About the premium version of LanguageTool

I just typed a short French text in the online LanguageTool grammar checker and this was the outcome:

  • one spelling error (spurious, but fair enough, it was a city name)
  • 13 errors (style & grammar for which details can only be seen for the “Premium version of LanguageTool”
  • 4 errors for which the details are available to all users.

I find it disappointing to be honest the directions which LanguageTool has taken: for the majority of errors in French, unpaid customers can’t see any details. Most of the errors for premium users look spurious too or maybe debatable, but since I can’t see the details, I can’t tell for sure.

LanguageTool should be a free grammar checker in my opinion. Its license is LGPL. From a personal point of view, the large number of errors for the premium version only contributes to reducing my interest in contributing.

At least I don’t see premium errors when I check in Esperanto and Breton and I’d prefer those languages to stay this way.

Well, we pay people to work on LT, so I think it’s fair to add most (not all) their rules to the premium version. We don’t plan to have a premium version for Esperanto or Breton.