2010/4/25 David Hoffer <dhoff...@gmail.com> > I don't disagree with the last couple replies, however I will point > out that iText is the one that caused the mis-expectations on price. > Since prior versions cost $0 it is quite a shock to learn that new > versions cost $12,500. (Please understand I'm not saying $0 is the > right price.) What makes it even harder is that there are no > published prices for the new version of iText. > > Unless your doing waterfall development (so you think you know > everything up front) you don't always know what's needed at the > beginning. If I would go to my customer with a Y charge of $12,500 > that would be the end of it. > > I'm only saying all this because I was asked to explain, in my case > the older 2.x version is just fine and FOP a viable option if iText > continues with the current pricing. > > I agree with Dave! I think, it is fair to pay the iText developers for their fantastic work. I do not have a problem with that.
The problem: For my customers, it is completely irrelevant, what investments I have to do, to build an application. They give me 5000 bucks in total to deliver a programm. If there are license fees, it's me who has to deal with it. If I do not comply, somebody else get's the job. The applications aren't targeted at the mass market, so there aren't huge numbers of copies of the programms. When calculating the price, it's about 7% or 12 $ per programm that I earn (minus costs, taxes ...). I do not have exact numbers, but that should be quite representative. I surely can agree, that the customer and not the developer should care about the license, but unfortunately, that is not the way life is. The customers are from non IT businesses who want additions/extension to existing non IT products. They never heard of LGPL, GPL, AGPL or license fees for software libraries. I agree with Dave, that 300 $ would be perfectly fine and after all, 300$ from single developers is for you as well a question of getting 300$ or getting no fees and letting developer stick with earlier versions of itext or using other libraries. I hope, I didn't upset you. This is not what I want. As I said, I like iText very much and would like to use it in the future. I respect your decission to change the license and to get a share from the profits of those, who use your lib. Try to see this debate as a valuable feedback to determine optimal prices for the lib, that can maximize your income as well. By, Michael
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