Hi guys,
I think that REBOL/Command should be priced between US$29 - US$49. This is
a product that should pay for itself through volume, not through small user
base + high price per user.
People should be able to get REBOL/Core for free, test it, like it, and
then *painlessly* upgrade to the entry-level commercial version. A
no-brainer. I like REBOL, I want to do something Core doesn't do, oh, well,
no problem, I'll upgrade to REBOL/Command.
An educational/non-commercial version should be made available for free, to
generate a large user base. What students learn in college they will want
to continue to use when they take over the corporations. If corporate
America goes for REBOL (condition large, pre-existing recruitable user
base), then REBOL/Command and other REBOL products will generate a nice
income. I believe that for a long time Apple stayed in business because
they had a strong userbase in educational institutions. That userbase was a
result of many freebies.
Another source of income would be bundling with commercial OSs, such as
Solaris, BeOS, MacOS. Here a Novell port could be interesting, if Novell
wants to play along (i.e. guarantee a minimum number of sales, based on
their current user base and bundle REBOL with Novell as their standard
configuration and scripting language).
There are other forms of packaging REBOL. Some have been announced such
embeddable REBOL (i.e. libraries or DLLs), Apache modules and REBOL/Media.
Overall, I think that many low prices will be more helpful in spreading
REBOL than a few high prices.
My $0.02
Elan
