It was free with a request for donations, and he sold consultancy for people with big tasks or who might need quick detailed support (corporates using it to migrate large mail servers etc.). I remember donating a bit many years ago when it made our (a small company at the time) migration between mail systems much easier than it otherwise might have been, and I'd used it personally for backup & migration before that.
Looking at it for the first time in a long while, there isn't really much difference now – it is still free to use, the old licence still holds (https://imapsync.lamiral.info/LICENSE), he is perfectly happy with people using it freely, he still accepts donations and offers paid support. There is the convenience tax of the single-exe Windows build not being available by default (though nothing to stop someone else making one if they want to do that and support it, there are docker images that would qualify if you already have docker of some colour installed), I don't remember that existing at all back way back when. There also an online version to save you installing it at all (no use to some due to data safety due-diligence matters, but likely very handy for many home users), that is only free up to a point (fair enough, bandwidth isn't a free resource beyond a point that the service must be well beyond). Some also say he makes it less obvious how free it is on the home page, but I _really_ don't see that when I look at that page, it isn't exactly hidden…
It was free with a request for donations, and he sold consultancy for people with big tasks or who might need quick detailed support (corporates using it to migrate large mail servers etc.). I remember donating a bit many years ago when it made our (a small company at the time) migration between mail systems much easier than it otherwise might have been, and I'd used it personally for backup & migration before that.
Looking at it for the first time in a long while, there isn't really much difference now – it is still free to use, the old licence still holds (https://imapsync.lamiral.info/LICENSE), he is perfectly happy with people using it freely, he still accepts donations and offers paid support. There is the convenience tax of the single-exe Windows build not being available by default (though nothing to stop someone else making one if they want to do that and support it, there are docker images that would qualify if you already have docker of some colour installed), I don't remember that existing at all back way back when. There also an online version to save you installing it at all (no use to some due to data safety due-diligence matters, but likely very handy for many home users), that is only free up to a point (fair enough, bandwidth isn't a free resource beyond a point that the service must be well beyond). Some also say he makes it less obvious how free it is on the home page, but I _really_ don't see that when I look at that page, it isn't exactly hidden…