Tony mused: >Colin wrote: >> This meant that we went with the free Uni-OLEDB interface. >> Which worked fine for us.
I guess free was a poor word. "Already included" may be better. It used to be an extra cost option but it was later included in the base price. >That's a very good point that I never thought of, though here >we are after a >year in production and it's still at 1.x - I sort of doubt >this will be an >issue if a developer discusses this with RD up-front. A >clause for this >applies to most software that's sold. Good to hear. When I was looking at this it was not long after everyone in CDP was complaining about the new 50% upgrade price RD put in. We just didn't want to have to worry about building the uncertainty of upgrade pricing into our sales model. IBM's SMA includes all upgrades. We would either have to build the upgrade price into our fees or pass it onto our clients at the time of the upgrade. It's tough to tell clients that the yearly maintenance only covers (primarily) fixes to the code they've already bought and if they want the new version they have to pay more. Especially when our pricing has always included new versions. >It's very difficult for anyone to compete with "free" (as in beer). The >free software juggernaut should compel vendors to ensure that their >commercial software is especially worthy of the fee being >asked. I've seen lots of free software that wasn't worth the fee being asked. The biggest problem with "free" is that there is very little to no control. Sure, if you have the source you could make your own changes (if you can) but then you have to make sure you re-incorporate them into every new version you use. If there are multiple version of the software (see Linux) then things can really get complicated. > But on one >hand we have commercial vendors who don't quite get that >concept yet, or >they don't do the marketing to support their product, relying >on just saying >it's "good" to make sales. And on the other hand we have many >developers >who don't care or don't know about features and only pay >attention to the >price tag. I often wonder just how much these factors hold >our market back >compared to more mainstream offerings. I think most "pick" developers are used to being able to do everything in basic and since everything could be done in basic then they should be able to do everything for themselves. We're not used to buying "components". Besides I think there are a number of reasons "holding back" many pick developers. Well, that's way too much for a Tuesday morning after a long weekend.... -- Colin Alfke Calgary, Alberta Canada "Just because something isn't broken doesn't mean that you can't fix it" Stu Pickles ------- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.u2ug.org/listinfo/u2-users
