George Farr declares feature specific pricing on horizon for WDSC

Hi all,
 
I was at the Systemideveloper.com conference last week and was able to
attend George Farr's keynote address.  In the address there were a boatload
of comments made by him that I plan on mulling over in the next few months,
but one in particular that I thought was interesting was the approach
getting money to continue WDSC development.
 
In the end we all know that the developers on the WDSC product line don't
work for free, and the more burden they are to IBM the less throughput we
will get from them (read they won't be able to hire and expand as much as
they would like).   In an effort to address this George stated they are
looking to have customers pay for certain features.  For example if you
wanted the new screen designer you will be charged $300/seat for that
feature.  Note that is a "pretend" number that simply gives example to where
George foresee's the pricing structure vs. the $4K numbers we were hearing
about the AE purchase.
 
Looking at it from the big picture I'd say that they are right on the mark
in charging for solid tooling.  If I can get second to none tooling, which I
believe they are capable of, that gives me the competitive edge; then I am
willing to dish out the cash.  The burden will fall on them though to make a
creative pricing structure that doesn't paint them into a corner - the
opposite corner of their customers.  What I mean by that is there are a wide
variety of shops out there with varying environments.  What about the shops
that have very few developers or zero tooling budget?  You don't simply want
high paying customers using your product, because widespread adoption has
nearly as much benefit as getting money - hard to have one without the other
in today's tooling market.  I would love to see them go with a model that
gives the first 3 to 5 licenses of WDSC to shops COMPLETELY FREE.  That
would make it so small shops wouldn't be paying the expense and larger shops
would be able to have their R&D teams fully test the features to ensure they
wanted to make the purchase, or simply let the few that need to tool have it
at a reasonable price.  The other option of course would be to simply have
site/machine licenses similar to how we have the compilers.  Maybe instead
of going with a per seat license the simply charge $4K for a single machine
which would be attractive for shops with more than 14 developers.
 
In the end our WANT to pay IBM money for features totally depends on us
seeing things that will save us time/money in the long run.  George made it
very clear in his address that we "..will not be disappointed".  We shall
have to see what comes out of big blue in the next two years.  BTW, I am
installing my COMPLETELY FREE WDSC 7.0 as I type this:-)
 
On last note I wonder if they will query customers to see what they are
willing to pay in an effort to be in check with what the market will bear.
 
Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com