At the same time, the "Premium Personal" price is a one-time payment of $29. My basic chicken sandwich meal at Whataburger was $11 dollars.

Point being, it's obvious to me that this is 1 dude who is developing this, so I'm not going to expect flawless communication for the price of 2.5 Whataburger meals. I'd much prefer to deal with that than have something like a monthly subscription SaaS charge.

Doesn't have to be flawless but a full year delay is a little much. I'm not even with that employer anymore.

These coffee/meal prices differ a lot between countries. Similarly, there are huge differences how often people living in different countries can easily afford to eat out or buy a coffee at some café.

I am not claiming you ripped us off or that your product is no good. Pretty sure we eventually purchased 4 licenses, because it is a good product. But better communication, taking the whole thing a bit more seriously, would go a long way. You knew what day the betas were expiring, instead of leaving all the customers hanging, you could have proactively sent everyone license keys or a longer-expiring version. You could have posted a quick status update on your web site. As I mentioned in another comment, I vouched for you internally and when asked about it months later (budget reviews, etc) with still just a beta version, I didn't have any answers.

Also HN: Why is the one developper that work on my software when he can because he can't make a living out of my one time 30$ payment doesn't ship all the features and versions I expect in a timely manner

Support contracts start at 500-1000$ a month these days, if you depend on it for your day job maybe invest in your tooling correctly...

- we would have been fine continuing to use a non-expiring v2 beta, but the developer set it up differently (eventually, a non-expiring version was provided)

- we never asked for support, just to not have the software expire without a replacement available

> maybe invest in your tooling correctly...

So your suggestion is that businesses should avoid independent developers altogether? That's a great way to be supportive of the little guy.