| Re: Pricing (was Re: LINUX version of IDL) [message #2914] |
Tue, 11 October 1994 06:41  |
Geoff.Sobering
Messages: 14
Registered: June 1994
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Junior Member |
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In article <fskmjm.89@puknet.puk.ac.za>, fskmjm@puknet.puk.ac.za (Mathews,
MJ) wrote:
> If they made the price per site licence more realistic (say $300), guess
> how many we'd buy? More than five, so they'd make MORE money!
Same here. We've slowly (over 6 years) worked our way up to a resonable
number of IDL licenses (13 for 20 worksations and ca. 50 users). At $2-3K
per pop that added up!
BUT, don't forget to consider support/upgrade costs!
We used to be able to argue that the high purchase price of IDL was great
deal because we got free upgrades. Then we could eaisly claim that
$200/year for a site was resonable to help support continuing development
at RSI. Now, we have to try and BS our way arguing that $200/year/license
on top of the $2-3K/license is *still* a good buy.
In our case, our yearly outlay to RSI has been roughtly constant at
$3-5K/year - before we were purchasing a license or two (or five) per year,
now we're spending more and more of that budget on upgrade fees. Don't get
me wrong, I have *no* problem supporting the continued development of IDL,
I'd *much* rather justify the outlay with more licenses than nebulous
arguments like, "there are a bunch of new features...". Our users respond
much better to a note that they should be seeing less of the dread "No More
Licenses Available..." message.
Basically, I really wish RSI would be more flexible with licensing medium
to largeish sites. For example, I'd be *very* happy to pay $6K/year for 50
one-year licenses (or 100 - essentially an unlimited number) and upgrades,
rather than grumbling about spending $6K on support and one or two new
licenses per year. This would have been *particularly* attractive a few
years ago before we invested $30K in floating licenses, so I suspect there
are a lot of sites out there interested in IDL, but turned off by the large
initial investment to get a useful number of licenses. I'm sure there are
others who would be interested in non-standard licensing arangements to fit
their own requirements.
Sorry to waste bandwidth on non-technical stuff...
--
Geoff Sobering (Geoff.Sobering@nih.gov)
In Vivo NMR Research Center
National Institutes of Health
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