FreeLists / 4d_rad / [4d_rad] Re: connectivity licensing solves problem??

[Richard Wright <rwright@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steven Horst 11/22/2000 3:45 PM

>
>It's been growing on me in the past 24 hours that, IF the real issue for 4D 
>is loss of corporate sales due to folks making thousands of copies of 
>merged applications as Oracle front-ends, I don't see why the solution to 
>this need abandon unlimited licensing of Engine or Productivity Plug-Ins at 
>all.
>
>What is the problem with a simpler solution than the one on my website: 
>namely, revert to unlimited licensing of Engine, Write, Draw, but keep the 
>new scheme of charging for each copy of 4D Oracle and 4D ODBC.  Adjust 
>prices so that the latter get what the market will bear from the corporate 
>installation market and the former will allow the consumer-product 
>shrinkwrap market to grow.  Indeed, I would think that it would be 
>psychologically easier to sell your corporate clients on spending, say, 
>$200 for each copy of 4D Oracle than $100 for each copy of 4D Oracle plus 
>$60 for each copy of Engine and $40 for each copy of Write.  I.e., decide 
>what you need for these corporate installations and roll it into one fee.
>
>Unless 4D's real intent is to squeeze more out of the small-application RAD 
>developer (which they seem to disavow), this would seem to solve the issue 
>in one swoop.  And it's very unclear whether the alternative would actually 
>generate more money from us or drive us away altogether.
>
>Am I onto something here, or am I missing something?
>================================================================
>Steven Horst, Founder and President
>IntelliGents, LLC -- Essential Software for the Academic Community
>http://www.intelli-gents.com
>
>
Several years ago, my company made the
decision to take our existing 4D database and move it to Oracle, but
keeping 4D as the front end and using 4D Engine to compile and distribute.
The reason had nothing to due with saving money in 4D licensing as we are
paying significantly more with Oracle. Rather, the reason was based on
reliability, speed and capacity. We were having daily problems with Server
crashes, many of which occured during the flushing of the cache, which as
you know, requires a rebuild by tags or the resetting of the flag that
allows the database to restart. Some of these problems were directly
related to daily importing of large numbers of records. This was proving
to be an intolerable interruption to work flow. In addition, the user base
was over 100 seats and growing.

We chose to stay with 4D as the front end because 1) it is any easy
programming environment, 2) a lot of existing code could be reused and 3)
we could by 4D Engine and an unlimited 4D Oracle license. These factors
obviously kept development costs to a minimum and the ability to buy
Engine and the unlimited 4D Oracle license was a big factor since we would
be paying Oracle on a per seat basis.

Within the v6.7 world, we are now faced with paying per seat licensing to
Oracle and 4D. Since we do not use any of 4D's database functionality in
the front end, the per seat licensing makes it completely non-competive
with other front end tools with regards to price. That, coupled with the
ongoing deficiencies in the user interface, e.g., no hierarchical menus,
no grid tool (included forms are an absolute joke and require the use of
4D's database), no multi-column heirarchical lists, non-toolbox scroll
bars that are virtually uncontrollable, etc., etc., etc, is causing us to
seriously investigate other front-end tools.

Notice that 4D lost our revenue stream for 4D Server not because of
pricing, but because of reliability, speed and capacity (whaterver effect
this has on the long term viability of 4D as a company was decided long
before v6.7).  However, they continue to make money from us through the
purchase of 4D Engine and 4D Oracle. Now, however, they may very well
loose that revenue stream, as well, to another tool such as Visual Basic
or RealBasic. The bottom line for us is that 4D lost its server business
to a better player (Oracle) and they are now trying to get a piece of
Oracle's pie. We are not using 4D's database and hence they are not
loosing money by us making unlimited copies of Engine for "free".
Unfortunately, we need Engine or Runtime Classic in order to make use of
the compiled code even though we don't use the Engine code per say. We are
willing to put up with the bloat in the application size by the inclusion
of Engine but paying them for it is another thing.


Rich Wright