As a third party developer (pgSQL4RB) I'm confronted to 2 reasons: The first is the occasional "what if the add-on gets abandoned" syndrome.
The other and most important by far, is that many RB users expect third party stuff to come for free or at a price so low it wouldn't even cover a couple of support e-mails. I believe the latter is inherent to the main type of customers RB attracts; they aren't making a living out of their work with RB and thus are not prepared to spend amounts higher than roughly what is charged for consumer applications out there. So my answer to the problem would be: - Educate people to know that it's normal to have to pay certain amounts. - Educate people to understand that if a third party add-on has been around for roughly 5 years and is still actively developed in the present, it is reasonable to trust the developer. In other words, it's not gong to vanish and leave you stuck. - Educate people that it's ok to invest in new third party vendor's stuff if they can test it out all the way and if it does what it claims in a stable way and is professionally documented. If you work with a product that has a high level of finish, that's a telltale sign. - Let people know that third party developers are indeed generally far more responsive and built far more stable stuff than RS, like Joe Huber wrote. How to educate people is a whole 'n other problem though. ;-) And it still doesn't change a thing about the total amount of RB users being fairly small and consisting mainly of consumers instead of 'prosumers'. Frankly I don't think there's a lot of market (and thus motivation) for third party add-ons. How many years has it been since a new one popped up? Cheers, Marc _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
