Hey Barry, I'm obviously not an Adobe employee so I'm not the "official" word you're looking for, but here are my quick 2 cents...
Flex 3 isn't coming out anytime soon. If I had to guess (and I have no insider info, just pure speculation), it seems like MAX in Chicago at the end of September would be the launch platform for Flex 3. It's not even on Labs yet for beta testing, and beta testing a product like Flex is no small, quick process. As for licensing, Flex 2 to Flex 3 is a major revision, not a maintenance release, so I'd expect there to be upgrade fees for the product, though hopefully nominal. While Adobe is still targeting Flash Player 9 for the release, that most certainly does not mean that there aren't going to be compelling reasons to upgrade, and those enhancements cost money to develop, right? Remember, Flex Builder is *not* part of the open sourcing of Flex, so Adobe needs to make their money somewhere. Whether or not you ask your boss to commit now or later is up to you. Either way, you're going to be paying for Flex Builder at some point, so why wait? Sure, you can develop Flex apps in any editor you wish, but the productivity gains of using Flex Builder far outweigh the $750 cost of Flex Builder, as you likely know. How much is an hour of your time worth? Let's say your company bills $100/hour. In less than one working day you'll have paid for the cost of the IDE. Further, you can't assume they're not going to raise the price of the IDE down the road, so you might actually be better off buying Flex Builder now to avoid having to pay full price for FB3 (again, I want to stress that I have no information that I'm being coy about....it's just speculation). Anyway, I don't want to ramble, but I definitely don't agree with your premise that buying Flex Builder now is somehow bad timing. I think we're still at least several months away from any official launch of Flex 3 and you'll be missing out on building some amazing experiences if you decide to wait until then. Besides, in my experience with Macromedia-now-Adobe, when I've run into a situation where I've purchased software that was subsequently upgraded or the licensing changed soon thereafter, I was very well taken care of by my sales rep (read: Flex 1.5, which was $30,000 to Flex 2, which was free). So I wouldn't worry too much about being ripped off. Regards, Dave. Cynergy Systems, Inc. On 5/13/07, barry.beattie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
we're just about to cough for 2 more FB2 licenses (with charting). What with Flex 3.0 getting closer every day and it being released as open source, can we buy today with impunity and confidence that we won't be further stung with IDE upgrades when Flex3 is released? one would hope not, eh? just adding new libraries to FB2. but I'd like to hear the official word before I ask the boss to commit. thanx barry.b
