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Svante
Spectator

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the feedback. Also Lucas, thanks for your comments.

About the interface – you don’t need to see it. Just minimize it and then use AxCrypt from Windows Explorer like you always did. It’ll stay minimized the next time you start it too. The “Enter Password” dialog looks a little different, but is actually cleaner than version 1 – which includes 2 checkbox options ;-) For regular encrypt/decrypt/open use, there is virtually *no* difference in the number of clicks and keypresses. It *is* the same! (In other words, the “Simple Interface” mode is one minimize click away).

Also about the interface – through the years, a common feature request has been an install-free portable version. I.e. a version which does *not* use Windows Explorer context menus and double-click as the main way to use. In order to do this, a user interface of some kind is required! Now, we can discuss the user interface chosen. But for a portable version to be possible, an interface is needed. AxCrypt 2 can be run in portable mode. Feature request: Check.

About the online/offline – yes, part of it has to do with commercial reasons, we need to keep track of who is who and who has paid. That’s fairly standard. But, more importantly, it allows us to move into a more modern world of public key-based cryptography for sharing – with unparalleled ease use. We feel that it’s worth it. When we have the resources we’ll probably try to develop pure offline version.

About happily paying for the 1.x – there’s always been an option to donate. If only 1% had happily donated, development of that would probably have continued. If I had made the mistake of moving from voluntary donations, to required licensing – it would have completely killed AxCrypt. Plenty of precedents. There is nothing that will stir up annoyance like when a FOSS simply goes and becomes commercial and you can’t have it for free any more. So, the only option was to redevelop a new AxCrypt, keep the basic same features free – and *add* Premium functionality. Now, you can still have AxCrypt for free, and it’s still open source. But, many will now find an incentive to pay for the premium stuff – which allows us to develop it and this benefits the free users as well. So, it simply isn’t as simple as it may look.

A Windows Phone version is actually not that impossible, but it does depend on funding. The technology we use make it if not trivial, at least, feasible to do.

Finally, AxCrypt 1.x has not changed in any essential way in 15 years. It’s time to mess with ;-)