What turns away users/prospective users?

Posted by Zach Johnson on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Zach Johnson
Published on 2010-03-18T19:21:48Z Indexed on 2010/03/18 19:31 UTC
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In your experience, what kinds of things have turned away users and prospective users from using your programs? Also, what kinds of things turn you away from using someone else's programs?

For example, one thing that really bugs me is when someone provides free software, but requires you to enter your name and email address before you download it. Why do they need my name and email address? I just want to use the program! I understand that the developer(s) may want to get a feel for how many users they have, etc, but the extra work I have to do really makes me think twice about downloading their software, even if it does really great things.

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