On 3 Oct 2009 at 11:24, Aaron Sherber wrote: > As I said earlier, when I buy a > piece of software, I expect more than a year's worth of bug fixes, and I > expect major bugs to be fixed even after the next version comes out. For > example, MS continues to put out critical fixes for Office long after > the next version is released. If Makemusic just said "You can buy the > software, and you get one year's worth of free upgrades" -- which is > essentially what their practice it -- then I woudn't be bothered so much > by having to shell out that money each year to get fixes to longstanding > bugs.
But Microsoft is not on the yearly upgrade merry-go-round. They release patches for their current version, but once the previous version reaches a certain point in its lifecycle, only dangerous problems are patched. The current Finale pricing already *is* a yearly bug fix. And don't fool yourself into think that Microsoft doesn't answer a lot of bug reports with "we fixed that in the next version and will never fix it in the previous one, so you have to upgrade to get the bug fix." It happens *all the time*. Indeed, MS has recently introduced in the crash reporting a default recommendation that you might be able to avoid the bug you're experiencing by upgrading to the current version -- it's quite annoying. Last of all, you just can't compare a small company like MM to Microsoft, which is a huge, huge company with many major product lines that can cross-subsidize each other in their off years. That is, the release schedules for the major product lines can be staggered such that the revenue stream remains fairly stable and finances the whole operation. MM is just not big enough for that. It doesn't have any second major product line, just a number of inter-related products that are based around the same technologies. There is no independence there, and the different products have significant dependencies that require that they work together (e.g., SmartMusic and Finale cannot be developed on independent schedules, since SmartMusic is only viable if Finale can be used to produce current SmartMusic formats). I can't see how calling the yearly upgrade a subscription changes the reality of it, unless it allowed them to slipstream patches/upgrades without changing the Finale version numbers. That is, what under the current system is called Finale 2010 might be 2009B instead. But would this change the difficulty of the task of producing the next yearly version release? I don't think so. Might it reduce expectations for how much in the way of new features each yearly release would have? Perhaps. But that would also likely reduce the motivation for upgrading. Again, if there were a financial scenario where MM could make this change and increase revenues, or keep revenues flat and improve customer satisfaction, there's no way MM wouldn't do it. So I can only conclude either that the forecasts show it wouldn't keep revenues flat or betterm, or that the models are too ambiguous to justify risking the future of the company on something that might very well be disastrous. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
