Advice to Vendors of Enhancements for the Products I Use

I've been talking a lot lately with different various product teams and vendors of various products. I always end up saying a lot of the same things to these guys. So, to save some time in the future:

1. If it runs on someone else's framework, I am not interested (I don't care if it "integrates" with mine).
2. If it doesn't work with my tools, you better give me significantly better ones (keep in mind that if your existing tools were really significantly better, I would already be using them).
3. If it forces me to pay excessive royalties, I am not interested (by excessive I mean, why must I pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to redistribute your server side components, while the client side equivalents are always royalty free?).
4. If it forces me to pay any royalties, it better be pretty darn amazing.
5. If it forces me to pay any royalties, it better be something I can't write myself in two weeks.
6. If it costs me as much to use your product as it would take me to build the small portion of your product that I am actually going to use, I will just build it myself.
7. I am not interested in buying a "revolutionary" methodology (I already use the same proven methodologies that the rest of the world uses).
8. You have competitors. They want my business too, and maybe more than you do.

4 Comments

  • 1. Is there a specific benefit to you here or is this just thinly veiled .NET bigotry? If the former, please explain. If the latter, leave it be.



    2. Fair enough, except for the breathtakingly circular logic at the end.



    3. Microsoft collects hefty royalties from PC vendors on every unit shipped. Why do you get a free ride when someone else is trying to collect?



    4. If it's not worth it, don't buy it.



    5. Your ability to copy the work of someone else does not mean their innovation is of no value. And it certainly doesn't give you the right to do so. It's easy to say something is trivial and obvious when you haven't spent the long nights making all the hard choices that go into great design.



    6. Ditto.



    7. Then it isn't revolutionary now, is it?



    8. Duh.

  • How is this .NET bigotry? Third party vendors and their pros and cons happen everywhere... .NET, Delphi, *insert favorite framework here*, even if licensing fees aren't on the line with free or open source items there is still your time and code commitment, which in my experience always overshadow initial costs.



    I agree with every single point and would add one more: don't push your amazing support so hard, I'm buying this library/component/plug-in/widget anticipating it saving me time, not looking forward to hours dealing with support helping you work out issues, knowing how well oiled your support machine is a scary thought.



    The only company I've ever bought 3rd party items from and still felt I'd done myself a service when the project was over has been TurboPower, and they're now gone *bows head in silence*

  • 1. No need to swear. From most people mouths the expression "our framework" is somewhere between a blatant lie and wishful thinking.



    2. Tools? for working with the aforementioned "our framework".

    It works with Visual Studio.Net... if they can't afford a Studio, they can't afford components;)



    3. One time payment per domain.

    ...4,5. Write it in two weeks ?

    Conservative :$50 * 37hrs *2 - > $3700, I never would have thought.

    If it works at design time, and on localhost for free, is $100 / domain at lot to have it work in production?



    6. It is small, it only solves the problem it solves; orbital tracking is not included.



    7. If I had a revolutionary product, I would be out changing the world with it.

    I did build a templating system for asp.net (UITemplates.Net) , but it will be redundant with Whidbey.

    It solved the templating problem and everything worked, if you can't wait for MasterPages, mine works now.

    If I were a salesman instead of a coder, I would still be going on about how great it is.



    8. Competitors?

    I am not trying to sell you a scrollable, pageable,curseable, hierarchal DittoGrid.

    I had master-pages equivalent solution before master-pages and I have a solution for localization of asp.net applications coming up next. Not quite as easy as the WindowsForms "instant" localization, but you will feel like you are in control.







    $50/ hour for your time is probably pretty conservative....

    I'm a programmer at heart, I like to write code that solves problems, so that I have to write less of the mundane code, so I can spend time writing code that solves problems.

    Even with some base class methods to help, people have been ( are still ) writing FirstNameLabel.Text = GetString("FirstNameLabel"), it is tedious, error prone and time-consuming.





    I've been thinking about comercializing some components, but the sales aspect is daunting...

  • "localhost is free" does me absolutely no good at all. I don't develop from nor on localhost. I have a development server that all development is done on, a desktop that all development is done from. Then the aspx, config, and dll files are moved to the production server.

Comments have been disabled for this content.