More fP sockets pricing insanity

[Fairlight]

Only Kenneth Brody would say something like:
> 
> The website also doesn't clarify the fact that filePro will, in
> fact, run on a Friday the 13th under a full moon.

True.  :)

> Now, if you had told me that you got the misconception based on
> something from the website, or even from something that fPTech
> had said, I would agree that the website should do something to
> correct it.  To say that the website should clarify something
> that, until now, no one has ever said (AFAIK), is asking a bit
> much, don't you think?

Not really.  The problem is that "user" has been a nebulous and often
misleading term when used in the context of fP.  SYSTEM() calls to clerk
or report prior to 5.6 are one issue.  Concurrent use of those programs
under multiplexors other than FacetWin are another; Bud, in a move that I
consider sheer ignorance, flat-out told Jay publicly that screen(1) will
never be supported as a single user--that's in the list archives for anyone
that cares to look.  

There -is- a history here that basically amounts to, "Any time 'something'
accesses fP, even if it's fP itself, it's considered a 'user'."  And
5.6 being so new and hardly adopted yet, it isn't enough to reverse a
multiple-decade-long historical trend entrenched in the minds of the
community.

So when someone says "user" under filePro, one could very, very easily draw
the conclusion that anyone accessing a server written in fP using sockets
is one "user" per connection, given the past glazing over of certain
aspects of user count.  In fact, both the examples above did in fact lead
me to assume that the standard long-standing policy was being propogated to
the "new product" (management will -never- live down the licensing of the
sockets API separately when it's become well known that it existed prior
to 5.6, let's be honest here--more than a few people are ticked, including
at least one hardcore loyalist).  Judging by roughly 80% of past practise
(I'll give credit for SCO console and FacetWin), it was a fairly reasonable
conclusion for anyone familiar with the history of "user counts" under the
application as viewed by TPTB.

Following years of questionable-to-lousy management decisions (subjectively
speaking), it's very easy to assume the worst in a case like this unless
it's explicitly stated to the contrary.  I know I did, and that's in spite
of a trend towards softening my stance on a lot of things regarding fP over
the last several years.

So to answer your question, yes, I feel if they want to avoid such
misunderstandings, it behooves them to state the specs outright and
verbosely.  Inadvertantly or not, they've misled people for years on the
user count issue; there's no reason to further shoot themselves in the foot
just by being nebulous.

mark->
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