I was chatting with a beginning programmer who is at this point a hobbyist. I was preaching the good LLBL Gen word high from the pulpit. He got interested and started taking a look and realized that the trial was limited and asked if there was some hobbyist version. I told him that I didn't think so, but I thought I'd ask ... is there some sort of "One client that can only look at one database" type of version that a hobbyist could use? I figured if you got them hooked, once they got a job programming that they would get their company to purchase licenses for real world applications.

Sorry, that license type is not offered at the moment. We'll consider it for v2.0, where we move to a per-seat license scheme.

No problem here. My company stills considers it a steal

Just wanted to make sure I wasn't misinforming that person.

Otis wrote:

Sorry, that license type is not offered at the moment. We'll consider it for v2.0, where we move to a per-seat license scheme.

Otis wrote:

Sorry, that license type is not offered at the moment. We'll consider it for v2.0, where we move to a per-seat license scheme.

Do existing users get a free upgrade to 2.0?

If so, how would the licensing work?

psandler wrote:

Otis wrote:

Sorry, that license type is not offered at the moment. We'll consider it for v2.0, where we move to a per-seat license scheme.

Do existing users get a free upgrade to 2.0? If so, how would the licensing work?

You get a very high discount. (say you pay only 20% or so of the price). We use the same criteria for a license: runtimes are royalty free, the designer requires a license. So if you have a team of 10 people and 2 use the designer, you need 2 licenses.

This will sound strange, but I'm glad you're changing your licensing, and I hope you make more money from it. You're giving it away at the current price level. We want you to stay in business!

swallace wrote:

This will sound strange, but I'm glad you're changing your licensing, and I hope you make more money from it. You're giving it away at the current price level. We want you to stay in business!

We first went for a large installed base as in: lots of companies working with our software. Now that's accomplished we can change the licensing abit. Future looks good! .

Hmmm, and independent observer could see it as fooling your customers: first you promise that every developer can use it, plus free upgrades for future releses. After they got dependent of your product, you change the terms: major upgrades are not free and licensed per developer...

But I'm not that independent...

Upgrades are free for the codebase you purchased a license for, i.e. 1.0.200x.y. The version where the license changes is v2.0 which has a new framework for .NET 2.0.

For that, upgrades will also be free. One can't expect to pay a single fee and get new versions till doomsday, neither have we promised that.

We can also charge you a fee per year or like the component vendors do: you pay for every upgrade or you pay a hefty subscription. I think THAT's fooling your customers, not what we've done in the past and are doing now or in the future. Customers of the current version get a very high discount, so I don't see the problem, as most current customers have enjoyed at least one or two feature upgrades (which are in fact versions with new features) for free.

So it's up to you, do you want us to become like the competition? Where support costs money, takes ages and you pay every year for the same code?

Sorry to sound annoyed, but I think we're very generous towards our customers and always have been.

Also, you seem to jump to the conclusion that the current code base isn't supported after v2.0 is released. That's not true, if bugs are found in the current codebase, fixes are released, just not new versions with NEW features, only fixes. I think that's logical.

I totally understand your reasons (together with most of your customers I guess) and not saying that the changes are good or bad - just that it can be seen from that perspective too, that's all...

Otis wrote:

Upgrades are free for the codebase you purchased a license for, i.e. 1.0.200x.y. The version where the license changes is v2.0 which has a new framework for .NET 2.0.

For that, upgrades will also be free. One can't expect to pay a single fee and get new versions till doomsday, neither have we promised that.

We can also charge you a fee per year or like the component vendors do: you pay for every upgrade or you pay a hefty subscription. I think THAT's fooling your customers, not what we've done in the past and are doing now or in the future. Customers of the current version get a very high discount, so I don't see the problem, as most current customers have enjoyed at least one or two feature upgrades (which are in fact versions with new features) for free.

So it's up to you, do you want us to become like the competition? Where support costs money, takes ages and you pay every year for the same code?

Sorry to sound annoyed, but I think we're very generous towards our customers and always have been.

Also, you seem to jump to the conclusion that the current code base isn't supported after v2.0 is released. That's not true, if bugs are found in the current codebase, fixes are released, just not new versions with NEW features, only fixes. I think that's logical.

Preach it Man

Your current pricing structure isn't equitable for you and I'm happy that your moving in a new direction. I don't know how many programmers work for you (maybe it's just you and 'Blondie' (no disrespect, I just don't remember her name )) but you seem to do everything. If you don't mind me asking, what's your future plans with staffing? Are you going to hire others? Just courios in case you decide you want to do something else with your life and there's no backup plan.

Take care,

Fishy

One more thing. People forget how much money is saved by tools like yours and others. Even Infragistics, which charges quite a bit for their tools, are well worth it.

My brother-in-law is a pharmacutical rep. and he gets grilled by people who complain about the price of drugs and how drug companies are scum. His perspective is 'Hey, go ahead and get an operation or take a pill, you decide, no ones twisting your arm'. He's right, to a certain degree. Yea, drugs save money and lives but how far do you go as far as price? (btw, drugs companies provide free meds to people who can't afford them)

Your customers will let you know if your sticking it to them, no ones twisting their arm.

Okay, I'm done, that feels better...

Fishy

btw, just my $.02 annually, $.04 with subscription, $.10 - priority support

castlejoe wrote:

I totally understand your reasons (together with most of your customers I guess) and not saying that the changes are good or bad - just that it can be seen from that perspective too, that's all...

