On 7/11/20 11:06 AM, René J.V. Bertin wrote:
Not my words ... and there must be money in it so it can't be entirely
worthless ;)
If there was "money in it" we wouldn't have FUD licensing practices and
statements about making people buy QtCreator. You get that from a dying
company. I'm old. I've seen a lot of companies die. They all engage in
this death spiral of trying to royalty and license "everything" in hopes
of squeezing out just enough money to survive.
There have been many spectacular examples over the years. While it is
not quite as spectacular as the Qt Company implosion that appears to be
going on.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.shutterstock.com%2Fz%2Fstock-photo-building-demolition-by-implosion-image-of-a-shot-sequence-101827762.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.shutterstock.com%2Fz%2Fstock-photo-building-demolition-by-implosion-image-of-a-shot-sequence-101827765.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
Wang was a great case study. They tried to license everything and
royalty everything. In the ultimate human sacrifice they changed
licensing policy after the fact stating that the OS license could not
transfer with the machine. You had to buy a new OS license _at list_
when you bought a used Wang. For over a decade this had not been the
case. Even "small" used Wang computers sold for $20K because you got a
complete system. The day after that decision they stopped selling
because Wang wanted a hideous amount of money for a "new" license. It
was something like $40 or $60K. The millions of dollars in used
inventory dealers held became not only worthless, but a liability. They
had to pay someone to haul the stuff away when they went under. Yes,
they all went under. It wasn't too many days/weeks after the
announcement that people and companies stopped buying Wang computers.
Nobody was willing to pay half a million for something they would have
to pay to throw away when they could spend about the same money on other
midrange computers that still would have resale value.
It didn't matter that Wang was the only platform _anywhere_ that could
do multi-person document editing. Something like 7-8 people could all be
editing the same part of the same document at the same time and see the
changes real-time. Even Google Docs hasn't caught up to what Wang had
back in the late 1980s. Wang just had the limitation of Green Screens.
The first deadly drug you see a failing company reach for is royalties.
The second deadly drug is license roulette. After that it doesn't matter
if they have a completely unique product; companies will simply choose
to live without it.
The Wang customers gave the document people AT computers with
WordPerfect and told them to pass around floppies until Netware came along.
Yes, there was a time when WordPerfect ruled the land.
https://www.wordperfect.com/en/
Know what did them in? Licensing. A ghost of a product is still around,
but the company is long since dead. They are still trying to get $400
for the full package.
https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/professional-edition/
--
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593
http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
http://www.infiniteexposure.net
http://www.johnsmith-book.com
http://www.logikalblog.com
http://www.interestingauthors.com/blog
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