Craig Parmerlee wrote: [snip]>
As users who have a vested interest in Finale surviving, we cannot solve the software problems for them. But we can buy upgrades to help them fund the continued development. Anybody who cares enough to post messages on an Internet board really shouldn't be complaining about paying a hundred bucks a year to keep the thing going.
I don't see your logic here -- what does our posting to a discussion group of users helping users (since the program is harder to master without such help) have to do with how much discretionary money we have available to spend to keep a corporation afloat?
With your major release every 60 days, what sort of marketing model does your product have? Annual subscription, pay a hefty fee every 60 days, pay for the product once and get the major releases for free? What sort of product is it -- a product that a major corporation uses across the corporation, a product that a single user would purchase? How many developpers are working on your product, that you can push a major release out the door every 2 months?
Finale is primarily a single-user product where many of the users are hobbyists who can't take the expenditures in Finale (or other music software and hardware) as tax deductions. I was just speaking to a band director at a public school yesterday who was bemoaning the release of Finale2006. His comment -- "I just bought Finale2005 a year ago! And now they want me to upgrade? I ordered it, but it's the last one I'll be buying for a while."
Sure we have a right to complain, sure we should be voicing our upset. The whole marketplace thing is a partnership, and partnerships only work when both partners (all partners) get what they feel to be fair returns for their investment in the partnership. We put in the money and the suggestions for new features and the requests for bug-fixes. Finale puts in the development time and produces the product. When either partner feels the equality of the partnership has been broken, they are faced with a dilemma -- they can continue the partnership, hoping things will rectify themselves and a perceived slight will be a one-off occurence, or they can dissolve the partnership, feeling that things are irrevocably skewed.
But we can still talk about it and try to come to some sort of understanding of why the company seems to be following the path it is.
And hope that the company is listening and paying attention. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
