Randy -- 100% agreed.  Those same links show up on my feed's landing page ()http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeformGoodness), and I'm completely OK with that.  If that's what it takes to pay Feedburner's bills, what nerve there is for someone receiving this free service to complain.

I think the "nerve" (if you can call it that) is that Michael's not getting it for free - he's a paying subscriber, as he mentions in his post.

Giving Feedburner the benefit of the doubt, here, I'm going to assume that whatever they're doing to Mike's landing page was spelled out in the Terms of Service.  If so, Mike doesn't have a legitimate beef as far as I'm concerned.  However if the ToS for the paid service leads one to believe that the paid service is substantially different than the free one in this respect then I think he's got a point.  I don't know - I'm a free user and as such am fine with the ads.

cori
http://kinrowan.net

Hey randy, Dick from FeedBurner here. As niall kennedy and some others pointed out in michael's comments thread, this link has been there for over 18 months now and was the result of a private labelled feed reader that Bradsoft (nick bradbury) introduced back in march or april of 2004. If you look at our blog post from may 2004 when we first created the nicer xslt on the feed, you can see in the blog post from that date:
http://www.burningdoor.com/feedburner/archives/000558.html
that the feeddemon download link has been in there since then. Nick B. at bradsoft was experimenting with private label readers, we put one together because at the time, becase people would come to us for both feed management AND "do you guys have a reader", so the link to the reader's been on there ever since. Obviously, with the cleaner design of the style sheet now, that download FeedDemon link is standing out more, and maybe it's too much.  As I've said in michael's comments, the right answer is to put the customer in control and give publishers the ability to style their own landing page, and then people can promote (or demote!) whatever collection of web chicklets, desktop clients and more that they would like to promote (in addition of course to making the style sheet look more like their own brand, etc.). I think that's the right answer, because it takes any subjectivity out of the equation.  We know we need to do that. As our post announcing the new style sheet mentioned, we've got a couple things to wrap up and then we'll get to this.

Mr. Morin makes some great points.  I agree with a lot of them.  But to the point made above that because I or someone gets something for free somehow excludes them from offering feedback, that's absurd.  I won't argue the intent of Michael's message but there's a large difference between offering feedback and simply bitching about something. 

I get feedburner for free.  I don't like the ad or I'd like to have more control over the ad.  It's a preference, a little feedback.  Feedburner could slap a big old ugly K-Mart ad on the thing.  I probably still use it and I don't have to shut up and keep my preference to myself it if I get it for free.  Of course, delivery and intent are key and validation helps too, but free product doesn't equal shut your trap and eat it raw.

Griffin