Re: Hosts who have upgraded to v5.0?
This WebDNA talk-list message is from 2003
It keeps the original formatting.
numero = 49057
interpreted = N
texte = Marc,Could you please be more specific as I'm not clear on what you mean by dropping products or repackaging the same product. Before we started thinking about 5.0 well over a year ago, you could purchase two products ... Typhoon Pro, and WebCatalog. Those two 'packages' still exist in pretty much the identical form as Partner Edition and Commerce Edition. You purchased WebCatalog ... which is called Commerce Edition today, but today with 5.0 has several new features at the same price point. All the other editions are new packages for new functionality. This is what we've changed in the past year with the introduction of 4.5 and now 5.0:- Developer Edition: new product package, now free, all features enabled with the limitation on threads so you can freely develop against any WebDNA product feature or language element, but need to move up the food chain to one of the production licenses if you want to host high volume sites.- BMT (Before My Time), there was a 'Typhoon' product at $99 that was non-commerce (no commerce tags) and limited to one database. This was no longer available when I became a SMSI employee, so is the only case of a 'dropped' product that I'm aware of ... and that's been a couple years ago. Given the choice of a one-database, non-commerce product at $99, and a complete functionality, unlimited database, three-thread product for free (Developer Edition), I'd think many people would find Developer more useful.- Typhoon Pro = Partner Edition: lower price, now without thread limits in 5.0, and contains new 5.0 features.- WebCatalog = Commerce Edition: lowered the price from $2,995 to $1,995 for unlimited domains earlier last year, with 5.0 now has more features. Additionally, available at an entry point of $995 if you don't need unlimited domains.As for your argument that it's the same software in new box ... there is significant quantitative evidence that we did in fact add a lot of new functionality to the product. You can download the free Developer Edition 5.0 and try out everything except the Intranet and Content Management templates. The Intranet can be seen via the test site posted on the DRC. I'm looking at how we could post a publicly available site for Content Management (perhaps as a repository on the DRC for free sample code that registered users could modify and post check-ins of their modifications?).At every software company I've ever worked at or known of for the past twenty years, the only way you could get perpetual new functionality upgrades for 'free' is if you paid a recurring annual maintenance subscription, which we do not do. I don't know why, but I wasn't able to convince Microsoft to give me that Windows XP upgrade for free. Come to think of it, I also had to pay for that new version of Quicken, even though I was a loyal customer for years. Of course, I could have just decided that I didn't need the new features in the new version of Quicken and stayed with the older version ... maybe I should send some flame mail to Intuit and see if they'll just give me that new version for free.The bottom line is every software company, ourselves included, spend money, and lots of it, to support products and to develop new features. The only way that can continue is if the result of that investment some how generates revenue to support that effort. If you went out and bought a Honda Accord five years ago, then drove it for 120K miles, having owned that car for five years doesn't somehow include the right to get a 2003 Honda Accord at no cost. Does the 2003 Accord have a lot of similarities to your 1998 model? Sure, it has four wheels, AC, airbags, stereo, etc. ... but the new one also has new features that the old one doesn't. Is it fair to accuse Honda of simply re-branding the old 1998 Accord as a 2003 and selling you the same old product under a new name simply because you don't understand the value in any of the new features? I'd think not. You can CHOOSE to simply keep driving that 1998 Accord.Phil B.-----Original Message----- From: marc@kaiwi.com [mailto:marc@kaiwi.com] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 11:10 AM To: WebDNA-Talk@talk.smithmicro.com Subject: Re: Hosts who have upgraded to v5.0?I have to add to this. I agree, and I'm very upset about it.The fact is that SmithMicro has priced me right out of their product and I'm mad about it. I purchased WebCatalog (several licenses in fact) at a premium price under the assumption that it was a good product and one that I would continue to develop, promote and upgrade.Unfortunately SmithMicro is in fact dropping the products I purchased, repackaging the same product and trying to sell it back to me again at a premium price as if it were some kind of new program all together. Some might argue that it is indeed a new product but when I look at, It's the same software in a new box.I couldn't begin to suggest or talk about marketing strategy because I don't know anything about it. All I see as an end user of this product is that, as it turns out it would seem that it was a bad choice on my part to invest the time and money in SmithMicro's product in the first place only to have them price me right out of the market.I won't make the same mistake again with SM. I may have to discontinue any further WebDNA upgrades but that won't stop me from developing new software with what ever tools