Henrik and the other devs at Dell, I appreciate the clarification, and I'd like to add something from the community point of view. First, I greatly appreciate the fact that Toad for MySQL is freeware, and quite honestly while I'm not happy to pay the price of Toad Data Point, I have looked at some of the lower cost alternatives to Toad for MySQL and haven't found one with the same feature set, so I stick with Toad for MySQL - and I say thanks very much for the product! In terms of my frustrations, what is difficult with Toad for MySQL is the lack of response to beta feedback and reporting of bugs. And my frustration isn't over whether or not something I report gets fixed or not - as you said, it's a free product, I have no right to expect anything to get fixed - my frustration is that there is no mechanism for even knowing what's going on. I'll report something and just get no feedback whatsoever, I have no way of knowing if something I reported is being worked on, or if a feature suggestion has been considered. The beta page says things like "By becoming a beta tester you have direct access to the development team and product management.", "We want to encourage you to participate in this beta program to help us to deliver high quality product.", "I also want to remind everybody that we have started the Idea Pond to give you a chance to submit what you are missing in the product, want to change, or see what others think about it. Of course, you can simply submit your post on community beta forum to interact directly with the development team.", and "Remember your feedback counts!" But it doesn't seem like any of that is true, because I do those things and get complete silence, some suggestions in Ideapond are marked active, but that's it. I'd ask for two things (again respectfully acknowledging that I don't have the right to ask for anything): 1. If someone on your team reads a post in the beta forum and it is about a valid issue, just give a brief response, a couple of words saying "noted". You're not committing to deal with the issue, but at least we know someone has seen the post. If it's something you don't think is valid then say so, and the issue is closed, not just dangling. 2. Create some release notes for each new beta release - not formatted official release notes, but some down and dirty (automatically generated by the build system would be fine) notes so we at least have some vague idea about what might have changed, and what you're working on. It would be awesome if you'd open up the bug tracking or whatever change management you're using along the lines of an open source project, or better still make Toad for MySQL open source, but I'd settle for those two right now! My point is - yes the product is free, but I am trying to help, I am trying to invest some of my time and I'm offering it for free, but if it's a waste of my time then I won't bother. So, if you don't want feedback from the community then please say so, change the messages on the beta page and don't ask for feedback. But, if you do want our input, then please provide the means for us to feel like our input is valuable.
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