On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:07:18 +1000, Andrew Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think the price of Flex has been a very big discussion right from its > initial release. > > Here's the problem that I see and others can correct me if I am wrong.
I shall... heh "why you upstart barnesy!" ;) > At the price tag that it is currently at, it means that only very big > corporations that could use it would be able to afford it, however if I was > able to justify the price tag for our framework here and yes flex would be > very handy to have but that means our price for what we offer would increase > ten fold to justify switching over to it. As the MM confirmation email stated, they have lots of price structures made available and as default these are the ones illustrated. If you feel you could use it but in a manner thats not enterprise level but more suited to product level (aka ShadoMX or something like that) - by all means probe Mr Mark and make it happen (let us know if you can/do that). > Smaller company's would love to use it, like us but see it is well maybe one > day when we get a client big enough to help with the cost of it. Or you > could take a gamble and develop with it and hope that you land a client that > is willing to pay extra for the work, which I would say is were Rocket Boots > are they obviously will not have a problem but others will. > > So that brings me to the question, would it not be more beneficial to lower > the price and make it more available to developers to afford the licence and > also make it harder for other competitors to compete with the product? IMHO, it would, I think the FLEX technology takeup would be marginally higher then CFMX as clearly CFFORM.FLASH has shown that folk out there aren't shy from using FLASH in terms of form displays - sadly no behaviours though. Reasons why - To me, they are too far gone to turn around tommorow and reduce its price, because if its reduced large scale enterprises will absolutely whip their butts for making them pay excess of $15k - $80k in setup costs for it now, then to see it being practically given away..well ye ol Macromedia couldn't sell them a pencil let alone a new enterprise level server. - Uptake could sufficate the products support power, FLEX isn't as easy to get up and running as everyone assumes, you still need to learn the core framework that it comes with, then you now have to adopt a different approach to day to day web development. No more page refreshing(s) for a start. Those who have used thickware clients will probably laugh at that remark stating - "My boy, i've been in the world of stateful clients, don't lecture me ya young upstart" - i agree, but disagree at the same time. This is a language that can be shifted and pulled via source dynamically with an automated compiler thingy putting it tgether and while traditional software development skills would help out heaps - its still got new hooks is all. So if 500,000 people were to take FLEX onboard at say $5k a CPU or 2-CPU, then thats now 500,000 folks to support for the product (ie there are support costs involved but there are basic support gurantees..ie bugs for one etc so someone has to answer a phone and take note of customers gripes. I think support could be a big hit imho (not just technical but sales aswell). On the flipside - if it were to be reduced at a fraction of the price: - more career potential for old flex gits like me who have spent countless hours invested in learning it. - Flash Players uptake would be stronger in terms of the market share..98%? could even go higher or actually meet the supposed 98% hehe. If FLEX doesn't perform though to peoples expectations it could backfire and Flash Players respect-o-meter could drop even more then it has todate..... - More smarter approaches to its use, which means a stronger evolution of the product. If you take stock at how Flash IDE has evolved you'd be a clown for assuming that Macromedia all by themselves came up with the brilliant notion of using as a tool now..no, the end users showed them the way they just made it all happen in a super smart way. No more skip intro jokes please... - AMXML? whats that... could be a question asked and some die-hard M$ faction creeps out of a dark corner somewhere and explains its a Microsoft Version of FLEX hehee... ie MM could get the jump on Microsoft in terms of a XML flavoured approach to UI development.... - No more god damn Operating System biased websites. Imagine the day you could surf the web and all see the exact same website no matter what operating system you use or even better - what device you are using it on. - Corporations can easily get back to grass roots thin-ware cliens to allow business workflows to be carried out.. and a cheaper price which means the CEO can now buy a boat and a freakin BMW this year... That being said, FLEX hasn't finished with us yet, there is more to come and only super secret personnel locked in Area 51 know what i'm yapping on about, so be mindful this product is not going to die in the ass simply due to price hike - far from it. -- Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.mossyblog.com http://www.flexcoder.com (Coming Soon) --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aussie Macromedia Developers: http://lists.daemon.com.au/
