I won't fan the flames on this thread, but I will say....

If the only motivation people had for writing software was to make money, there would be no WoW mods, Linus Torvalds would probably be another anonymous coder, the Free Software Foundation would be something to do with building and the Sourceforge would be a place to buy something to go with your Sunday lunch.

Everyone *should* be suspicious of little-known software, especially little-known software that demands net access... but that's true for all software, and no more so for freebies. Just because something has a dollar tag on it doesn't make it any more trustworthy.

To question the motivation of all freeware developers based on ones own paranoia and lack of understanding what motivates them is quite wrong.

The best firewalls (Zonealarm for example), spam filters (Mailwasher for example) and anti-virus software (many examples) either are, or started life as, free.

I'm glad we now have lots of software options to help us multibox, and I think it's entirely right and proper that we continue to promote all solutions equally - we all have our favourites, and they all have their advantages, after all.