Website closed!

Dear Flightsimmer,

Today I decide to close my website. I would like to say sorry for that to all Flightsimmers who came here regulary. Below I would like to tell you the reasons for it.

In the last months I found many discussions about Freeware in several Flightsim Forums. I know that it is not absolutely new to create terms for the usage and changing of Freeware Addons. But in the meantime there are such dimensions of especially those terms, that a lot of Flightsimmers discuss about the legally Base of Freeware. If I have to talk with a Lawyer before I offer something as Freeware or if I make a mistake when I upload something as Freeware which is legally no Freeware I keep off that job. Since about five years now I design and upload Freeware Addons for the Microsoft Flightsimulator. When I start with this hobby there was no nitpicking if an Addon is a Freeware or a Public Domain Addon. I think (this is just my opinion) that the real Freeware Concept lose touch within the last years. Good Freeware doesn't disappear when a Freeware Designer or a Freeware Group stops working. Good Freeware fades away with the founding of Rules and Terms for changing, improving and spreading of it.

The second reason is much easier to explain. My Panels don't have the standard a Flightsimmer wants today. I couldn't (and maybe I don't want to) realize such things as FMS and FMC, the equipment of a PSS and the PIC 767 Panel. The trend is programming the FMC and let the Aircraft fly itself. Maybe this is the realistic way of modern flying but not my interest in flying the Flight Simulator.

A Flightsimmer wrote in a Forum some weeks ago, that a Top Aircraft with Panel and Sounds just could be done by a Designer Group. An individual Designer has no chance to realize such an Addon. Excuse me please but what means "chance" here? What chance do I need if I design something for fun? I don't do that to be in competition with any other Designer or to have a lot of Downloads. Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people have this opinion. So it will be time now to draw the coclusions.

Since a long time I always told and write, that I will design Freeware Addons as long as I enjoy it. I don't have any hidden motive when I upload a Panel as Freeware and I don't do it to earn fame or anything else. This website isn't closed to enter a protest or to carry on propaganda (it seems that this is a common practice today). I've closed it because I lost the fun designing any Addons by the above reasons. Of course you will find my files furthermore at Http://www.Flightsim.com and within the next days I also going to upload my already finished files. Maybe one day I will continue designing Panels or Aircraft (as far as I get back the fun in designing Addons). All of those new files will be uploaded to Flightsim.com. However this website stays closed.

07/03/01
Matthias Lieberecht