Express to Dreamcard was RE: scrollbar problems

[Alex Tweedly]

At 06:48 22/07/2004 -0700, Richard Gaskin wrote:

>Alex Tweedly wrote:
>
>>At 06:04 22/07/2004 -0700, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>>>As for the licensing stuff, I haven't yet read a post from Kevin 
>>>describing what will happen with license holders for the 
>>>about-to-be-end-of-lifed Express (did I miss it?).
>>Yes, it's in the FAQ mentioned in Kevin's announcement email
>>    An FAQ on the changes to Express can be found here:
>>    http://www.runrev.com/express/expresstodreamcard.shtml
>...
>>Well, just 10 days ago I bought my first license - Express plus a one 
>>year update bundle.
>>Now I find that there will be no updates on the product I bought.
>>Tell me again  - why should I be happy about it ?
>
>If I read the URL you posted correctly, it seems you're moving up to 
>Studio for the price of Express.  Doesn't sound all that bad.

Not quite. The way I read it, I'll have the opportunity to movie up to 
Studio in 11-1/2 months from now; in the meantime, I'll have only Dreamcard.
Or, alternatively, I take the Studio update now (and just lose the 11-1/2 
months of updates I already purchased).  (If I read the FAQ correctly).

And, of course, I didn't really want, far less need, Studio.  I chose 
Express because it gave me what I wanted at a price I can afford.

>Sure beats having a product end-of-lifed with no upgrade option at all, 
>like Apple did to its HyperCard customers and Adobe did to its LiveMotion 
>customers.  Both companies had spent years selling the products at their 
>sites while no product development was happening, concealing their 
>internal plans to nix them from the buying public -- how can the consumer 
>exercise caveat emptor without fair disclosure from the vendor?  Between 
>the two, only Adobe eventually came clean and announced end-of-life for 
>LiveMotion.  To date, the last official word on HyperCard from any Apple 
>employee was Steve Jobs' comment at CAUSE '98 in which he said that 
>"rumors that we've killed HyperCard are bullsh*t".  I guess one needs tall 
>boots in Cupertino <g>.

Sure - that's one reason that I'm not an Apple customer.

>At least with Rev you can safely walk barefoot on clean grass; Kevin & 
>Co's being up-front about end-of-lifing Express puts them in a very rare 
>category among software vendors.  Maintaining the Express price for Studio 
>seems a pretty good move for both them and Express license holders.

I don't see how they're being entirely "up-front" about it. I purchased a 
year's updates to Express on the expectation that there were going to be 
some. There aren't. Now I know that the year's update doesn't actually 
specify whether there will be any updates or not - but my expectation was 
that there would be.

Kevin and Co are being much, much better about it than many other companies 
have been in the past - but that still doesn't make it "OK" to sell 
something and then not deliver it. They're NOT maintaining the Express 
price for me - they're giving  me a one-off discount to maintain it for 12 
months - thereafter I would pay the full Studio rates.

Let me be clear - this is not a "terrible" thing that they're doing - in 
fact, compared to most companies, it's a pretty generous offer. But 
nevertheless, none of the options available to me now look as good as the 
one I thought I had yesterday morning, or the one I thought I was 
purchasing last week. So I'm disappointed, but it ain't that big a deal for me.

>>(And I won't even mention the fact that I bought it in the UK, at 40% 
>>more than the USD prices we generally talk about).
>
>Why does Rev cost more in the UK?  I had thought that when making credit 
>card purchases the price shown in USD is adjusted to current local 
>exchange rates by the card broker, no?

No, there are separate prices.

There's a short explanation, a medium explanation and a long explanation.

Short answer:  "Alex, you're exaggerating, it's only 25% more"
Because  they need to charge VAT to EU residents and companies, the actual 
price difference is 25% not 40%.

Medium answer: "Most companies will recover the VAT anyway"
Most of RunRev's sales are (I imagine) to other companies, and EU companies 
are basically unaffected by the VAT cost. The VAT component shows up in 
those companies' VAT cost account, so they effectively don't care too much. 
Only small businesses (below the VAT registration threshold)  and consumers 
are really affected - and they are a very small part of Runrev's customer 
base. (Though maybe not such a small part of the target customer base, 
especially for Dreamcard)

Long answer: "Taxes are complicated enough, it's nearly impossible to be 
'fair' "
Any company operating internationally has to deal with countries using a 
variety of tax strategies, direct vs indirect, included in prices vs added 
to prices, sales tax vs VAT, etc., as well as with the issues of tax 
collection. The cost of Runrev's development work (I presume largely 
UK-based) includes a significant UK-tax portion - and that should (IMO) be 
amortized against all sales revenue; that would give a pro-ration smaller 
than the effective cost of charging full VAT to EU customers only.

However, that would require UK (and/or EU) prices to be lower than 
US/international prices to be fair - and that is so likely to be unpopular 
that they'd be crazy to do it.

So the short answer is close to correct - there is an argument that I 
should have said 25% more expensive rather than 40% - but that's a bit of 
an oversimplification. I'd be happy to split the difference and ask ... Why 
are the UK prices 35 -35% more than US prices ?

Now - about the way 2.5B1 actually works .....  on to more interesting topics.

-- Alex.
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