Rev_rant part 4

[Chipp Walters]

Richard,

I respectfully disagree with some of the points made.

Dave specifically stated:
>>
The problem is that when they read the sales small print (in this case)
and see support is not included.
<<

I believe he was referring to his company's Enterprise developers and
management when he said it.

Support fees are widespread in Enterprise-- especially in software
development. If you code in Xcode and need support, you pay Apple a yearly
support fee. If you code in Visual Studio and you need the upgrades for
MSDN, you pay over $2K per year. It is typical for Enterprise customers to
pay 10% or more in yearly support and maintenance fees for all types of
sofware.

That said, many software toolkits automatically include the price of
"Standard Support and Maintenance" with the first year of purchase. I
imagine Rev doesn't do this because they are trying to hit a very low
pricepoint. They may wish to rethink that decision. TrollTech, another
cross-platform development toolset, includes 1-year support and maintenance
plan, but just see how expensive they are:

(You may want to make sure you are sitting down)

http://www.trolltech.com/support/support/standard
and
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pricing

The thought that the small price of Rev's support/maintance program would
throw Enterprise customers off, perhaps tells more about the customers than
Rev's pricing strategies.

In anycase, I agree with your premise of supporting applications you author.
That said, supporting WebMerge vs RunRev is two different levels of
activity. Heck, just providing support for altSQLite and altBrowser kept
Chris quite busy!