On 8 Jul 2005 at 9:18, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > David W. Fenton schrieb: > >>>I guess my point is that the kind of restructuring I'm calling for > >>>here would go much further to making it possible to manage "house > >>>styles" than any of the things you mentioned. > >> > >>Except it won't happen. > > > > I'm not certain about that. The Finale developers are computer > > programmers. They understand better than *you* do the advantages of > > non-duplication of data, of sub-classing, of object-oriented > > programming. My bet is that they'd love to have the luxury to be > > turned loose on Finale and rework its data structures in order to > > support the kinds of UI and feature requests I've been talking > > about. But the realities of business don't allow them to pull a > > Netscape (and, of course, they shouldn't do that, anyway: > > David, I am absolutely certain it won't happen. Not unless the way > MakeMusic has been working the last few years will change radically.
They've changed their ways of doing things before, when outside conditions forced it upon them. If they want to stay in business they are definitely going to have to make changes in their operating practices. If they don't, they'll always be playing catch-up, and thus lose more and more market share. I think they are going to have to abandon the yearly upgrades. I think it's a really bad business practice in the first place, because it places a schedule on development that is artificial -- a software development schedule should be determined by the goals of the projects currently on the table for implementation/revision/fixing. MakeMusic is also now in a situation where their yearly upgrade is coming out at an inoppportune time for schools -- releasing in August and September and October is not a very good time for that. If they took 18-20 months for their next release, they could have the new release out in time for budget considerations for the next school year. After that, they could return to the old schedule, if they liked (though it still doesn't make any sense to me -- some Finale releases, like the upcoming one, seem to me more a matter of "we're going to ship, even if there's nothing significant in the upgrade"). Secondly, one longer product cycle could give them time to address large-scale architectural issues that might otherwise be impossible in one release cycle. Another alternative would be to release, say, Finale 2007 as nothing but a rewrite of Finale 2006, with no new functions, just fixes to old stuff and the new architecture necessary to make Finale 2008 a major leap forward. While it would be impossible to justify charging the usual full upgrade price, at 1/3 or 1/2, it might be worth it, and produce enough revenue to keep the company operating. It's not like Finale is their only product these days, is it was a decade ago. If MakeMusic does *not* make some major changes, more and more committed Finale users are going to abandon it, just as Sibelius tends to be the program of choice for people just getting into music engraving. So, I don't think it's impossible for them to change. Market conditions have change drastically. They are losing market/mindshare, and with Sibelius 4, they're going to lose even more. If they don't change, they will simply wither and be gone in 5 years. I think that if *I* can see that, MakeMusic's board can see it, too. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
