Hefty new fees?

[Ben Rubinstein]

on 22/8/03 3:21 pm, Shari wrote

> According to the licensing info on the RunRev website, to purchase a
> license that allows you to develop on multiple platforms would cost
> $1200, with renewals of $400 per year.  But what happens if you do
> not renew every year?  Is it $1200 again?  That's how it appears.
[... snip ...]
> I have Metacard installed on three platforms, ONLY because I've
> discovered that the anomalies from platform to platform, are nearly
> impossible to deal with unless you can fix them on the offending
> platform directly.

Shari,

I don't know the answer to your specific question (how soon after the expiry
of a license do you have to renew in order to get 'renewal price' rather
than 'new price'?) and I agree it would be helpful if RunRev could clarify
their policy on this.  However, one observation that might be useful to you:
for any given platform, the difference between "Express" and "Enterprise" is
in-depth tech support, and access to Oracle.

If you primarily develop on one platform, but need to be able to fix
problems interactively on the others, with the pricing currently in force
each additional platform costs $75.  That's a special offer, but even with
the list prices, if you're not bothered about support or Oracle, you could
buy Studio for one platform, and Express for two others, for $399+$199+$199
= $800.   Renewals of these (at current prices) would be $49+$20+$20 = $90.

Of course on this basis, the only point of Studio is convenience, to build
for all three platforms simultaneously rather than having to do it on each.
If you were willing to forego this, you could even go with Express on each
platform, so purchase from new would be $600 for three platforms, renewal at
current rates $60.  Those prices seem a lot more attractive.

If I were you, I'd definitely consider going down something like this route.
Especially noting that often a version other than the latest might be
perfectly acceptable for your use (fixing a bug) on secondary platforms; if
you always built on your primary platform, you might not need to always keep
the secondary ones up up to date, only when the bug you were fixing was
affected by the difference between versions.

The RunRev people are very charming; I'd be surprised if they weren't
willing to let you renew from one version of Enterprise to a newer version
of Studio, if that made sense for you (ie if you get a Enterprise upgrade
for a decent cost as cross-grade from MetaCard, then when that expires
prefer to switch down to Studio, you could probably choose to do so at the
Studio upgrade rate).

[Also note that the current special offer expires at the end of the month;
and the offer price to buy 2.0, plus listed upgrade price to 2.1, is less
than the price to buy after that date.]

HTH,
 
  Ben Rubinstein               |  Email: benr_mc at cogapp.com
  Cognitive Applications Ltd   |  Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
  http://www.cogapp.com        |  Fax  : +44 (0)1273-728866