Link: Nick Bradbury: NewsGator Acquires FeedDemon, TopStyle...and Me!.

First off, let me say that I'm an avid FeedDemon user and I like the software a lot.  It was well worth the $30 I spend on it.  Nick Bradbury built a great tool and I'm happy to see him doing well for himself.

That being said, I'm not really happy about this merger...  mostly because I don't believe in a subscription model for a piece of software that sits on my machine that I don't get any support for.  Newsgator is a subscription based tool and they've offered me a free two year subscription, but then I'll have to start paying for FeedDemon annually.  I'm sure the support forums and other efforts are great... but I don't use any of them.  If given the choice, I wouldn't sign up for support either.  FeedDemon shouldn't break.  Period.  Its a piece of software that does a relatively simple thing...  reads RSS feeds.  I don't pay for my browser on a subscription model...  how is this different?  Its a really nice piece of software that I really like, but, not enough to pay an annual fee for it when I already paid for it once.  I feel like I bought it, and basically now I have to pay again for it, just because the company merged.  This isn't what I thought I signed up for.