I have dozens of apps and development tools, paid for and legal over the
last 15 yrs +-, that either the company went away, or the product is no
longer supported, or it was bought by a bigger company and it's
'technology' became part of a bigger $1000 'suite'. In all cases,
problems occurred because of new OSes, conflicts with other, newer
software, or problems with new hardware and some help or update was
needed. I don't care what the customer is being told, when the board or
the founder decides to sell or close the doors, you will probably get
screwed. End of story.

The bigger vendors and customers enter into code escrow deals. Critical
processes should not be built around small-time PC programs. If you can
manage your margins with a $100 per yr support or renewal fee, and the
vendor raises it to $10,000 per yr, then if it's critical, you're stuck
for some time paying it and YOUR business is in jeopardy. Same thing if
the vendor disappears... Plus all of the retraining expenses.

We look first at open source these days and have been quite happy.
Buying that great tool from some small vendor is our last resort. We
also partition processes out so that one bad vendor could be worked
around and doesn't control everything. It has kept costs down over time,
and our risk exposure is much less.

>From a vendor point of view, consider what business you are in. If I
remember, you said you developed something in-house, and now were going
to offer it to others. Do you build widgets, or build software? Two
different businesses, although widget makers seem to think the road to
being a software company is lined with gold! The truth is the road to
Hell is lined with software companies! ;)  If your customers number in
the hundreds or few thousands, you may not get a return on your
investment in support costs, packaging, development, etc, even if it's a
high ticket item.

I also wouldn't believe that piracy is as big as Microsoft would have
you believe. It isn't reasonable to count how many PCs exist, subtract
how many licenses of the latest OS have sold, and conclude the result is
pirated copies and lost revenue. In many cases of actual piracy, the
person couldn't afford it and would not have been a customer anyway. Yes
they're getting the benefit, but it isn't a 'lost sale'. There's also
folks who LIKE the older versions, etc. If it's specialized software,
and the customers are corporations, very few would be looking for hacks
or cracks to steal it. However, it does come down to departments doing
the actual buying and having the need, so if the terms and costs are
onerous, they will find ways to play in any 'gray area' as you may see
it, like sharing copies internally within the department. In many cases
it's a value perception as well - if 3 people use the software on 3
machines for 1 hour per week on different machines, and the 3 machines
are not one machine because it's more convenient to the people involved
to have their own stations, then there is motivation to circumvent
having to buy 2 more $1000 licenses for the others. They still aren't
using it beyond 1 license worth of utility. There is more motivation to
cheat as the arbitrary license terms depart from the benefit it brings
to the customer. In reality, the OS is probably the only piece that
could be rationally protected to ensure each PC had a unique copy. Even
a word processor could be set up on one machine and a process made to
use it only there. It used to be that the logic behind licenses bought
by the company were based on concurrent users. If I set it up on 2
stations - Jim's so he could work on it on Mondays in his office, and
Jane's, so she could work on it in her office and not in Jim's on
Fridays, I'm within one license. It's the company that bought it, and
actually, only getting 2/5 of the potential use of the product. Where
they put it is the customer's business. It COULD be set up on one
station in the hallway, but that's not how we conduct our business.

Somewhere along the line, abject greed set in, and I'm waiting for
license terms that say I can only use it while standing on my head
(perfectly legal to add) or I have to pay more.

IF you're not a software company, and if your 'market' could have
something to add, you might consider releasing it as open source. Your
costs for support and sales and all would not exist, and the payback
would be contributions from customers and others to improve it, which
you then would benefit from in your own core business. There are lots of
variations, including open source and selling support contracts,
variations on maintaining control, controlling derivative works, etc. If
it's a technical audience, it works best too. You will get fixes for
things that haven't even affected you yet in your own house, before they
impact your own business.

You also reinforce the fact that you're a widget company first, and good
enough at it that you can show off some of your internal tools, rather
than a wannabee software company making widgets until you can sell
enough software to get out of that business....

-Skip

> No clue, have seen quite a few dongles just "stop". On top of that is
> new OS's not working with the dongles (and the company not releasing new
> drivers since the software I'm using is "no longer supported"),
> companies only offering lpt dongles (despite that port being gone from
> most PCs), poor drivers (problems like what people here have described
> with regards to ICD2 drivers). The BIGGEST issue is you have to hope and
> pray that the company continues to exist. Have encountered problems with
> dongles and then discovered the company went belly up, so zero support.
> All of a sudden the thousands of dollars we've spent on a piece of
> software, and the hundreds or thousands of man hours spent learning the
> software, is down the drain.
>   
>   

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