Mirye Runtime Revolution Moving to Monthy Issue Releases; First Release 808

[Lynn Fredricks]

> OK, then perhaps a different explanation might be of use, 
> since I am not one of your customers, and I still don't get it.

Mirye sells Revolution too, but we are putting out a kind of update every
month, and that includes additional benefits for customers. We don't change
the software itself, but we can add stuff to the collective product. Also,
there will be news and articles. It's a sort of magazine style release that
provides additional benefits over a shorter amount of time.

Most dev tool vendors follow a standard release method of releasing a X.0
major release, then doing a series of minor releases over X amount of time.
That X amount of time isnt always uniform, although at least one other
vendor does lock step their releases that way. So you have 2.8, 2.8.1,
2.8.2, 2.9, etc.

Our approach is similar to how to some digital media tool vendors work. The
core product is released and updated, but there are
updates/additions/improvements of other things which are not core to the
product. This has the advantage of making a time based update plan more
valuable, because you can expect useful items each month.

Compare two release methods of "subscriptions" you are likely already
familiar with: antivirus software and your favorite word processor.

Your word processor may have come with X amount of time you'll get free
updates. Or, you may be entitled to all minor updates for a specific
version. Or both. For example, if you bought Word 2003 shortly before Word
2007 came out, you may have gotten a free upgrade. But if you bought Word
2003 a year ago, you got X number of updates during the lifetime of Word
2003.

Now look at anti-virus software. Its probably updated near to a weekly
schedule (esp if you are running a windows box!), so you can get a
meaningful "value" even a few times a week during the 1 year subscription
period.

When you get Revolution with no early update, you get 3 months of updates.
How many updates is that? It could be none, or it could be three. That's
either lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it. Our new release
method makes sure you get something useful for each month of updates you
have coming, even if the core software itself is updated irregularly, often
or not at all. It also gives us a way to engage customers more by way of
feedback on whats provided, and simply just asking, what else they'd find
useful for their projects - this doesn't remove the value of formal surveys
either of course.

If Revolution wasn't a great product at integrating such a variety of
sources (data, images, video, audio, etc) and more like Visual Basic, this
wouldn't work all that well. Fortunately Revolution is very appealing to
rich media developers and designers (as well as more traditional application
programmers) and this is a good approach.

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
Mirye Software Publishing
http://www.mirye.com

Mirye Community NING
http://miryesoftware.ning.com