Professional or "novice user": the best of both worlds?

[David Bovill]

On 29 Oct 2005, at 01:11, Dan Shafer wrote:

> I think the answer is yes but this opens a whole can of worms about  
> how to position, package, price and market Rev, whether for the  
> audience you and I see or for the professional programmer. RunRev  
> tries to both and I don't think that can be done well. At least  
> I've never seen it done well.

I think they have done a great job taking an essentially unix based  
vertical market tool and packaging it for first time and semi- 
professional users. However as you point out this is hard to combine  
with the professional end of the market. Problem being that if there  
is no commercial / professional end then the new users won't take the  
time and investment to learn it!

<rant type="positive">
-
Another reason to let go a little of the professional end of the  
market. Re-introduce the ability to license the full source code,  
take a positive and clear stance on open source, and provide a clear  
direction for developers to build and extend the toolset provided by  
the Rev IDE but for other business sectors. Open source code  
developed in this market can be packaged and sold as professionally  
documented and supported components, or bundled with the IDE. A  
ransom model would allow developers to "go ahead" finish a tool - and  
if RunRev perceived a clear market for it - pay the ransom as a  
monthly subscription - and open source it after the ransom was met.  
There are many other business models for this sort of community  
development. Opening things up a little, and giving a clear  
direction, would allow us to experiment a little here to try out the  
best models.

That way they can concentrate on selling the flow of sustainable  
benefits from the professional markets, and package them nicely into  
the worlds most powerful well documented and easy to use cross  
platform development environment - for those users who just want a  
tool that works.
-
</rant>