Just read the whole thread and it sounded like the internal discussion we had in our company as well. We are willing to pay for such a great lib, however not 10K-12,5K which would basically eat up the budget. Of course one can argue that the project calculation/budget is wrong but reality is more complicated than that...
So currently we are using 2.1.7 and we are fine, even thought of making a fork to that version... The idea of a 'per developer license' sounds interesting to me... Good discussion, ToM 2010/4/25 Michael Schmodt <[email protected]> > > > 2010/4/25 David Hoffer <[email protected]> > > I don't disagree with the last couple replies, however I will point >> out that iText is the one that caused the mis-expectations on price. >> Since prior versions cost $0 it is quite a shock to learn that new >> versions cost $12,500. (Please understand I'm not saying $0 is the >> right price.) What makes it even harder is that there are no >> published prices for the new version of iText. >> >> Unless your doing waterfall development (so you think you know >> everything up front) you don't always know what's needed at the >> beginning. If I would go to my customer with a Y charge of $12,500 >> that would be the end of it. >> >> I'm only saying all this because I was asked to explain, in my case >> the older 2.x version is just fine and FOP a viable option if iText >> continues with the current pricing. >> >> > I agree with Dave! I think, it is fair to pay the iText developers for > their fantastic work. I do not have a problem with that. > > The problem: For my customers, it is completely irrelevant, what > investments I have to do, to build an application. They give me 5000 bucks > in total to deliver a programm. If there are license fees, it's me who has > to deal with it. If I do not comply, somebody else get's the job. The > applications aren't targeted at the mass market, so there aren't huge > numbers of copies of the programms. When calculating the price, it's about > 7% or 12 $ per programm that I earn (minus costs, taxes ...). I do not have > exact numbers, but that should be quite representative. > > I surely can agree, that the customer and not the developer should care > about the license, but unfortunately, that is not the way life is. The > customers are from non IT businesses who want additions/extension to > existing non IT products. They never heard of LGPL, GPL, AGPL or license > fees for software libraries. I agree with Dave, that 300 $ would be > perfectly fine and after all, 300$ from single developers is for you as well > a question of getting 300$ or getting no fees and letting developer stick > with earlier versions of itext or using other libraries. > > I hope, I didn't upset you. This is not what I want. As I said, I like > iText very much and would like to use it in the future. I respect your > decission to change the license and to get a share from the profits of > those, who use your lib. Try to see this debate as a valuable feedback to > determine optimal prices for the lib, that can maximize your income as > well. > > By, > Michael >
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