Unfortunatly, software economics are not that easy. I'll bet the gang at IntelliJ has given this a lot of thought. I for one think that $399 is very reasonable for a corporate setting, and I'm in the midst of making that case to the company now.
There are two problems with your argument, IMO. a) Your scale is way off. Games that sell for $50 have potentailly millions of sales, at least a couple of orders of magnitiude difference. On the other side of the coin look at software that big development shops use that has much less thought going into it, but also very few customers often sell in the $10,000 range. Its all based on the size of the potnetial market. The market for really good well thought out programmer's programmers tools is unforunatly pretty damn small. Mostly, its just pearls before swine. > Isn't it a case of 100,000 users @ $50 rather than $1,000 @ $200 ? b) I really doubt it, but the real problem is getting there. You have to have a sustainable business model, even these days, and unless big money is willing to support you for 2-3 years to get to that level of market saturation, you'll be long out of business before your ultra-cheap pricing strucuture catches on. To us, its worth the price. But I do think that having a $200 personal version is a really great idea; as you point out, most non-business users are not going to easily drop $400 bucks on anything. I'd consider buying IntelliJ out of my own pocket for that much, its that great a tool. We're programmers, dammit, why is it so hard to pay for something that we know people put a lot of effort into? I'm all for open-source and everything, but in some cases I think its led people to put little value on anything. Maybe that's good from an ultimate social utopia point of view, but in the meantime I'd like to keep the folks at IntelliJ happy and fed. :-) Anyway, I can't find a key anywhere on the site for the current EAP program key. Does anyone know where it is? I'm still waiting for corporate approval to buy and am seriously jonesing... -Miles > -----Original Message----- > From: Wangjammer5 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 1:42 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Eap-list] OFFTOPIC: Idea for personal use > > > > > This is a little off the purpose of the lists, but anyway > just to let you > > all know. It will be possible to license IDEA to a > personal name (not a > > company) for $200 from December 20, 2001 until January 1, 2001. > > That's pretty cool. The price is currently too high for > single users I > think. However I don't understand why you are doing this for > 1.5 weeks > unless you just hoping to get some christmas gift trade! > > FWIW, IDEA is really great. However I do not feel that many > individuals > are happy to pay that kind of money for an IDE, especially > when you can > refresh your eval key quite easily. After all, at the end of > the day you > can always go back to "vi" and "javac" for free. > > I know - the increase in productivity far outweighs the cost of the > software, but many people do not see things that way - the loss of > productivity through inferior tools is a "hidden" cost - > "...I can always > rename all those packages manually, just like I always did > before IDEA" > > My point? I think everyone would sell a lot more software if > it was much > cheaper. You can buy a computer game for $50 or less (which > is too much > for a game!). I think that's about the maximum the bulk of people can > stomach for software. > > Why do you think half the world has a ripped off copy of > Adobe Photoshop > on their hard disk? > > If IDEA was $50 I'd buy two copies - one for me and one for > my friend who > can't afford it. > > There are so many free solutions out there, the "bang for > buck" has to be > HUGE to differentiate something like IDEA from free IDEs. Most of the > major commercial IDEs have an non-time limited free version > for personal > use. IDEA doesn't, and that's probably why you're seeing lots > of eval key > requests every 3 weeks. > > You'd get far more successful developer evangelism too I > reckon. I know > I'd be telling everyone to get a registered copy if it was a > lot cheaper > than it is. I know there's a lot of work that goes in to it! > > Isn't it a case of 100,000 users @ $50 rather than $1,000 @ $200 ? > > Cheers > > > > _______________________________________________ > Eap-list mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.intellij.com/mailman/listinfo/eap-list > _______________________________________________ Eap-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellij.com/mailman/listinfo/eap-list