are available to me and the fact is I don't really care who's name is on the tool box i use but unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to be SmithMicro.SIDE BAR: The whole issue of the new product marketing and pricing has been a joke from the beginning. I've read (on this list) many hundreds if not thousands of words from SM's crack sales team packed full of all kinds of dynamic sounding techno sales jargon and it still took hundreds of emails back and forth from SM and folks on this list to figure out how much the thing would cost!! Come on! Sheeshhh.: c)Thanks,MK On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:06 AM, Claude Gelinas wrote:> Hi Kenneth, > > It's a very expensive upgrade and it's nowhere close to my available > budget for such an upgrade. I'd go as far as 500$US for a fully > unlimited license. That's the absolute max. > > Unfortunately, the folks at SmithMicro seem to think we're rich, or > something. They fail to see PHP's rock solid capabilities and free > license (which makes a world of a difference since). > > Since a lot of the action on the list seems like it's slowing down, I > take it that perhaps a majority of WebDNA users are already toying > aroung with the thousands of PHP scripts freely available at > http://hotscripts.com/ to convert everything they built with WebDNA in > the past in order to have 100% PHP operations in the future. > > It's sad but SmithMicro can't understand the logic of small web shops > like mine. They seem to think we're very rich and the only way out for > us is to pay their insanely high prices and unattractive conditions > (the domain limitation, namely). > > An alternative talk of this matter is going on at > http://webmaster.mbnx.net/ but my biggest wish would be that > SmithMicro woke up and got a brutal reality check: we're NOT rich! We > love the language but raising the bar for us all will just kill the > language by pushing everyone to something they can afford, such as > PHP. > > God, I really hope they wake up! > > Here's a bit of advice: being generous will make you insanely rich. Be > a grinch and you'll choke under your own paranoia that you're it. > SmithMicro: please get a brain. Your sky-high prices are killing any > chance for the language to seriously take off in the market. It > doesn't take a genie to figure that one out but obviously, SmithMicro > still isn't figuring it out... > > I wouldn't say all this if I wasn't madly in love in your language. > I'm doing it because I care. > > Respectfully yours,Signed: Marc Kaiwi ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list
. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/
Associated Messages, from the most recent to the oldest:
Marc,Could you please be more specific as I'm not clear on what you mean by dropping products or repackaging the same product. Before we started thinking about 5.0 well over a year ago, you could purchase two products ... Typhoon Pro, and WebCatalog. Those two 'packages' still exist in pretty much the identical form as Partner Edition and Commerce Edition. You purchased WebCatalog ... which is called Commerce Edition today, but today with 5.0 has several new features at the same price point. All the other editions are new packages for new functionality. This is what we've changed in the past year with the introduction of 4.5 and now 5.0:- Developer Edition: new product package, now free, all features enabled with the limitation on threads so you can freely develop against any WebDNA product feature or language element, but need to move up the food chain to one of the production licenses if you want to host high volume sites.- BMT (Before My Time), there was a 'Typhoon' product at $99 that was non-commerce (no commerce tags) and limited to one database. This was no longer available when I became a SMSI employee, so is the only case of a 'dropped' product that I'm aware of ... and that's been a couple years ago. Given the choice of a one-database, non-commerce product at $99, and a complete functionality, unlimited database, three-thread product for free (Developer Edition), I'd think many people would find Developer more useful.- Typhoon Pro = Partner Edition: lower price, now without thread limits in 5.0, and contains new 5.0 features.- WebCatalog = Commerce Edition: lowered the price from $2,995 to $1,995 for unlimited domains earlier last year, with 5.0 now has more features. Additionally, available at an entry point of $995 if you don't need unlimited domains.As for your argument that it's the same software in new box ... there is significant quantitative evidence that we did in fact add a lot of new functionality to the product. You can download the free Developer Edition 5.0 and try out everything except the Intranet and Content Management templates. The Intranet can be seen via the test site posted on the DRC. I'm looking at how we could post a publicly available site for Content Management (perhaps as a repository on the DRC for free sample code that registered users could modify and post check-ins of their modifications?).At every software company I've ever worked at or known of for the past twenty years, the only way you could get perpetual new functionality upgrades for 'free' is if you paid a recurring annual maintenance subscription, which we do not do. I don't know why, but I wasn't able to convince Microsoft to give me that Windows XP upgrade for free. Come to think of it, I also had to pay for that new version of Quicken, even