Actually, if you read the terms - it's free until your startup makes money. Then you owe them licensing fees retroactively. So they're offering deferred payment to startups, which is cool I guess - but it's definitely misleading that they call it free. Intriguing, but would you stake your startup company on thousands of dollars of deferred licensing fees of a 1.0 product? Scary.
It's not really "retroactive". You owe the seat fee, as of the date when you start making money, subject to whatever actual deal you work out with them. They do state that they will work these terms out on a case by case basis with each startup. And yes, I would agree to this, because I have zero risk in trying it out. On top of that I can just take the Express version for FREE until I'm confident that it's going to work for me, then go Pro. Worrying about the 1.0 version is a little odd when discussing a business decision broadly. First of all, the startup that is looking at this deal isn't even at .1 yet. Second, the price isn't $5,000. The 1.0 price is $1,748 until February or so, if I remember the dates correctly. Thirdly, what would you say if they took $7,000 in stock options per seat instead of cash when you start generating revenue? Would it be a good deal then? Finally, arguing that any pricing or any product is a worry because it is 1.0 does not make the product or the pricing a problem in even the medium term. If this was the deal and the product was 1.5 (which one would expect it will be sometime next year), would you still think it's a problem?
I agree it's interesting. Keep in mind they "include" the database and web servers because they're just bundling free software (Firebird and Apache). Any tool that generates web apps could bundle those two if desired. Pricing out deployments versus developer licenses can often be 6 of one and a half dozen of another - really it depends on your business. Some love to be able to just pay for the developer seats and be done with it. Others would rather save money until they are ready to bill a client - and then just pass on the cost. Personally I *do* like the former the majority of the time.
Yes, they are bundling in software that doesn't cost them anything (which means no license fee for SQL Server or Oracle). The thing that interests me, though is that they are hiding these components from me, and they are making it easy to detach them (if you decide to go Pro). I don't have to know how to configure Firebird or Apache, or write a bunch of Perl or PHP. I design my application the way I would if I were using any other RAD IDE, and when I compile it, Firebird and Apache are built in.
> 2) On AJAX/FJAX: If you've used Gmail or Google Maps you will > immediately recognize that there is a significant difference between > AJAX apps and your run-of-the-mill web apps. Speed. Smoothness. > Shortcuts. You can't get the same feel from straight XHTML.
XML has nothing to do per se with the speed of AJAX apps. You can very well make asynchronous calls for data without transmitting it in XML format, and get all of the same benefits. Depending on the app, XML may in fact be a good format to choose - but it's definitely not the source of increased speed. Your asynchronous request could return XML, XHTML, HTML, plain text or my personal fave - JSON (Javascript Object Notation) objects. Or anything else your client-side code can handle. If you really want to open a can of works, try sending back some Javascript to execute - voila, self-modifying web app (ack)!
Yes, you can do this in a variety of ways. I have not seen any implementations that _efficiently_ use bandwidth that use anything OTHER THAN XML to embed the data. If you can do it, great. Maybe we'll get some of the frameworks tweaked to make life less <taghappy/>. -- On the first day, God created the heavens and the Earth On the second day, God created the oceans. On the third day, God put the animals on hold for a few hours, and did a little diving. And God said, "This is good." _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution