What other products do you know of where the developers keep such a close relationship with the users? Most of the feature suggestions and bug reports came directly from the users on this BBS.

Not to take anything away from the empeg guys who I agree are doing a great job, but this is the way most open source projects work. If you ask the developer(s) they will tell you when they are likely to get around to adding a feature or fix a bug. If that is not soon enough you can always do it yourself. Take Jempeg (java emplode clone) for example. The last revision was really good, but had problems with a few of my files. I have told the guys working on it about the problems that I am having and then done 'quick ugly hacks' to work around them for my files. I am sure Mike S and Dan Z will do a better job of fixing the problems than I have, but my fixes work for me, for now.

-Mike