Issue with Windows 10 Screen colors

Tue Jan 7 13:19:40 PST 2020

Pricing is black magic, I'll give you that.

Here's the double-edged sword:

Unless you're -very- fortunate, you have -either- high volume, -or- high
pricing.

If I know I'm only going to sell 10-30 copies, the price is a lot higher
than if I know I'll sell a few thousand.  It has to be.

Likewise, unlike many, I debug so thoroughly in-house that external bug
reports are rare.  Since it launched, I think I've had -one- external
bug report for OneGate, across all versions, which was -actually- a
legitimate bug.  That particular bug was fallout from a feature
requested by the same party, and had a 72hr turnaround time instead of
my usual 24hr turnaround time.  The complexity was just...ugh.  It was
not a pretty situation, because it was never designed to accommodate
that feature, originally.  I made it all work nicely in the end, though.

Point being, if you're competent, and things stay working without
interference for years at a time, and you're not in there every month
fixing bugs for a price, and you don't do the annual upgrade whether
they need it or not revenue stream, you -need- to price your software
higher.  And I do.  Companies run huge, huge percentages of their
operations on my software.  What I see is a one-off cost.  If I had it
to do over again, it would be a subscription, or there would be a
reporting and royalties situation.  Nobody likes that, but it would be
fairer.

Take credit card gateway integrations.  I'm no stranger to those.  If I
do one nowadays, I make sure that I charge a decent chunk on the up-front
implementation, because -if I'm lucky-, I'll maybe see $300 down the road
when TLS version restrictions and library limitations force some OS update
work which is out-of-scope of the product, yet necessary.  Because that's
pretty much the only time my stuff legitimately breaks, based on historical
patterns.  If they're going to be raking in money hand-over-fist for years
(and -especially- if they're in legal, debt collections, or medical), I
don't feel at all badly about charging a few more grand up-front for them
to have that opportunity, because it's the last money I'm going to see for
years on that, be it custom or canned, while they get fat with no further
outlay on that front.  If they're big enough to play with the big boys
on merchant accounts, they can afford to make it worth my while.

You can easily become a victim of your own efficiency, if you don't
think far enough ahead.  I've learned to think farther ahead, after
burning myself a few times.

Now there are things I would refuse to do.  I cannot conscientiously
withhold security patches for upgrade money.  And yet, I can name vendors
who have.  The original fpcgi 1.x to 2.x being a case in point, as I
recall.  The whole 1.x model is -FLAWED-, point-blank, from a security
standpoint.  2.x was given a new alternative model, but they didn't make it
the default, in the name of backwards compatibility.  (Meaning there were
insecure installations running on borrowed time, even after paying for the
fixed version.)  I find that a horrible, horrible practise I could never
defend or justify.

