Shoutbox

As people have already pointed out in this thread, the sponsor is adware, not spyware, there is a huge difference. A spyware, like its name implies, tends to spy on you, do stuff behind your back and does not provide any way to be removed. The psonsor just display popup ads for various products and comes with a very efficient and fast uninstaller.

As for the amount of time required to do something like Plus!, your firne can't realise how much work is required to do an add-on software like this. It would be actually easier to add features in something made from scratch like Gimp. Note that I'm not saying Gimp is easy to make, I just say the challenges are widely different, making Plus! probably requires more R&D if that's something you're interested in. You can't assume that this or that software is easier or harder to create, if your friend says this kind of thing, he's probably no developer and thus, has no right to throw numbers like these.

Many people create software (like Gimp) without any intention to make money from it. Messenger Plus! was made in the same way and the sponsor was only added more than 2 years after its creation so that I could spend my entire time in the project. Sine then, the number of users frew from 4 million to 17 million so I think I made the right decision.

I hope this answer's your friend's questions.