though I was a loyal customer for years. Of course, I could have just decided that I didn't need the new features in the new version of Quicken and stayed with the older version ... maybe I should send some flame mail to Intuit and see if they'll just give me that new version for free.The bottom line is every software company, ourselves included, spend money, and lots of it, to support products and to develop new features. The only way that can continue is if the result of that investment some how generates revenue to support that effort. If you went out and bought a Honda Accord five years ago, then drove it for 120K miles, having owned that car for five years doesn't somehow include the right to get a 2003 Honda Accord at no cost. Does the 2003 Accord have a lot of similarities to your 1998 model? Sure, it has four wheels, AC, airbags, stereo, etc. ... but the new one also has new features that the old one doesn't. Is it fair to accuse Honda of simply re-branding the old 1998 Accord as a 2003 and selling you the same old product under a new name simply because you don't understand the value in any of the new features? I'd think not. You can CHOOSE to simply keep driving that 1998 Accord.Phil B.-----Original Message----- From: marc@kaiwi.com [mailto:marc@kaiwi.com] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 11:10 AM To: WebDNA-Talk@talk.smithmicro.com Subject: Re: Hosts who have upgraded to v5.0?I have to add to this. I agree, and I'm very upset about it.The fact is that SmithMicro has priced me right out of their product and I'm mad about it. I purchased WebCatalog (several licenses in fact) at a premium price under the assumption that it was a good product and one that I would continue to develop, promote and upgrade.Unfortunately SmithMicro is in fact dropping the products I purchased, repackaging the same product and trying to sell it back to me again at a premium price as if it were some kind of new program all together. Some might argue that it is indeed a new product but when I look at, It's the same software in a new box.I couldn't begin to suggest or talk about marketing strategy because I don't know anything about it. All I see as an end user of this product is that, as it turns out it would seem that it was a bad choice on my part to invest the time and money in SmithMicro's product in the first place only to have them price me right out of the market.I won't make the same mistake again with SM. I may have to discontinue any further WebDNA upgrades but that won't stop me from developing new software with what ever tools are available to me and the fact is I don't really care who's name is on the tool box i use but unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to be SmithMicro.SIDE BAR: The whole issue of the new product marketing and pricing has been a joke from the beginning. I've read (on this list) many hundreds if not thousands of words from SM's crack sales team packed full of all kinds of dynamic sounding techno sales jargon and it still took hundreds of emails back and forth from SM and folks on this list to figure out how much the thing would cost!! Come on! Sheeshhh.: c)Thanks,MK On Monday, March 31, 2003, at 09:06 AM, Claude Gelinas wrote:> Hi Kenneth, > > It's a very expensive upgrade and it's nowhere close to my available > budget for such an upgrade. I'd go as far as 500$US for a fully > unlimited license. That's the absolute max. > > Unfortunately, the folks at SmithMicro seem to think we're rich, or > something. They fail to see PHP's rock solid capabilities and free > license (which makes a world of a difference since). > > Since a lot of the action on the list seems like it's slowing down, I > take it that perhaps a majority of WebDNA users are already toying > aroung with the thousands of PHP scripts freely available at > http://hotscripts.com/ to convert everything they built with WebDNA in > the past in order to have 100% PHP operations in the future. > > It's sad but SmithMicro can't understand the logic of small web shops > like mine. They seem to think we're very rich and the only way out for > us is to pay their insanely high prices and unattractive conditions > (the domain limitation, namely). > > An alternative talk of this matter is going on at > http://webmaster.mbnx.net/ but my biggest wish would be that > SmithMicro woke up and got a brutal reality check: we're NOT rich! We > love the language but raising the bar for us all will just kill the > language by pushing everyone to something they can afford, such as > PHP. > > God, I really hope they wake up! > > Here's a bit of advice: being generous will make you insanely rich. Be > a grinch and you'll choke under your own paranoia that you're it. > SmithMicro: please get a brain. Your sky-high prices are killing any > chance for the language to seriously take off in the market. It > doesn't take a genie to figure that one out but obviously, SmithMicro > still isn't figuring it out... > > I wouldn't say all this if I wasn't madly in love in your language. > I'm doing it because I care. > > Respectfully yours,Signed: Marc Kaiwi ------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/------------------------------------------------------------- This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list . To unsubscribe, E-mail to: To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to Web Archive of this list is at: http://webdna.smithmicro.com/
Phillip Bonesteele
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