Ok, I understand. The thing is though, that you buy a license for the current feature set, the current version. We state that you get upgrades for free for the current version, our roadmap says we will release a new version at the end of the year. The licensing will change, true, but a license bought for the current version won't become void for the current version .

Personally I hate it when I buy a license for a piece of software now and I can't get bugfixes in 6 months from now. So that's not going to happen to my customers, you can be sure of that. The current codebase will be supported with bugfixes for another year, after v2.0 is released, so people who use the current version can continue to do so. After a year with solely bugfixes I think the version is quite stable to continue to live on without a lot of support requirement to fix bugs.

Fishy wrote:

Your current pricing structure isn't equitable for you and I'm happy that your moving in a new direction. I don't know how many programmers work for you (maybe it's just you and 'Blondie' (no disrespect, I just don't remember her name ))

Aglaia

but you seem to do everything. If you don't mind me asking, what's your future plans with staffing? Are you going to hire others? Just courios in case you decide you want to do something else with your life and there's no backup plan.

I'm doing the code / design for the application at the moment, there are a couple of side-projects, like the converter for projects and in the near future a couple of others, which are done / will be done, by contractors. It's just too much fun to give up and do something else and what I have up my sleeve, I think it will stay fun for a looong time .

If work gets too much, we'll hire contractors, as that works good with these kind of projects, because it's very modular.

Fishy wrote:

One more thing. People forget how much money is saved by tools like yours and others. Even Infragistics, which charges quite a bit for their tools, are well worth it.

My brother-in-law is a pharmacutical rep. and he gets grilled by people who complain about the price of drugs and how drug companies are scum. His perspective is 'Hey, go ahead and get an operation or take a pill, you decide, no ones twisting your arm'. He's right, to a certain degree. Yea, drugs save money and lives but how far do you go as far as price? (btw, drugs companies provide free meds to people who can't afford them)

Your customers will let you know if your sticking it to them, no ones twisting their arm.

Okay, I'm done, that feels better...

Thanks for the great post, Fishy

Otis wrote:

You get a very high discount. (say you pay only 20% or so of the price). We use the same criteria for a license: runtimes are royalty free, the designer requires a license. So if you have a team of 10 people and 2 use the designer, you need 2 licenses.

Charge more. Seriously. Make alot of money. Hire/train another coder to learn the ropes. We NEED your company (and the company's code) to survive.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff To be clear: you don't have to worry about us going bankrupt. Even if we don't sell a single license for the next year, we'll be fine. I hope that takes away some concern

Otis wrote:

Thanks Jeff To be clear: you don't have to worry about us going bankrupt. Even if we don't sell a single license for the next year, we'll be fine. I hope that takes away some concern

If you're happy, I'm happy.

Hell I don't mind paying a little more for the upgrade. I know I am jooping you (out of pocket) with what I have paid already for a truely wonderful product

Seriously, To put it a nice way I think I have bought a rolls royce for the price of a mini and had to blink twice when you agreed to sell it to me through my subscription.

The LLBLGen Pro upgrade will be at the top of my list when it's released, above DevExpress! If I could give you an award I would. Hell, I can. Here you go:

+-------------------------------------------+

A W A R D

(Best Kick Ass Product Of them All)

+-------------------------------------------+

If there is anybody out there having any reservations as to whether or not to buy/upgrading this product then stick to gardening! sheesh. This product is not only slick its embarassing to other O/R Mappers out there, saves tons of time and very powerful indeed.

Keep up the good work Frans.

<Edit> I know i'm quiet on the board but I just can't stop coding with it.

Geoff.

Jeff wrote:

Otis wrote:

Thanks Jeff To be clear: you don't have to worry about us going bankrupt. Even if we don't sell a single license for the next year, we'll be fine. I hope that takes away some concern

If you're happy, I'm happy.

. I appreciate and understand your concern, but don't worry . We planned beforehand to follow the proven strategy of 'penetrate the market with a low-cost very good product to get a large installed base', similar to what for example MS is doing with SqlServer and what the japanese car manufacturers have used in the 70'ies.

By moving over time to a more higher priced product you still increase your installed base with enough sold licenses and also increase your profit. The other advantages is that the competition then has a hard time following you. Up till now, this strategy has proven to be very succesful for us and the future looks very bright

davisg wrote:

Hell I don't mind paying a little more for the upgrade. I know I am jooping you (out of pocket) with what I have paid already for a truely wonderful product

Seriously, To put it a nice way I think I have bought a rolls royce for the price of a mini and had to blink twice when you agreed to sell it to me through my subscription.

. Thanks Geoff

The LLBLGen Pro upgrade will be at the top of my list when it's released, above DevExpress! If I could give you an award I would. Hell, I can. Here you go:

+-------------------------------------------+

A W A R D

(Best Kick Ass Product Of them All)

+-------------------------------------------+

Cool!

If there is anybody out there having any reservations as to whether or not to buy/upgrading this product then stick to gardening! sheesh. This product is not only slick its embarassing to other O/R Mappers out there, saves tons of time and very powerful indeed.

Keep up the good work Frans.

<Edit> I know i'm quiet on the board but I just can't stop coding with it.

Geoff.

Thanks for the great feedback These kind of postings really make my day and are one of the core elements why I love my job Thanks again