Product idea re. fP and Windows

[Fairlight]

With neither thought nor caution, Bob Rasmussen blurted:
> 
> PROBLEM: FilePro on Windows can not interact with other Windows software 
> in any way other than command-line utilities (no DDE, OLE, DLL, script 
> interface, etc. support). This prevents many kinds of interaction that 
> would prove beneficial. Case in point is the recent request for modem 
> dialer support. 
> 
> HOWEVER #1: FilePro CAN do socket operations.

fP can also do serial port work with OUTS, et al, can it not?  I guess the
question is, who has a more robust implementation, and can yours do USB
where theirs likely does not?

[snip]

> And in a wider scope, such a program could be configured to answer socket 
> calls from DIFFERENT machines on the network (with proper safeguards, of 
> course).
> 
> What do you think?

It's my opinion that fP's architecture is not conducive to a robust
server implementation by its very design?  That precludes a lot of the
server-oriented stuff from being extremely stable in HA environments.

Besides that, though, you have to look at what you're basing this premise
on; namely, you're basing it on their sockets license addon.  I just
looked at their pricing, and it's $995 per 5 users, minimum 5 user blocks
according to their web site.  You're talking about an additional $200/user
to be able to dial a phone, eject a disc, or any of the other things you
mentioned.  That's pretty significant middleware overhead per user for
tasks that really don't seem to be worth that cost, IMHO.

I think when you break it down by what people will be willing to pay for
functionality, it's not going to make financial sense to develop based on
their implementation of sockets.  I just can't see enough people going for
it at fP-Tech's pricing to make this viable, myself.

I'm not saying -nobody- would go for it, but I can't see it being high
enough a volume to justify development.  I can see some cases where it
might be people's only option and they'd jump at it.  How often will that
happen with those costs involved?  That's the bottom line commercially.

I'll be bluntly honest:  This makes 320% less sense than bundling ssh into
Anzio Lite, which you at one point (I could look it up in the archives)
told me would never happen due to support costs.  Obviously that happened,
but it made sense that you should eventually change your mind.  But here,
you're talking about something catering design towards one product in
particular, which is a niche program whose community is a notoriously hard
sell, with significantly lower volume than you'd get in general for ssh in
your flagship product.  And with that tiny, tiny volume you'd probably be
incurring a lot of support costs dealing with people that aren't used to
dealing with socket programming at all.  I doubt even making it a premium
support channel would justify development costs.

By all pragmatic considerations, what you propose should be a non-starter.

No offense.  I just can't see it flying.  This falls into the category I
usually hit:  Decent idea, but not near marketable enough.

And largely, this is due to fP-Tech charging in 5.6 for something that
actually existed in the last few versions of 5.0.xx.  They're killing their
own opportunities to be interoperable by being hamfisted with their
marketing and sales, IMHO.  If it was actually active by default, I'd have
a different take on the whole thing--although I'd still say the volume
would be negligible enough to make it questionable.  But it would make an
easier sell.

Using fP for devs these days is like being sold your car piece by piece,
but worse.  You'll get the frame, body, engine, transmission stock.  Oh,
you wanted to be able to stop?  Brakes are extra.  Wait, you want to be
able to signal to other users?  Turning signals and horn are extra, but
you'll need to buy the optional electrical system.  By the way, those are
only licensed by 5-highway blocks.  If you drive on more than five roads,
you've got to purchase additional seats for each road you drive on in
five-road blocks.  For each subsystem.

You get the idea.

Bests,

mark->
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