Pricing ACL
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From: alex.gman on 13 Dec 2005 16:38 I wrote this as an email reply to R. Fateman, but I now feel like posting it. (BTW, Richard, you probably meant to post your message in the first place): All I can say is that "we will ask you for a %-age of your future profit once you have your product ready for shipping" is a total deal breaker. I don't want to hire lawyers NOW to negotate with Franz when I'm just developing the product, and I don't want to get f*** (pardon my french) by Franz if I delay the negotiations until later. Score 1 for other alternatives. If I'm being unclear, image this situation: I'm Franz. You have naively developed a product using ACL, Allegro Cache, and other things that only I (Franz) can provide. You have two choices: pay whatever I ask you, or abandon the product (major rewrite included). As a business, I (Franz) will be inclined to ask you for just a little less than the cost of a major rewrite. Now if you are smart, you'll never get into this situation by either (1) Never using Franz (LW, CMUCL) or (2) negotating the distribution terms in advance (laywers, etc.). For most people (1) seems like a better alternative.
From: Jon Boone on 13 Dec 2005 16:48 alex.gman(a)gmail.com writes: > All I can say is that "we will ask you for a %-age of your future > profit once you have your product ready for shipping" is a total > deal breaker. I can understand why you would be put off by this type of situation. I can see, however, how this might not be a terrible situation for either Franz or the entity using Franz's intellectual property. At the early stage of development, you may have very different ideas as to the profitability of the product you're producing than you have once it's nearing shipment. In fact, that should be the normal course of events: * At the early stages, you have a rough idea about the product, target market segment, potential price points, etc. * As you near the point of shipment, these ideas will be less theoretical and based on more accurate assessments that have been completed in the mean time (market surveys, assessment of the competition, etc.) * Consequently, you will likely either value the product more than at the early stages (because you judge your chance of success as higher) or you will value it less (because you judge your chance of success as lower). This type of situation would be terribly beneficial if you could avoid putting *any* capital up front into obtaining the Franz intellectual property. They would, in essense, be subsidizing your development process, while helping to ensure that products that actually ship using their intellectual property are more likley to be successful. As it stands, since you have to put some capital in up front, the value prospect changes based on the idea that the intellectual property is worth more than the up front charges. Each entities judgement of this implication will likely vary. --jon
From: Kenny Tilton on 13 Dec 2005 18:21 alex.gman(a)gmail.com wrote: > I wrote this as an email reply to R. Fateman, but I now feel like > posting it. (BTW, Richard, you probably meant to post your message in > the first place): > > > All I can say is that "we will ask you for a %-age of your future > profit once you have your product ready for shipping" is a total deal > breaker. That's fine. Apparently enough others feel differently that Franz is making a profit. With Lisp. Hello? Note that I am not saying there is anything wrong with your choice, just that Franz probably understands they will lose a lot of customers with their policy but do better enough with those who go for their terms to make up for it. The math probably has something to do with few people wanting to use Lisp, but thems that do /really/ needing it /and/ Franz's added value. In brief, the market is perfect and Franz seems to be playing it well. > > I don't want to hire lawyers NOW to negotate with Franz when I'm just > developing the product, and I don't want to get f*** (pardon my french) > by Franz if I delay the negotiations until later. Score 1 for other > alternatives. > > If I'm being unclear, image this situation: I'm Franz. You have naively > developed a product using ACL, Allegro Cache, and other things that > only I (Franz) can provide. > You have two choices: pay whatever I ask you, or abandon the product > (major rewrite included). Yep. Although I do not think Franz has all that much power to dictate. There is a downside to acting badly, however legal. But, no, I would not want to be negotiating at the last minute. > > Now if you are smart, you'll never get into this situation by either > (1) Never using Franz (LW, CMUCL) or (2) negotating the distribution > terms in advance (laywers, etc.). For most people (1) seems like a > better alternative. > (3) If (1) is an option, you do not need their proprietary stuff. So develop with AllegroCL and deliver with something else. If you absolutely need something they offer no one else does, that might make it a little easier to swallow them taking a cut. Just my two. kt
