The Cost of Software (was: The Omni Group Announces OmniWeb 5.0)

[Neil Lee]

Le 01 janv. 2004, à 16:05, shrubberies at adelphia.net a écrit :

> What is the goal? Is it to have everyone upgrade to 5, leave 4.5 
> behind, and collect revenue from only those benevolent souls who don't 
> feel unrequited in this a-la-Intuit-bug fix/upgrade approach? Or is it 
> to offer value in exchange for funds already received?

Not that Omnigroup needs someone else to defend them, but in my 
experience OG has been pretty amazing at supporting earlier versions of 
their software. They're probably one of the few shareware companies 
that I know of that have released updates for earlier versions of their 
software - the summer releases of updates for earlier versions of 
OmniGraffle (updating 2.x versions, even though the current version is 
3) is a good example.

I agree that updates for OW 4.5 are overdue, but let's keep things in 
perspective:

1. OW 4.5 was released in August. That's not too long for updates to 
come.
2. The price of OW (and thus the amount of revenue and programming 
resources OG can muster) is not high. We're not talking about even a 
$100 application here; $30 is not a lot.

I do web design consulting for Cocoatech (creator of Path Finder: 
<http://www.cocoatech.com/>), which is basically in the same price 
range as OmniWeb (Path Finder is $34) and I know that the amount of 
revenue from sales of PF, while enough to sustain the sole developer, 
are not incredible.

Given that programming resources are limited, and OW (like Path Finder) 
has the might of Apple to compete with, I would rather see OG dedicate 
themselves to improving and extending each release, rather than 
dedicate too much resources maintaining earlier releases. With that, I 
also would rather see OG charge a very reasonable upgrade fee for this, 
rather than see them release free updates at the cost of needed 
revenue.

To summarize my longwinded babbling: yes, an update would be welcome, 
but I recognize that OG needs to keep revenue flowing, and needs to 
prioritize resources. I would rather see OG charge a small upgrade fee 
and release a brand new version (with tons of improvements, I might 
add), rather than see OG go the way of Casady & Greene, Caffeine Soft, 
and other mac software companies.

Neil
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