I may as well say it before someone else does -- I'm a greedy S.O.B.! And by "greedy", I mean that I'd like to pay off credit cards, family members and medical bills and start saving some money.

Why am I hearing Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick singing "I'm a Goofy Goober" in my head? Oh well, that's beside the point.

Okay, so here's the real story. For several years, I've been giving away a free version of my main product, CaRP. It's probably been downloaded 20,000 times by now, possibly more. I have no qualms with anyone for using the free version -- heck, I use all kinds of free software myself and enjoy giving when I can.

The problem is that the free version of CaRP is good enough that not enough people feel the need to upgrade to CaRP Evolution (thus the credit card balances, etc.) One of the questions in a survey I sent to my CaRP SE users a while back was why they hadn't upgraded. The two most popular responses were "CaRP SE does everything I want" and "I just haven't gotten around to upgrading".

So it's time to get greedy (and by "greedy", I mean solvent).

Today I discontinued CaRP SE ... and replaced it with CaRP LE (yes, I'm still going to give away a free version). Unlike CaRP SE, CaRP LE will not display "descriptions" (the article summaries). But where something was taken away, something else has been given: unlike CaRP SE, CaRP LE will display publishing dates and authors. With these changes, the free version of CaRP becomes a little less of a "free version" and a little more of a "demonstration version".

I won't be trying to fool existing CaRP SE users into "upgrading" to CaRP LE and then force them to buy CaRP Evolution to get their descriptions back. I won't hold any grudges against anyone who uses either of the free versions and never upgrades. I'm greedy, not sneaky or hateful.

And by "greedy", I mean I'd like my affiliates to get paid more for their efforts, and to be able to afford to hire someone to answer tech support questions faster than I sometimes do...