February 17, 2010 at 11:51 am
'Scuse me for asking, but what rock have y'all been hiding under? 😀
MS, Oracle, IBM, <pick a company> have been doing this for a very long time. This should not be news to anyone who's done any software pricing/purchasing in the last couple of decades. Right, wrong or indifferent, it's the way things are with most off-the-shelf software.
Steve G.
February 17, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Elliott W (2/17/2010)
Clive Chinery (2/17/2010)
Steve Jones - Editor (2/17/2010)
I do think it's unfair that we cannot buy an older product that meets our needs.I agree.
Doesn't this exist outside the world of software? They stop making X and start making Y. X still exists and can be bought but the quantity available is ever shrinking. How many things on Ebay are not made anymore, you can still buy them.
But just because I want product X that fits my needs, there is no obligation for the company that made it to continue to make it available to me. There are other channels available to me..
That works fine outside of the software world. But in the software world, most items are licensed, not sold. Some (very few in my experience) licenses allow you to transfer them to someone else, but it's generally illegal to resell software. Even when it is legal, you often have to go through many hoops to ensure that 1) you don't have it installed on any machine (even, e.g, one you sent to the dump and don't realize is sitting in some dumpster-diver's garage now), 2) it's not an upgrade license or a license that supports an upgrade that's in use, 3) it's not tied to particular hardware, 4) you transfer all necessary components (I've seen rulings that without transferring the disks, you can't transfer the license, and others saying without transferring the license, you can't transfer the disks...), etc ad nauseum.
Then, even if you do that, and it's protected by piracy prevention systems such as in Microsoft's recent operating systems, the person who gets the license still has to go through hoops to prove that they are authorized to run the software.
In short, most software companies don't want a "used software" market, and engineer their licenses and support systems as much as possible to prevent that. Given that, I think it would only be fair for them to have to continue to provide less expensive alternatives (such as older versions) for a longer time that we hold other product sellers responsible for. But, then, since when is business fair?
February 19, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Microsoft is un unfair business partner to its customers whether final users or developers. And I believe that Oracle and IBM are too.
I moving away from this slavery of modern times to freedom, and advise everybody to do that.
I have not known Microsoft or Oracle to be unfair to developers because both provide development tools for free to very limited cost.
IBM is known to charge for RDBMS drivers and connectors and filing frivolous patents but their customers pay for their tools like the banks that use DB2.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
February 19, 2010 at 3:20 pm
george sibbald (2/17/2010)
we were quoted 15% for enterprise edition, 25% for standard edition.
I am not sure standard is worth 25% but Enterprise is actually worth more than 15% because of MDM. So I am assuming the 25% for standard must be for SSRS and power pivot and I am saying the cost is too high because MDM is not included.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
February 19, 2010 at 3:31 pm
This is the beauty of Open Source Software. FREEDOM. The software is the new engine of the world and the supremacy that Microsoft and others have achieved, is coming to an end, because people needs freedom. Real one. The GPL is a genius stroke from the heart of capitalism to itself. Today, there is a clear path toward the development of the computing world and it is driven by this simple gesture, the GPL.
I'm taking away all the chains that I have from these companies and turning to new ways to work and produce.
Hope new generations of software developers understand this and free themselves.
M.
February 19, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Mauricio Ramirez (2/19/2010)
This is the beauty of Open Source Software. FREEDOM. The software is the new engine of the world and the supremacy that Microsoft and others have achieved, is coming to an end, because people needs freedom. Real one. The GPL is a genius stroke from the heart of capitalism to itself. Today, there is a clear path toward the development of the computing world and it is driven by this simple gesture, the GPL.I'm taking away all the chains that I have from these companies and turning to new ways to work and produce.
Hope new generations of software developers understand this and free themselves.
M.
I am assuming you are not talking BI because the prices in the link below makes Microsoft SQL Server 2005 standard looks good. Then there is the ReportViewer control which can be used to create decent reports in local mode with Oracle, MySQL, DB2, PostgreSQL and other RDBMS for free. The ReportViewer is part of the SQL Server/Visual Studio Express toolset.
That takes me to the question what is the price of free?
http://www.pentaho.com/products/buy_bi_suite.php
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
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