RagTime GmbH, a German-based provider of integrated productivity software for the Mac and Windows platforms, is releasing the full commercial version of its RagTime business publishing software free of charge for private, non-commercial use.
ComGrafix, the North American distributors of the product, describe RagTime as the “Swiss Army Knife” of office software. The company says there are over 250,000 worldwide users of the “the only business publishing application that allows users to create spreadsheets; annual reports; generate catalogues and price lists; perform calculations; and display them in graphical form using one program.”
The full-featured version for non-commercial use can be downloaded from the RagtTme Web site free of charge. The main difference from the commercial version is a startup window that asks the user to acknowledge that RagTime Solo may not be employed for commercial use.
Among the suite’s interesting features is “live documents,” where changes to a financial plan in a spreadsheet document will also be automatically updated in related charts, text references, tables and other elements. So why make a free version available?
“Software differs from other goods in that producing a large number of copies and distributing them via CD or over the Internet is relatively inexpensive,” said Kai Brüning, general manager of RagTime. “So we turn that into an opportunity to make RagTime available for non-commercial use free of charge. Private users will add their creativity to the RagTime Community and help to build a rich environment of expertise for all RagTime users.”