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Can't understand software company logic

2007-07-31 14:30:56

(Score:5, Interesting)

by Simonetta (207550) on Tuesday July 31, @12:44PM (#20059267)

I simply can't understand software company logic. They sell a 'product', that

is, a cardboard box containing a disk and a book. A few years later they sell

more or less the same product (a disk and a book in a cardboard box) with a few

changes. But they won't reduce the cost of the previous product. They simply

refuse to sell or allow anyone else to sell the previous product at a reduced

rate. It makes no sense and no other business (or at least any business that

actually makes things) works like this.

Company BozoTron makes Bozo-XKE, a software program that does, well, something.

They release version 1.0 and it sells a few at $299 a box. Two years later,

they release super-improved Bozo-XKE v2.0 (which does nothing more than muck up

the user interface that all their customers took so long to learn, and fix a

few bugs). It sells for $379 a box. But you can't buy the old version 1.0 at

$100. And the owners of v1.0 can't sell their software for $100 to someone else

and have BozoTron continue their support with the new owner. Some software

companies might do this, but not BozoTron. You also can't split the v1.0

package and sell one part of it to a company (that will only use that section

of the software, and doesn't need the rest of the package) for $50.

So absurd and insane. The only reasonable thing to do is just make copies of

XKE and use them however you like. Which drives BozoTron nuts. But that

wouldn't be happening if they were a reasonable company with a reasonable

marketing plan to begin with. But they aren't, they're a software company, a

fantasy business, a virtual corp that only works as long a people agree to

continue to give them money.

Now I realize that this goes against everything that the Slashdot community

believes in and threatens your livelihood, such that it is, but the only true

value in software is what wealth it can create when applied to other economic

resources. In itself, software is worthless. Its only value is when it's

applied to other techniques, processes, and materials and increases the ability

of those other techniques, processes, and materials to make money.

So indeed, if XP is making you money and the cost of going to Vista is going to

cost you more money than XP is making for you, then nobody is going to switch

to Vista. Microsoft should franchise their old operating systems. Let some

other company buy a support license from Microsoft to be the people who adapt

and fix the bugs in Windows 98 and continue to support it in its various

business environments. They are fools for expecting people to abandon old OS

installs and go to unproven alternatives. That used to work for the first

twenty-five years of the office PC, but it's beginning to change. People are

beginning to realize that their corporate PC needs don't match Microsoft's

corporate expansion needs. It used to be that what was good for Microsoft was

good for the rest of the corporate community. Now that basic symbionic

relationship is splitting. This would be good for the Linux community, but they

are too splintered for reliable corporate support. It would be good for Apple,

but they took too much LSD and it still shows with their obsession with flashy

expensive electronic trinkets instead of rugged flexible low-cost computing

systems. Eventually someone else will step up to fill the needs that Microsoft

used to be able to do before they lost their way.