Unfortunately since the beginning of my association with FlightSim and graphics, back in 1998, I have seen the rivet counters hammer freeware developers with their expectations of perfection (in their eyes). I have seen many painters, model makers, and scenery designers come and go and a large volume ultimately give up due to the public floggings in forums by these rivet counters.

Very rarely do the FREEWARE user even bother to acknowledge or appreciate the fact that they are getting others peoples hard efforts for FREE. There is an almost a pervasive outlook in the simming community that we are ENTITLED to get FREE stuff and ENTITLED to critique or even slander those that give us the free stuff.

Basically we seem to have lost the concept of FREEWARE being a PRIVILAGE that it is shared with us.

Very very rare to ever see - "WOW - thanks mate for sharing this with me" from the simming community. Yes, sometimes, what some could class as junk, is published - but that junk is often many hard hours of slogging with unfamiliar tools, learning and effort and often some personal financial costs by the developer and he/she wants to share that time and effort with others. Knock or critique too hard and the enthusiasm disappears and we possible loose another budding developer.

This Rivet Counter mindset and the loss of the concept of a PRIVILAGE that freeware is being shared with us is harming our most precious simming resource. Imagine simming with only payware products - the contribution of freeware developers have kept simming alive since its inception - many sites exist only because of the volume of freeware that is published by amateur developers and shared with us because they choose to do so.

There is a fine line between critique and guidance - many developers appreciate guidance but disdain critiques that are unwarranted, ignorant, or downright malicious in content.

In a nutshell, lets show some appreciation every now and again for what we get for free from a plethora of developers - encourage the budding developer - everyone starts somewhere on the quality scale and improves with guidance and appreciation - all we have to do is put in a little time for constructive feedback and support and we all win.

And finally to the Rivet Counters - if you don't like it - just don't use it - or even better - do a better rendition yourself and share it with us.