On 2012-12-14, at 8:27 AM, midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
OK, and did that hurt IBM? Would they have been substantially (or
even noticeably) better off by charging extra for it back then?
A little history of tool pricing here to put things in context.
The predecessor of RDP and WDSC was a tool called Code/400 - it's arrival signalled the end of my usage of SEU. Originally burdened by being OS/2 only it was later ported to Windows. This was a chargeable product and had a lot of different prices - going ever lower - over the years. Adoption rate was slow but IBM were convinced that a better editor was needed and persevered.
A decision was made to bundle all of the AD tools and Code was included. Prior to that you purchased each compiler and the PDM/SEU tool set as separate items. The bundling was in part to encourage people to use a mixture of languages and to encourage the use of modern tools.
When the cost of maintaining/enhancing Code began to escalate the team decided to move to an Eclipse code base and WDSC was born. Like Code it was included in the base pricing.
By the time V6 came around (think that was the timeframe) IBM decided to unbundle the development tools and at the point of course started charging for WDSC. They had a lot of different reasons for doing this - I suspect one being that it was very difficult to track usage of the tool and therefore impossible to decide how many development $ should be spent on each tool.
I opposed this unbundling - BUT - I have since changed my mind. Turns out that once there was a price on the product a very large number of people became interested and usage absolutely rocketed. For years IBM didn't know how to persuade people to use the tool - tuns out charging for it realized what no previous method had achieved. Go figure.
Those already using the tool were justifiably a little annoyed but of course could continue with the version they had.
So why do IBM charge? Because (apparently) it was the only way to get RPGers to pay attention to the tool.
Jon Paris
www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com
midrange.com
