What happened to …

Things sometimes disappear from a website without anyone explaining why. Here we explain.

… the USB stick version?

The portable version worked: it ran straight from the stick and needed no activation on the host computer. It was almost finished – it never got past the testing phase. It still will not ship, and for an entirely different reason.

The reason is the padded envelope. It counts as packaging under the EU Packaging Regulation, which creates separate registration, scheme-participation and authorised-representative obligations in every EU destination country. There is no small-volume exemption: in legal terms, shipping a million parcels and shipping thirty USB sticks are the same thing.

We worked out what that means for a small business and discontinued the product. The administrative effort would have exceeded the €30 surcharge many times over.

In short: the software was finished enough. The envelope was not.

The software itself is unaffected. It comes as a download – and bits do not need a padded envelope. See the licenses →