Originally posted by Montoya
Pixel - I think i paid $40. development has been darn slow.
My issue with Pixel is that Pavel started taking money from people long before the program was anywhere near functional. Users were basically paying for being allowed to be BETA testers. (more like pre-Alpha actually). Pixel was slow, suffered frequent crashes and was more than just quirky. Its programmer unresponsive to his users and slow with promised updates.
More than once, Pavel has just abandoned his users exactly because he is a one-man show. Gabor(RT) did the smart thing: he collected a group of enthusiast to help him code RT, allowed people to download and use for free - donate if the liked it. Now that Gabor is considering (or has decided already) to GPL RawTherapee I believe that he will actually get more donations.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as Pixel clearly shows.