On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 01:35:30PM -0400, Robin Hanson wrote
> We were talking about choosing not to offer them a discount on updates.
>So the discussion about why companies don't do this is a lot more
>interesting then a discussion about how they could (if they wanted too).
>After all, a software company has the problem that it's users don't
>really have to pay for the software if they don't want to. So you can't
>really do things like charging what are probably your most loyal
>customers more. This is a sure way to lose them.
I think it is probably very likely that anyone that uses a particular
program enough to find bugs will face significant lock-in. The costs would
likely be significant for them to switch to another program. As long as
the lost discount on updates was less then the switching costs, the user
would continue to buy the updates and submit bugs they find in hopes of
improving the next version.
