On Mon, Oct 23, 2000 at 04:56:54PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote
> >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.
You must realise that a user has little incentive to submit a bug
report. It does require quite some effort to investigate, reproduce and
document a bug in such a way that a software developer can do
something with it. So reporting a bug already carries a cost, while the
benefit is spread over all users. Many users won't bother submitting
bugs, feeling confident that someone else probably already has done so
they can spare the effort.
Reducing the incentive to submit bugreports even further is not a wise
thing.
The other thing to consider is that even the most advanced of users
rarely submit a bugreport. Most of the users that submit bugreports
rarely do so more then once.
The other thing not to forget is that the whole system only works if the
software company knows all it's users real names... So that it can
enforce any price discrimination based on past behaviour of users.
A last note about "vendor lock-in": The most important reason why
switching is more costly then staying with the same software is that teh
last option can carry no or a very low cost, at the discretion of the
consumer. The consumer can always decide to keep using the software
without paying the software company. I doubt Microsoft products would be
so popular as they are now if the license terms were really enforced.
Krist
--
Krist van Besien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
