Endless discussion on licensing and pricing (was: Standalones on el Capitan?)

Paul Dupuis paul at researchware.com
Mon May 2 08:56:46 EDT 2016


This really is a pointless discussion and I know people will find that
comment offensive and it is not intended to be.

For ANY product - even Free ones - there are people who will feel that
the "value" for the "cost" (whether that cost is money, time, whatever)
is not what it "should be". The higher the cost, the more people will
fall into this group.

For every organization delivering a product, that organization has to
make the product's cost vs value work for THEM. If they charge too
little, they go out of business. If they charge too much, no one buys
it. If they favor one market segment with huge discounts while others
pay a fortune, they piss off the segment paying the fortune or do not
make enough revenue due to the huge discounts

Organizations making products, unless they are complete idiots (and
hence would be out of business quickly), look at all their feedback. If
the are not pricing something a certain way, it because that way doesn't
work for them. Potential customer can (1) not buy anything; (2) find the
money to buy it, possibly waiting for a "sale"; or (3) waste time and
effort uselessly rehashing discussions that have long since taken place
(new people to lists are excused since they may never have seen prior
discussions).


We make a niche product for researchers, primary academic researchers.
We have separate pricing tiers for commercial users (retail price),
government users (a discount), educational institutions (a bigger
discount) and a special price for students (80% discount). I know we
loose sales because some students think our student price is still too
high and we loose some sales because our commercial users think they pay
too much compared to others. We price our products after careful review
of our markets, our competition's pricing, and what we need to do to not
loose money, but make a dollar or two. We have never lost a sale to
anyone who needed a better price who contacted us in private email to
ask for a better price, but we've never responded to public comments for
revisions to our pricing because pricing is complex and should never be
driven by arguments on a email list or forum.

Again, I don't mean to be offensive, but it just seems like people's
time would be better spend either contacting LiveCode private to try to
negotiate a price point for some need of theirs or spend the time coding
or learning a new xTalk feature or anything but arguing about pricing
and licensing yet again.






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