From: Richard J. Fateman on 13 Dec 2005 19:56 alex.gman(a)gmail.com wrote: > I wrote this as an email reply to R. Fateman, but I now feel like > posting it. (BTW, Richard, you probably meant to post your message in > the first place): No, I didn't :) But since you responded here... > > > All I can say is that "we will ask you for a %-age of your future > profit once you have your product ready for shipping" is a total deal > breaker. That could be the case. But then here's another potential deal breaker: you try to sell your product to a business. The business says "does this come with support?" You say "no, I was planning on taking a vacation to Tahiti. If you have problems with the underlying Lisp, just post your questions or bug reports on some newsgroup. Or you could hire some bipolar Lisp hacker. Just check on comp.lang.lisp." the business says "You wrote this code -- there are no questions about whether it maybe contains code that is copyrighted by ATT, Microsoft, Adobe, etc, and you will sign this contract to that effect.?" You say "What the hey, this code comes from [whatever, GPL, LGPL, BSD, ...] open source licensed. I can't say who wrote it!" the business says, "Oh, about that Tahiti trip, who's your maintenance person on 24-hour call." you say "Hey man, does a blackberry work in Tahiti?" vs. "A professional software company with a staff of experienced programmers, 18 years in the business, is maintaining the lisp system." or maybe even "I have partnered with them and the key contact at Franz to answer questions is X; if he is not there, someone else will pick it up." So now maybe you take a vacation in Atlantic City instead of Tahiti. > > I don't want to hire lawyers NOW to negotate with Franz when I'm just > developing the product, and I don't want to get f*** (pardon my french) > by Franz if I delay the negotiations until later. Score 1 for other > alternatives. Seems to me that if you take a program that Franz sells for $X, make a trivial addition to it, and then sell it for $Y where Y<X, then Franz should have an interest in that... To the extent that a recipient of your program can (by ignoring your contribution) have a complete version of Allegro, isn't there a real problem? Now I haven't been following all this stuff (like Reddit), but has someone come up with a rational pricing strategy? (In my email to alex, I think I commented that I doubted the market for lisp was very elastic -- elastic means if you drop the price by 1/2, you'll get twice the sales or more, and thus more revenue. My suspicion is that if you drop the price by 1/2 you'll get about the same number of sales, and lose revenue. This is presumably what marketing droids take polls about and maybe know about.) > > If I'm being unclear, image this situation: I'm Franz. You have naively > developed a product using ACL, Allegro Cache, and other things that > only I (Franz) can provide. > You have two choices: pay whatever I ask you, or abandon the product > (major rewrite included). As a business, I (Franz) will be inclined to > ask you for just a little less than the cost of a major rewrite. Franz could certainly not ask you for more than a full license fee per recipient, so that is an upper bound. And if your application included full resources so the recipient could use your "product" instead of buying ACL+Allegro Cache directly from Franz, there does seem to be that problem! Your customer might even be in a situation of selling Lisp in competition with Franz and for that matter, selling your product in competition with you. How would you like that? > > Now if you are smart, you'll never get into this situation by either > (1) Never using Franz (LW, CMUCL) or (2) negotating the distribution > terms in advance (laywers, etc.). It seems to me that setting up a situation that limits Franz's exposure and your exposure to someone ripping them or you off, is not a bad idea. I do not know that lawyers are needed to negotiate this. If Franz wants you to pay some fee for each copy of their lisp that you send to someone else, it seems like a business cost, just like (say) rent. [I assume that if you ship a lisp that is substantially "disabled" e.g. without a compiler, without eval, without various tools, then this could be relevant.] What is to prevent your landlord raising your rent to be "just slightly less than your cost of moving"? For most people (1) seems like a > better alternative. That may be because they are not examining the total cost of ownership and sales of software. What is supposed to be "free" may in reality require substantial investment. (For example, in tech people, and legal fees. Most free software comes without warranty, and so if someone like SCO comes and sues you because you are using their code, it's your problem, not the "vendor". And you have to hire a lawyer even if you are innocent of wrongdoing.) As I pointed out to alex, in email to him, I am a stockholder/founder of Franz, but I don't set pricing policies. I do know that "losing a little on each sale, but making it up on the volume" doesn't work. RJF >
From: Pisin Bootvong on 13 Dec 2005 23:14
Richard J. Fateman wrote: > alex.gman(a)gmail.com wrote: > > I wrote this as an email reply to R. Fateman, but I now feel like > > posting it. (BTW, Richard, you probably meant to post your message in > > the first place): > No, I didn't :) But since you responded here... > > > > > > > All I can say is that "we will ask you for a %-age of your future > > profit once you have your product ready for shipping" is a total deal > > breaker. > > That could be the case. But then here's another potential deal > breaker: you try to sell your product to a business. The business says > > "does this come with support?" You say "no, I was planning on taking > a vacation to Tahiti. If you have problems with the underlying Lisp, > just post your questions or bug reports on some newsgroup. Or you > could hire some bipolar Lisp hacker. Just check on comp.lang.lisp." > How many time does the problem of an application comes from Underlying Lisp rather than the application's own logic. > the business says "You wrote this code -- there are no questions about > whether it maybe contains code that is copyrighted by ATT, Microsoft, > Adobe, etc, and you will sign this contract to that effect.?" You say > "What the hey, this code comes from [whatever, GPL, LGPL, BSD, ...] open > source licensed. I can't say who wrote it!" > And I can be sure Franz did not violate any of them because I never see their source code, right? And nobody that uses Franz in commercial also use CL-PPCRE, CL-PDF, SLIME? And if you use Franz with those BSD/GPL licensed library then you