I agree with Jeroen in that you might lose a *huge* audience by not making
this exciting technology affordable to your average joe.  That's what
they did back in 1980... Brought the exciting technology of this
"computer" thing (that used to cost 25K and only the govt. and big big
business could afford) and put one of these suckers on the desk of homes,
small offices, and schools.    

Which brings me to my next point...   I'm still in school at Cal Poly,
SLO.  I've been lucky enough to have been exposed to this rippin'
technology and I will swear up and down by it because I know it's
powerful as all heck, it's scalable, and it's easily to use/maintain.
Right now I can play with it at educational prices, but what about
when I graduate next year?  I'm looking for contract work and I'm going to
have a really hard time convincing small companies that they need this.
I might know that WO privdes scalability that ColdFusion or ASP doesn't,
but I'm a little rusty at the jedi mind-trick, and won't find many
customers that will believe that a scalable upgrade path is worth 25K.

Furthermore, if everyone thought about projects in the depth that I've
seen in some of the email messages, the software-world would be a much
better place.  This just isn't the reality for small businesses who are
trying to get a slice of the pie and these are the people experimenting
with WO as an alternative to ASP, dead-end Fusion, or custom code. 

Believe me, three of my friends and I *could* write a tool that served up
WebApplications is a manner similar to WO and we'd be happy to do it for
$5K a piece. (Especially after living off top ramen and cold pizza for
four years).  The client would get the tool and their
WebApplication development done for less than the cost of the software one
would otherwise need to just get out of the starting gate.   

So Apple, if you're listening, please remember the small people... It was
us that never lost faith.  Aim WebObjects to be an entry- to mid-level
tool that introduce people to the concept of three-tier application
architecture and charge the big bucks for redundant fail-over versions of
the server software and better EJB support and load-balancing.  That's
where you can get away with a huge sticker price...  If they can afford a
bunch of E10000 servers, they won't blink at $25K or $50K for software. 

- John "Will Code for Options" Taylor


On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, Jeroen Clarysse wrote:

> ok, you're right... no self-made app at $25K can do anything near WO (if
> you see that microsoft is throwing millions at their own server soft and
> can't do it properly...)
> 
> the point I was trying to make is : what soft can I use for $10K projects
> that can not justify a $25K budget increase ?
> 
> 
> WebObjects simply can NOT justify its cost for small projects, but
> unfortunately, the 50tpm limit screws up these small projects (small
> projects do not generate less hits or transactions !)
> 
> apple should realize that SMALL BUDGET != FEW TRANSACTIONS and come up with
> a financing scheme for small to medium projects.
> 
> 
> what alternatives do we have on OSX server besides WO that a $10K project
> can afford ?
> because : Put it like you want, but the majority of *small* developers can
> not compete in $100K+ deals. We have to live off off small deals, and apple
> is leaving us in the cold with its financing scheme.
> 
> 
> jeroen
> 
> 
> 

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