At 08:31 AM 12/1/96 -0800, you wrote:
>At 12:05 AM 12/1/96 -0500, David B. Smith wrote:
>>But that's not the question. You have two different customers, buying
>>exactly the same product. One is paying less money. The other is
>>paying more money for the same product, -because- they also paid more
>>money for hardware, more money for connections to the Net, and so on.
>>But the product is -exactly- the same. Why should the customer who more
>>heavily uses the product subsidise the smaller user?
>
>They're NOT buying anything. They're licensing a solution to a problem.
>--
>ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG
>2215-R Market Street #576 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF
>"There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick
>
They are indeed buying something. They are buying a license.
I have some serious dificulty with the concept of paying more for the two
versions of the same thing if the only difference is some internal limit on
its functionality. There is precedent for this though. Many software houses
do essentially the same thing. The most notable is Microsoft. Windows NT -
4.0 is sold as a Workstation package and a Server package. The Server
package has a bunch of "free" stuff included, costs about 2 1/2 times as
much and is *EXACTLY* the same as Workstation. The only difference is two
Register settings which can be changed if you know how. Release 3.51 was
easier to change but MS figured that one out and hid the settings.
At least Listserv offers three versions which are, in great measure,
different from one another and have different capacities for sending mail.
They apparently aren't numerically limited capacities but algorithmic
differences
I find the idea of paying more for a product simply because of *MY* use of
it troublesome, however. Should I pay more for my personal stock management
software because I have $25 million in stocks and bonds and my neighbor less
because he only has $25,000? I think not. (Those are, by the way, the last
known words of Descartes.)
It's been a good discussion though.
Best to all.
Dave Bigham
dbigham@cantec.com
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