don't have to be worried? > the business says, "Oh, about that Tahiti trip, who's your maintenance > person on 24-hour call." you say "Hey man, does a blackberry work in > Tahiti?" > This is quite nonsense. Your client never know, when a problem comes, whether it is your application's problem or the underlying Lisp's problem. So if a customer have a problem with a product (Your product X, not ACL or any Lisp) and cannot contact the you because you went to Tahiti, that is not a problem of using open-source Lisp, it is a problem of choosing the wrong shop. Are you saying that if reddit use ACL then the developer can go to Tahiti, not taking any call, and Franz will support any reddit issue for them? > vs. > > "A professional software company with a staff of experienced > programmers, 18 years in the business, is maintaining the lisp system." > or maybe even > "I have partnered with them and the key contact at Franz to answer > questions is X; if he is not there, someone else will pick it up." > > So now maybe you take a vacation in Atlantic City instead of Tahiti. > > > > > > I don't want to hire lawyers NOW to negotate with Franz when I'm just > > developing the product, and I don't want to get f*** (pardon my french) > > by Franz if I delay the negotiations until later. Score 1 for other > > alternatives. > > Seems to me that if you take a program that Franz sells for $X, make a > trivial addition to it, and then sell it for $Y where Y<X, then Franz > should have an interest in that... To the extent that a recipient of > your program can (by ignoring your contribution) have a complete version > of Allegro, isn't there a real problem? I thought ACL have something like EXE maker. And that it shakes the image and unused function from the distributed image. I never know that when ACL build a distributed EXE, it includes all the IDE inside. I thought that if I bought MSVC++ and sell a product call "start-up-vc.bat" which does nothing but start MSVC. And if I sells it for 1$ and distributed MSVC++ with them, I can still get sued from MS. And yet MS didn't charge MSVC per distributed app. To some extent, you are implying that any language that have "eval" should be licensed per package sold. As a matter of fact, if a interpreter can be written in a language such language implementation should be licensed per package sold, too. Right? If you are afraid of your customer cheat in such a way, why not put it in EULA? Get a lawyer to indicate what it means to sell product that, in some way, allow one to use devlopment features of ACL. And indicate that only such product require per-package distribution fees (well, disregarding those Allegro special feature that should reasonably be charged per package if used, like AllegroCache). You don't have to be afraid that they won't follow the EULA, since if they are not willing to, I think they willl cheat in all other ways anyway. > Now I haven't been following > all this stuff (like Reddit), but has someone come up with a rational > pricing strategy? (In my email to alex, I think I commented that I > doubted the market for lisp was very elastic -- elastic means if you > drop the price by 1/2, you'll get twice the sales or more, and thus more > revenue. My suspicion is that if you drop the price by 1/2 you'll get > about the same number of sales, and lose revenue. This is presumably > what marketing droids take polls about and maybe know about.) > > > > If I'm being unclear, image this situation: I'm Franz. You have naively > > developed a product using ACL, Allegro Cache, and other things that > > only I (Franz) can provide. > > You have two choices: pay whatever I ask you, or abandon the product > > (major rewrite included). As a business, I (Franz) will be inclined to > > ask you for just a little less than the cost of a major rewrite. > > Franz could certainly not ask you for more than a full license fee per > recipient, so that is an upper bound. And if your application included > full resources so the recipient could use your "product" instead of > buying ACL+Allegro Cache directly from Franz, there does seem to be that > problem! Your customer might even be in a situation of selling Lisp > in competition with Franz and for that matter, selling your product in > competition with you. How would you like that? > > > > Now if you are smart, you'll never get into this situation by either > > (1) Never using Franz (LW, CMUCL) or (2) negotating the distribution > > terms in advance (laywers, etc.). > > It seems to me that setting up a situation that limits Franz's exposure > and your exposure to someone ripping them or you off, is not a bad > idea. I do not know that lawyers are needed to negotiate this. If Franz > wants you to pay some fee for each copy of their lisp that you send to > someone else, it seems like a business cost, just like (say) rent. > [I assume that if you ship a lisp that is substantially "disabled" e.g. > without a compiler, without eval, without various tools, then this could > be relevant.] > What is to prevent your landlord raising your rent to be "just slightly > less than your cost of moving"? > > For most people (1) seems like a > > better alternative. > > That may be because they are not examining the total cost of ownership > and sales of software. What is supposed to be "free" may in reality > require substantial investment. (For example, in tech people, and legal > fees. Most free software comes without warranty, and so if someone like > SCO comes and sues you because you are using their code, it's your > problem, not the "vendor". And you have to hire a lawyer even if you > are innocent of wrongdoing.) > > As I pointed out to alex, in email to him, I am a stockholder/founder > of Franz, but I don't set pricing policies. I do know that "losing a > little on each sale, but making it up on the volume" doesn't work. > > > RJF > > Pisin Bootvong |