[flexcoders] Re: Flex Pricing: Relax!
Here is my thinking, and having this aired out here has helped some on working through this. 1. Adoption of the language is the one thing that I as an investor in a technology platform is looking for. High prices seem to work against that. read everett rodgers diffusion of innovation it covers everything for diffusion it is a classic. 2. Stability of the platform. ie memory leaks etc, scalability. lack of wierd bugs (ie like the one i post and have not seen any comments on). Based on my CF experience, I see that as a realistic possible problem area. 3. I think the commodity nature of software is moving up the application stack. ie, hardware is pretty much a commodity, competition is based on price. OS's are heading that way espicially with Linux on the scene. Databases are going that way. and it seems that the middle layer tools are heading that way, laszlo, j2EE, .NET. if you look at the industry the big players are heading upstream. they are doing applications. look at the companies that microsoft is buying, look at who oracle is buying. Based on this it seems that the Laszlo business model makes way more sense. get the tools out there, charge for applications built on top of it. 4. what a business wants is solutions to needs. no business user comes to us in IT and says, I need you to go buy a new development tool. They say I need to add this new feature or offering. I need to eliminate costs. etc. So even if I could spend 80k on a software package, at the end of the day once it is installed it does not solve a single problem for the business. 5. The people that endorse a technology and get it in the door, really do tie thier livelihood and future to the results of that decision. And it is really disconcering to those people who have put the well being of thier family on the line, to see the vendor act in flakey ways. raising prices, de-emphasiszing products, having massive bugs and memory leaks show up at the last minute, jeopordize project failure on really large projects with limited scalability, that maybe know but is glossed over because that is the plan for later. That makes people edgy. that is probably why you get really emotional responses to price change announcements. I have been pretty well rewarded for using cold fusion in the past. it is a great language. but a huge memory leak with handling of COM almost cost me dearly a few years back. it completely bucked under our real world load. the server crashed every 2 hours and needed to be rebooted. Macromedia opened a bug ID for it. it took almost 4 months to get a fix from them. in the meantime, I tracked down cfx_xslt. I contacted the developer, had him make a small mod. and it was completely resolved, no memory leak within 2 days from contacting him. charge for the product.. no kidding.. $49. I knwo someone at macromedia is cringing that he did not find out how deep my pockets might have been and charged me 100 times that amount. But the point of that story is that the bug almost made the entire project a failure, and the best support could do was a fix 4 months later. could flex do this to me? maybe. am i taking on some personal risk for the sake of this product. 100% yes. --Dennis --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Vinny Timmermans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have started many discussions on Flex pricing, and contributed heavily to each and every other previous Flex pricing post, because I was convinced that Flex pricing killed my and other Flex lovers' opportunities. The reason why I did not contribute until so far is simple. I have experienced that for hot opportunities Macromedia is willing to work out the right deal for you and your customer. They don't kill your opportunities. This is a proven fact. So if you think Flex may be the right solution for your customer's business problem, don't let the pricetag intimidate you. Contact Macromedia and work it out! The real threat, however, comes from a different corner. High price tags might frighten developers to seriously invest in Flex. Return on investment may seem far lower than from investing in any other platform. The number of experienced, professional Flex developers is low at the moment and may not rise fast enough to realize all Flex opportunities that pop-up in the market in the coming years. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that Macromedia will provide a range of other Flex packages soon. From low-cost (stripped down server-based versions) to no-cost (just mxml compilation without server-based features; the developer-centered Flash alternative). The critical success factor in the next period is not the Flex price tag, but the number of experienced, highly qualified developers out there that master MXML and AS2 and can rapidly create the killer applications Flex can offer. Don't make it a second ColdFusion: powerful platform, excellent programming language, not enough
RE: [flexcoders] Re: Flex Pricing: Relax!
Adoption of the language is the one thing that I as an investor in a technology platform is looking for. High prices seem to work against that. As I said that's the major threat Flex is facing What a business wants is solutions to needs. With only a handful of skilled MXML/AS2 developers chances are low we will see a broad range of proven Flex solutions to real business needs anytime soon. Flex is extremely powerful. However you need magicians to create magic. Based on this it seems that the Laszlo business model makes way more sense. get the tools out there, charge for applications built on top of it. Given the open source trends, the fact that software becomes a commodity, companies are less willing to pay for just a technology platform. They want solutions for a competitive price. So as long as the combined price of Flex licenses and Flex application development is competitive compared to the offerings from Microsoft, Laszlo e.o. the sky will remain blue for Macromedia. Now prices for licensing have increased the cost for development should decrease. That is the development cycle should be shortened - developers want to make some money too ;-). I have experienced that even a high profile Flex shop could not compete in application development time with shops specialized in Microsoft technologies when delivering the same application. What's needed real soonis a broad community of skillful MXML/AS2 developers, heavily exchanging knowledge and best practices. More developers, more choices, shorter cycles, lower prices! Then Flex will really take off. Vinny -Original Message- From: jacksodj [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: vrijdag 1 april 2005 06:57 To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Flex Pricing: Relax! Here is my thinking, and having this aired out here has helped some on working through this. 1. Adoption of the language is the one thing that I as an investor in a technology platform is looking for. High prices seem to work against that. read everett rodgers diffusion of innovation it covers everything for diffusion it is a classic. 2. Stability of the platform. ie memory leaks etc, scalability. lack of wierd bugs (ie like the one i post and have not seen any comments on). Based on my CF experience, I see that as a realistic possible problem area. 3. I think the commodity nature of software is moving up the application stack. ie, hardware is pretty much a commodity, competition is based on price. OS's are heading that way espicially with Linux on the scene. Databases are going that way. and it seems that the middle layer tools are heading that way, laszlo, j2EE, .NET. if you look at the industry the big players are heading upstream. they are doing applications. look at the companies that microsoft is buying, look at who oracle is buying. Based on this it seems that the Laszlo business model makes way more sense. get the tools out there, charge for applications built on top of it. 4. what a business wants is solutions to needs. no business user comes to us in IT and says, I need you to go buy a new development tool. They say I need to add this new feature or offering. I need to eliminate costs. etc. So even if I could spend 80k on a software package, at the end of the day once it is installed it does not solve a single problem for the business. 5. The people that endorse a technology and get it in the door, really do tie thier livelihood and future to the results of that decision. And it is really disconcering to those people who have put the well being of thier family on the line, to see the vendor act in flakey ways. raising prices, de-emphasiszing products, having massive bugs and memory leaks show up at the last minute, jeopordize project failure on really large projects with limited scalability, that maybe know but is glossed over because that is the plan for later. That makes people edgy. that is probably why you get really emotional responses to price change announcements. I have been pretty well rewarded for using cold fusion in the past. it is a great language. but a huge memory leak with handling of COM almost cost me dearly a few years back. it completely bucked under our real world load. the server crashed every 2 hours and needed to be rebooted. Macromedia opened a bug ID for it. it took almost 4 months to get a fix from them. in the meantime, I tracked down cfx_xslt. I contacted the developer, had him make a small mod. and it was completely resolved, no memory leak within 2 days from contacting him. charge for the product.. no kidding.. $49. I knwo someone at macromedia is cringing that he did not find out how deep my pockets might have been and charged me 100 times that amount. But the point of that story is that the bug almost made the entire project a failure, and the best support could do was a fix 4 months later. could flex do this to me? maybe. am i taking on some personal risk for the sake of this product. 100% yes. --Dennis
