Sale Strategy

[Fairlight]

That's not the industry trend, though.

Look at -any- of the RAD kits for mobile apps.  From LiveCode to...well,
any of them.  I've searched extensively, and anything worth having is now
a subscription model.  As long as you're making money off of their engine,
they get a cut in some way, shape, or form.

The software industry as a whole seems to be going in that direction.  When
I consider the credit card processing gateway integration scenario, I have
to say I don't disagree with it.  Why should we as developers get one
small turn at the revenue trough, when the profit is ongoing indefinitely
and continuously for the customer?  I don't even consider that greed; I
consider it striving for equity.  Doubly so when I conscientiously write my
software to be ultra-stable, so that I'm not in having to patch it every
other week or month like a lot of vendors do.  It's usually one-and-done,
but why should my revenue stream from that project end when the customers'
continues indefinitely?  And who runs a business and doesn't want to
maximise ROI?  That's all moving to the subscription model as a developer
is, is maximising and extending the ROI.

In the case of runtimes, it -is- more like royalties than a CD or book,
because new licenses need to be instantiated for each runtime seat.  It's
more like covering a song, and needing to pay the original artist royalties
every time you perform it at a new venue.  It's not handing down the
original license at all.

In the case of simple software, often with transferrable licenses (let's
take Cubase as an example), then yeah, it's more like a physical good.

Now, what I -do- think is bullshit is charging someone to transfer
their license between OSes at the same version.  That's always been a
questionable practise.  That's almost as bad as charging $25-50 for a
character name change in an MMORPG.  (Yes, companies do that.)

m->


On Fri, Apr 06, 2018 at 01:56:18PM -0400, Brian K. White thus spoke:
> I accidentally sent to both you and the list, but the list never got
> to see the original, including why I equate filepro with a hammer in
> at least some cases, IE, users who aren't actually getting any new
> value after the initial purchase, in the form of bugfixes or service
> or new features. It IS like music, like a CD. I can play a CD or
> read a book as many times as I want and hand it down for generations
> and make all the backup copies I want, and none of that is in any
> way committing any form of theft from the artist or performer or
> distributor.
> 
> -- 
> bkw
> 
> 
> On 04/06/2018 01:00 PM, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> >On Fri, Apr 06, 2018 at 12:47:29PM -0400, Brian K. White thus spoke:
> >>>Point out the fact that they're -still- making out like bandits, and they
> >>>have been for 36 years.  Have they been paying a lease on that software for
> >>>three and a half decades?  No?  Then they're making out like bandits.
> >>
> >>When my grandfather bought a hammer in 1920, and I still have it
> >>today, we aren't bandits who deprived the hammer manufacturer of
> >>livelihoods.
> >
> >There's a difference, though.  A hammer is a physical good.  IP is entirely
> >another creature.  I chose the music recording industry as a baseline
> >comparison for a reason:  royalties are a legitimate revenue stream.
> >
> >>I don't cry for poor filepro at all. The only reason we still use it
> >
> >Nor I, per se.  I'm just saying that if it's truly a viable market model
> >(and Adobe, East/West, Microsoft, and several other notables seem to
> >indicate that it is), then anyone should be able to do it.  To -not- do it
> >is to get burned.  If I'm going to say I should be able to do it, then I
> >have to be able to say fP Tech should be able to do it.
> >
> >>is not because it's so awesome nothing else can do the job thus
> >>proving it's value. At this point every single seat license is pure
> >>duress. All the years of code investment are utterly unportable to
> >>anything else, and so there is no way to continue using your OWN
> >>code that you wrote yourself, without paying filepro, and the
> >>process of migrating is essentially 100% loss starting over, which
> >>means it takes a long time, which means you have to keep paying
> >>filepro for a long time after you no longer actually want their
> >>product. It's the worst example of a trap. It's the poster child for
> >>why it's worth paying twice, three, ten times as much in development
> >>costs to invest in "free" software, just to avoid this trap.
> >
> >The runtime license cost does make a bitter pill.  I could fully see the
> >development licenses going subscription, but move to a freely available
> >runtime like dBase did (and I think Filemaker Pro does, although I'd have
> >to look it up).
> >
> >That said, if you look at it in a certain light, knowing you're getting
> >zero percent ongoing return from something which is driving 90%+ of
> >someone's very lucrative enterprise is also a bitter pill.  That applies to
> >my own software, or any developer who writes enterprise-grade software.
> >
> >m->
> >
> 
> 

-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.