Big surprises and License models

[Jan Schenkel]

Hi All,

I remained silent during the debates over the new
license model ; however, the recent thread started by
Richmond made me realise that no one had yet tried to
explain the nature of the old and the new license
models.

DISCLAIMER:
this is an outsider's view, I'm affiliated with
neither MetaCard nor Revolution ; I'm merely applying
some business logic.


1) The old license model.

Important here is : where did MetaCard come from ?
Reading up on the history shows that MetaCard was
first built for Unix.
In such a world, maintenance contracts are the rule
rather than the exception -- IT managers wanting to
make sure they have the proper support and all that.
Hence the purchase fee + yearly renewal.
The advantage of such a license model is that MetaCard
was assured of a fixed income as long as the customers
were happy.
The started kit made perfect sense because it
generated interest and could attract new customers
without expensive marketing campaigns. And it didn't
cost MetaCard anything extra, as the software was
there anyway.

Newer versions added new platforms, and after a few
years, MetaCard entered the Windows and Mac markets.
However, the Windows- and Mac-worlds in general do not
have this same orientation towards maintenance
contracts : the focus is on buying a version and
upgrading when the new feature set warrants it.
And for these markets, 999$ + 299$ per year would make
the laymen in the IT-department twitch -- which is why
Revolution conceived the small-business edition.

The limitations of the starter kit also sounded a bit
strange to the people in these IT-departments with no
in-depth knowledge of the programming paradigm: after
all, who can write complete software in just ten lines
of code ?
To these people, clearly the traditional 30-day trial
version made a lot more sense.


2) The new license model

After the acquisition of MetaCard by Revolution, it
was the right time to review the license model as well
; and they constructed one that made very good
business sense.
- large companies still get the maintenance-contract
type Enterprise version with all the platforms.
- smaller companies can get the current version plus
the next and still compile for all platforms, using
the Studio edition.
- if you only want to build for a single platform,
grab the Express version -- personally I'm not too
sure about the 'Made With Revolution' splash, for the
same reasons as Chipp Walters.
- not to mention what Geoff pointed out in the first
week of the debates : you can mix and match Studio and
Express versions for testing and deployment purposes.
- and an _unrestricted_ Evaluation Edition opens up
_every_ corner of Revolution (including Oracle) for
those who want to get to know it, without the 'weird'
10 line limit.

All in all, this new license model gives everyone what
they wanted ; and the conversion of existing SBE and
Pro licenses to Commercial Studio and Commercial
Enterprise was the right way to make the transition
from the old to the new licensing model.

The only people left 'out in the cold' are those who
used the Starter Kit / Free Edition on a permanent
basis. But were they really 'mistreated' ?
In my opinion, no. They can still use every MetaCard /
Revolution version prior to the new license model,
until the end of time or it doesn't survive a new
version of the OS.

Want the latest and greatest ? Need the new features
?Scrape together the money -- in 1991, I dug into my
savings and bought myself a student copy of Think
Pascal for 160$, and was a happy camper for years.
Now, in retrospect there are a lot of things in my
student years that I should have done differently. But
if I compare the feature set of TP back then to what
Revolution offers today, I'd do it again. No doubt.

Just a few thoughts,

Jan Schenkel.

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)

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