at an Alexa graph of WC vs. deviantART you can almost tell the day we implemented that feature) but vastly VASTLY increased the # of real customers.

But I thought it important for others to read about Den Beste's case as well as hear a few of our experiences so that next time someone is using a free good or service that they not mistakenly conclude their customers with the right to send demanding emails. Instead, send that email as a polite request understanding that you're asking a favor as a user of something that's been provided freely to you.

Attila you wrote:
PS: Those 5 rules for free stuff is completely inaccurate and not based on respectable business practices. They're made up, ineffective and should be labled as (opinion) not (the rules).

What would you know about respectable business practices? You know I like you but aren't you basically in college or did you graduate yet?

If person A is a chef for a decade and person B isn't a chef. Doesn't it seem presumptuous for person B to tell person A that he doesn't know anything on cooking?

Do you have a theory as to why people on WinCustomize and JoeUser who respond tend to agree with what is written whereas this same article on deviantART would likely be a flame war? 

I provided my theory - age.  I think people who have been around longer tend to be more pragmatic.  They know how limited their free time is and so appreciate it just that much more when they see someone else using their free time to give something away.

Just because you think someone who USES your stuff is as much a customer as someone who pays for your stuff doesn't make you right. You are entitled to your opinion but I don't agree with it.  Someone who USES your stuff is a user. But they're not a customer. There is a difference. And the difference in my mind translates into a user can make requests all they want whereas a customer can make demands.

WOW do really believe that? I would expect that concept to discourage growth of your customer base. I agree that there is an obvious difference in the level of support or even an obligation to any support with respect to paying customers verses users. However, if I have a bad experience as a user chances are I won't be a customer.

Clearly if you don't count users as customers you'll have fewer customers by definition.

People who provide free stuff, by their nature, tend to be pretty open to other people's suggestions in the first place.

So it's not like someone who sends in an email saying  (right way)"I think you should write about the Mars mission in your next blog" are going to be told to piss off.

On the other hand, a person who sends an email (and I've gotten ones like this over the years) (wrong way): "The content of your blog is getting stale. I'm sick of hearing about skinning and politics. Why not write about something interesting like the Mars mission. You need to keep your content fresh if you want to keep your customers (read ME) happy."

That's not a direct quote but that's essentially the kind of thing that I and other writers get.

To use an ObjectDock example there's a difference between:

The right way: "Hi, I really enjoy using ObjectDock. I was wondering if you could add a feature to where I could move the dock free form on the screen?"

The wrong way: "As a long time ObjectDock user I am expressing my disappointment in the lack of progress you've made with it. Especially now that you have this Plus version. Maybe your greed is keeping you from wanting to support your original ObjectDock customers who made ObjectDock popular, but you need to start fixing ObjectDock otherwise I'm going to go back to using YZ Dock who, unlike you, doesn't seem to be driven by money."

As you may suspect, that's almost a direct quote of an email we received about 2 weeks ago.

It's all about attitude.

Cygnus, the problem with the DesktopX Pro argument is that at that point, we would then have to charge $499 for Object Desktop rather than $49.95. 

I would say it is a better scenario to have Object Desktop be $49.95 and include the features of DesktopX that apply to 99% of the user base than to have to increase it to $500 so that they can have access to features few of them would make use of.

Getting to the user vs. customer thing: It is important to (again) stress that I (and I imagine most others) agree that anyone has the right to voice their opinion. But there is a difference between giving feedback and making demands. See other examples in this thread to see what I'm getting at.

Cygnus, good stuff.  But we disagree at an axiom level: It's not that I don't think the customer is always right or whatever, it is that unless money has exchanged hands, they're not customers to begin with (to be right or wrong).

I agree that it is up to us all to try to educate consumers on these differences - which is part of the purpose of this thread.  The dot-com era mistakenly gave consumers the mistaken belief that they, by merely using a product, good or service, are entitled to the same rights as customers. They're not. Not by a long shot.  The dot-coms made the mistake of thinking that all consumers were customers and we saw where they led to.

As for Object Desktop, users get all versions of DesktopX.  DesktopX Professional is not the same as DesktopX. They are seperate products. We don't expect all users to agree with that but given that we sell DesktopX Pro for $499 and the entirety of Object Desktop at 1/10th the price I think we can rely on users to make a common sense conclusion.

Incidentally, the white paper you refer to is from 2002. The current one, linked from the Object Desktop page can be found here: https://www.stardock.com/products/odnt/odnt-info.asp

BTW, Cygnus, the system lists you as a level 2 user.  You should connect your WC account to your customer account so that you can get more benefits on WC.

You highlight the wrong part of the sentence:
And users also get **everything we develop or update** for it for an additional year via their ObjectDesktop.net subscription. At the end of the year, users can continue to receive new features and updates for $34.95 for each additional year.

You should highlight the entirety: everything we develop or update for it (it being Object Desktop). 

When a user purchase Object Desktop, they get everything already available on Object Desktop plus everything we develop for Object Desktop for an additional year.  At no time did we ever imply that we would start including $500 products into the $50 product. I think most users "get this".

When someone purchases Object Desktop, they get DesktopX. But we never implied they would get DesktopX Pro. And DesktopX Pro, as others have pointed out, is designed to create applications.  Object Desktop is not designed to be a software development product. It is a desktop environment (and those specific words are used all over the place).

I agree that what we say on the website is very easy to understand. But that doesn't seem to stop some percentage of people from misreading it.  I am not sure how one can possibly reasonably parse that "everything we develop for it" and "everything we develop" are the same things.  I mean heck, while you're at it, why not trim out the first part and just say "everything" and complain that we aren't handing over property and gold and jewels!  

In short, I think our meaning is pretty clear.  When you buy Object Desktop you get everything that's already available plus anything we add to it while you're subscribing.  Last year that meant things like IconDeveloper and Keyboard LaunchPad (along with updates to most everything).  This year it means upgrades to key components, Theme Manager, Stardock Central, Right-Click, WebExplorer, and more.

You don't have to agree with our point of view.  But ultimately we don't have to agree.