On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Mary Jo Sminkey <[email protected]>wrote:
> > >The cost has to do with Adobe being a publicly traded company needing to > >generate revenue and hopefully post a profit. The cost would therefore > more > >likely be based on the amount of effort (time/money) involved in > developing > >(research, planning, developing, testing, marketing) the product. > > A lot of us hoped they would see that selling it a lower price point would > help to increase the uptake of the language as a whole and thus ultimately > sell more server licenses. For a large company like Adobe, profit is what > the company makes as a whole, not what one product alone brings in. > Microsoft learned this a long time ago and has used free and low-priced > items to increase their revenue in other areas, and it's certainly a large > reason for their success. > Bundling it with FlashBuilder may be their way of trying to increase the uptake of the language as a whole and thus ultimately sell more server licenses. By doing this, they're potentially introducing CF to PHP developers, Java developers, etc. Everyone who uses Flex but doesn't use CF on the server side. I'm not exactly sure that selling it at a lower price point would have the same effect. It'd appeal to those of us who currently use ColdFusion... we'd conceivably be able to buy the product for $199 instead of $299. Ok... but I don't see where that would necessarily increase the uptake of the language as a whole. >I also think their move to bundle CFBuilder with FlashBuilder -is- > >encouraging developers. It's encouraging me to make the foray into Flex, > >which is something that I've wanted to do for a while now. > > Not if the price discourages me from even buying the product in the first > place. > But you're already a ColdFusion developer. If I wanted to buy FlexBuilder 3 last year, I'd have paid $299 (i think... it was certainly in that neighborhood). So we know that Flex developers are willing to pay that amount. They're going to pay the same thing this year, and get ColdFusion Builder. Adobe is pretty much giving it away to the Flex community in hopes of doing what you say... increase the uptake of the language as a whole. We CF folk.. we pay a little bit more than the $199 we hoped it would be, and get FlashBuilder. So not only is Adobe conceivably introducing CF to other developers, but it's conceivably introducing Flex/FlashBuilder to us. I'm sorry that people think $300 is too expensive. I know that "expensive" is a subjective term, and while some people can whip out their credit cards and order a copy without a second thought, some of us will have to save up for it. But as has been pointed out... if you use the product for a year (and it really shouldn't even take a year), how much time are you going to save... how much more productive could you possibly be? Maybe the answer is, "not enough". In which case... there are alternatives (CFEclipse and others). For me, I think it'd be enough (I'm currently using TextMate on Mac as my IDE... so I don't really have a horse in this race, so to speak). I've used the beta of CFBuilder tho, and I can see where it'd save me time. I run multiple CF8 and CF9 instances on my dev machine. Generally one at a time... not having to jump out of the IDE, into terminal, stop one service, start the next, back to the IDE... instead I can just open up the servers pane in CFBuilder, stop one service, start the other. Code insight, extensible via writing extensions in CF (-not- Java)... I think I'd make my $300 back in under a year, and probably end the year being up a few bucks. I get that it's not going to be for everybody. It's not going to work for everybody. I just wish folks could be more pragmatic about it and say, "yeah, it doesn't work for me... but I can see where they're going with it". Charlie -- Charlie Griefer http://charlie.griefer.com/ I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:332043 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
