As one option, why not try free products?
Note: free, not open source.
How do they survive by giving away free tools? The free editions have hooks
into a Borland run web service that offers Source Forge style cross platform
software development support.
You want version control: sure - that will be $20 per month per developer.
You want task management: add another $50 per month per developer.
You want off site backups: add another $20 per month per developer.
You want on site training: oh, about another $800 per person per day.
You want defect management: oh, about another $60 per developer per month
for the basic service...
etc...
They could even offer free hosting (again copying source forge) for open
source development using their 'free' tools.
It is fully buzzword compliant solution: ASP, Web Service, Hosted
application, open source sponsorship, .NET compliant etc...
Not only that, as free the tools are of such a high quality they would
attract developers in droves. I am sure that if the services were structured
correctly they would soon be milking more than a measly $8000 per seat per
24 months from the large corporate clients. And the large clients would be
loving every last dollar spent too! Not only that, the cash would be coming
in in the subscription model much loved by Microsoft - not in spurts every
now and then. This should keep the accountants and stock holders happy!
Doing this would be a chance for them to gain dominance in the development
tools market - a dominance that even Microsoft would struggle to challenge.
Once we are hooked into a site like this it will be very, very hard to move.
Especially as tools such as Delphi are 'proprietary'. This would also solve
the problem of us poor third world developers not being able to afford the
tools!
Borrowing from Microsoft, they can allow free downloads of the tools, but
charge $20 for 'handling' if you want a copy on CD. Ah - you like paper
books? You can print your own from the PDF manuals or simply send us $60 for
a copy.
My imagination is running rampant here. I think I'd better stop.
Just remember - you heard it here first!
Martin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, 11 May 2001 1:44 p.m.
> To: Multiple recipients of list delphi
> Subject: [DUG]: Delphi 6 and proposed release structure
>
>
> Hi all,
> Would you be more influence to upgrade if the period between
> versions was
> greater. I personally think 12 to 18 months is too short.
> What if the
> major release version was at least 24 months apart. After
> about a year you
> got say a .5 release and there were more maintenance releases
> that fixed
> errors in the interim. All these releases being free of
> course. I don't
> like how borland won't make additions to the product in maintenance
> releases. Maybe further enhancements would become available in the .5
> release. A possible structure could be
> Delphi 6 release
> 3 months Delphi 6.01 released
> 6 months Delphi 6.02 released (if it is like Delphi 4 that is!)
> 12 months Delphi 6.5 released - This release would add new
> functionality
> and even updated interfaces for OTAPI's.
> 18 months Delphi 6.51 released
> 24 months or more Delphi 7 released.
> I think this would be better. What do others think?
>
> JED
>
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