m->

On Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 03:59:09PM -0500, Microlite filePro Mail List via Filepro-list thus spoke:
> Well, I can only reply to what you write the way you write it.
> 
> Look, here are a couple of MY OPINIONS.
> 
> a)
> It is OK to have a difference of opinion and still like and respect each other. I happen to agree with Nancy Palmquist. You don't. There is nothing wrong with that, and no need to skewer each other. Civil discourse is actually a good thing. I bit back a little on your complete dismissal of my opinions, but that generally isn't me.
> 
> b)
> There is nothing easy about pricing a software product. The bits and bytes, once developed, cost nothing. How you much you charge to recoup the initial investment, cover current and future support and infrastructure costs, contribute to product development, and net in profit is more art than science. Everyone does it different.
> 
> Our clients seem to like the lower initial amount we charge, and value the extra features we add as we continue to make our products work with newer platforms. They understand that it costs money to do that, and don't mind paying for support subscriptions which happen to include upgrades and even cross-platform upgrades.
> 
> Some software vendors try to capture the revenue all at once with higher prices. Ok.
> 
> Some software development cost is defrayed as part of the hardware margin. No problem (if you sell hardware).
> 
> I don't really know how you sell your products or services, but I respect that you are welcome to do it any way that works for you.
> 
> So do what works for you, and let's all respect that others may do it differently. 
> 
> Tom Podnar
> Microlite Corporation
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fairlight via Filepro-list" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 3:01:35 PM
> Subject: Re: Issue with Windows 10 Screen colors
> 
> On Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 01:45:22PM -0500, Microlite filePro Mail List via
> Filepro-list thus spoke:
> > *** I got as far as paragraph three.  I would have expected nothing
> > more. Taking the time to completely read and understand opinions other
> > than your own does not appear to be in your general nature.
> 
> Let me rephrase:  I got as far as paragraph three before taking exception
> with your viewpoint.  I did actually read the entire post.  You simply
> invalidated any legitimacy you had early on.  You also don't know jack
> about me, man; I'm probably the only person I know who actually reads the
> contracts they sign, in their entirety.
> 
> > *** A few vendors from whom I used to purchase software started taking
> > your approach.  They're no longer my vendors.
> >
> > My flippant response to your flippant response would be that you have
> > no vendors, since no vendor I know would be jumping to make 20 year old
> > software work on modern platforms. That does not preclude the possibility
> > that one exists. Just that I don't know of one.
> 
> Funny...NVidia was still updating GeForce video drivers years after XP
> was EOL, while ATI (pre-AMD, at which point they actually got -worse-)
> screwed me five years early on Windows 2000 when they dropped support
> for Catalyst drivers.
> 
> Guess who my video card vendor is, and who will never see a
> non-integrated purchase from me again in my lifetime.  (And then only in
> gear which has no NVidia version, like an XBox or PlayStation.  Laptops,
> I'll go out of my way to find an NVidia version.)
> 
> > *** By your logic, it would be acceptable to keep wallet-raping someone
> > every time there's a new major update to Win10, since that's now their
> > equivalent of a new OS version.  You try that, and let us know how it
> > works for you.  
> > 
> > Actually, my "logic" says that whenever changes caused by
> > an operating system vendor break out-of-support software, the vendor is
> > entitled to compensation to remediate the problem, as it is extra work
> > that costs money to engineer and provide. But you are certainly free to
> > misinterpret that in any fashion you desire. I won't try to stop you.
> 
> In an ideal world, that'd be nice.  It's an imperfect universe.
> 
> The only thing you've done is reinforce the idea that I'm doing it
> correctly.  I may at times need to charge someone for the time spent
> getting their copy working (without upgrading them), but I've never
> force-fed someone a full upgrade cost when I could make the old version
> work for less money.
> 
> Yeah, I take a hit off of what I -could- be making.  Strangely enough,
> people keep coming back.
> 
> > > Your choices are:  1 - Keep it running on a platform that supports what
> > > you purchased. Our agreement is intact.  2 - Purchase whatever I've got
> > > that runs on the platform you want to switch to.  3 - Buy something
> > > else.
> > >
> > > It costs the vendor a lot of engineering time and money to support
> > > the newer platform.  If you've gotten your money's worth on the old
> > > product, you are likely to want the new product and be willing to pay
> > > for it. If not, there is always door #3.
> 
> Oh look...my shirt's turning read.  I believe that's my heart bleeding
> for you.  "Cost of doing business."  I've sucked up enough
> well-past-sale patches that I'm entitled to say that with a straight
> face.  Ask anyone who's gotten a fix from me years later, even if I had
> to install a whole new devkit -and- update the code to make it happen.
> 
> Hah...no, it doesn't work that way in the real world.  Witness the sheer
> volume of people who refuse to be blackmailed into upgrading past 5.0.14.
> 
> Look up "perpetual" in the dictionary.  The expectation is that it keeps
> working indefinitely.  You're veering closer to planned obsolescence,
> the true Apple way.
> 
> Your attitude at point #3 tells me all I need to know about never buying
> (or recommending) MicroLite.  That's on top of never having been
> impressed with it at client sites.  Just icing on the proverbial cake.
> I mean, seriously, point #3, could you seriously come closer to saying,
> "Or they could just fuck off?"  Cos you pretty much did just about that,
> in not so many words.  That's some awesome self-advertising, there!  :)
> 
> And no, I'm -not- likely to want the new product after being shafted on
> the old product.  I'm extremely likely to have a bitter taste in my mouth,
> and hold a decades-long grudge, going out of my way to anti-recommend
> the vendor in perpetuity.  Did it with Adaptec.  Did it with ATI.  There
> have been others.  
> 
> I'm only a Native Instruments customer because it's -the- industry standard
> for sample libraries, but believe me, I hate the hell out of them as a
> corporation.  Fair enough software, if designed extremely short-sightedly
> (10+ years from Kontakt 5 to 6, and the damned UI is still raster, not
> vector, and barely useable at 4K resolutions), but a -horrible-, horrible
> company with which to do business.  There's no acceptable substitute for
> Adobe, so likewise choiceless.
> 
> If there were actual fully-fledged alternatives (and no, GIMP doesn't
> cut it, nor do most NLE video editors), believe me, I'd be far, far
> away from Adobe CC. iZotope is the vendor currently making themselves a
> self-inflicted casualty of their "bundle" pricing games which purport to
> save you money, while they actually screw you over.  I've gone from buying
> virtually everything on release day, to planning on waiting a couple years,
> doing one last 'everything' upgrade for the resizable UIs once they get
> -all- of their product line in order, doing it on the biggest discount
> sale I can find, as a giant, "THAT's for being unreasonable," and having
> done.  Plenty of other vendors out there who do what they do, barring two
> specialised programs I will upgrade each version, if the features are
> compelling.
> 
> NI screwed me over to the tune of $495 when I first got into them.  I
> gave them a chance to make it right, and they took a pass.  They have
> lost -thousands- in sales to me that they otherwise would have had,
> because again, I tend to jump on new releases.  Now?  Having been burned
> by their business practises (and their -horrible- 'support')??  Now I
> wait 2-4 years, and upgrade Komplete Ultimate for $200, and that's all
> they see from me unless I absolutely positively want a new release
> -NOW-, enough to overcome the vendetta they've generated.  For the sake
> of $495, they've boned themselves out of probably $5k+ by now.  That's
> what happens when you screw over the customer and make it clear you
> don't care in the least.
> 
> I'm -far- more likely to find new vendor, if there's a choice.  There's no
> shortage, unless it's a very specialised task.  The only ones I grudgingly
> stay with after an experience like that are ones with an absolute monopoly
> on the featureset.
> 
> > > I'm going to have to agree with Nancy here. I'm well aware of
> > > development costs for volume software.
> 
> And I'm not?  Right.  And there's actually -less- of a cost for 'volume'
> software, given that the volume is actually there.  You can amortise that
> out across a much bigger ROI than you can smaller-scale sales.  You're not
> helping your case; with each sentence, you're literally diminishing my
> ability to look at it and not laugh.
> 
> m->
> -- 
> Audio panton, cogito singularis.
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-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.