Activity overview
Latest activity by KristoferA
JasonBunting wrote:
No, that's not what I meant - I mean he worked with no promise of monetary recompense.
Maybe mr Roeder's strategy was to build a large enough user base and then cash in by selling it on to someone (e.g. Redgate, Microsoft, or someone else)..?
Lots of "free" or "community" things work that way; websites (e.g. stackoverflow.com ) are free but the investors of course plan to turn a profit somewhere down the line when they have enough userbase/content/reputation to fetch a good enough price.
Selling the entire product to a bigger fish is often the easiest way to cash in, e.g. stackoverflow.com will probably make money by selling the entire company [to MSFT, GOOG, AOL or someone else with a lot of dosh] when they're large enough. Their competitor ( experts-exchange.com ) instead charge access fees per user. Different business models, but the end goal is still the same: to make money, cover the investment and hopefully a bit more on top of that. / comments
JasonBunting wrote:
No, that's not what I meant - I mean he worked with no promise of monetary recompense.
Maybe mr Roeder's strategy was to build a large enough user base and then cash in by ...
kenro wrote:
KristoferA: I wonder what you feel if all browsers all of a sudden charge you with a nominal fee. You should even charge them for your support [image] on them making so much revenue.
Redgate is a [relatively] small company in a vertical industry (SQL & .net tools). Comparing them (around 200 employees or something?) to Microsoft (90k+) or Google (30k+?), or their products to browsers is a bit like comparing apples to aircraft carriers IMO. Two completely different things.
They already do a lot more community freebie stuff than most other comparable software companies. They provided Reflector for free for three years, they run community websites, they sponsor .net/SQL user groups and conferences etc. / comments
kenro wrote:
KristoferA: I wonder what you feel if all browsers all of a sudden charge you with a nominal fee. You should even charge them for your support on them making so much revenue.
Re...
kenro wrote:
KristoferA, in reality, RedGate has a lot of tools that are NOT offered for free. And in reality, not all softwares are being offered with a price.
Right. And I think farmers should stop charging for potatoes since they already make money from other crops. [image]
I think it is very kind of all those who spend their own time and money on providing free software with no strings attached, but the reality is that most people [and companies] do need to make money on things they spend a significant amount of time and/or money on.
Redgate showed their goodwill by providing Reflector for free for several years after their initial investment. Without knowing any details, I would expect that they were out (at least) a few hundred thousand from day one and that amount has probably grown if the premium version didn't sell enough copies to cover the cost of the support/maintenance/dev team.
If they have determined that they can not recover their costs without charging a nominal fee to end users then that is their decision. I have zero understanding for those who are up in arms over that decision, because making that decision is entirely up to the owner of the IP involved...
...and why should they suddenly change their business model from a per-user-fee to some fuzzy google-adwords-like thing? If they are set up to operate one way and that works, then it probably makes zero sense for them to change the way they operate. / comments
kenro wrote:
KristoferA, in reality, RedGate has a lot of tools that are NOT offered for free. And in reality, not all softwares are being offered with a price.
Right. And I think farmers sho...
JasonBunting wrote:
I mean, if Lutz could provide it for free for all of those years and not get one dime for it,
Are you claiming that Redgate didn't pay Lutz Roeder for Reflector?
I always thought they bought it from him. As in: they got the IP and he got $$$.
My [possibly incorrect] interpretation was that mr Roeder invested his time and money on developing Reflector, and then recovered his investment (and hopefully also made a bit of profit on it) by selling it to Redgate. But maybe I misinterpreted/misunderstood it all... / comments
JasonBunting wrote:
I mean, if Lutz could provide it for free for all of those years and not get one dime for it,
Are you claiming that Redgate didn't pay Lutz Roeder for Reflector?
I always t...
kenro wrote:
@... Roeder, if you are reading this, it would have been better to have this tool been turned over to open source. The open source community would have offered a lot to the improvement of this utility.
...and how would mr Roeder have been compensated for spending years and years on this tool if he had turned it 'open source'?
Or do you really think he should give away his investment (time, money, etc) for free?
I presume you work for free, kenro, but the reality is that most of the rest of the world don't. Bills don't pay themselves, supermarkets and gas stations don't give away their goods for free. Please explain to me why you think that Lutz Roeder or Redgate should give away their time/money/investment/IP for free, because I really don't get it... / comments
kenro wrote:
@... Roeder, if you are reading this, it would have been better to have this tool been turned over to open source. The open source community would have offered a lot to the improve...
I think you're forgetting something important: Lutz didn't give away his work for free.
If he wanted to do that, he could of course have released it as open source through codeplex or whatever. He didn't do that; he sold it to Redgate.
Instead of going through the hassle of charging each individual user, he charged Redgate for his work and left it to them to figure out how to charge the users. They tried freemium, and decided it didn't work so now they're trying a different licensing model.
I can imagine that both Mr Roeder and Redgate have invested a lot of time and money into this excellent tool. Isn't it fair that they get paid for their work/investment? I think it is. / comments
I think you're forgetting something important: Lutz didn't give away his work for free.
If he wanted to do that, he could of course have released it as open source through codeplex or whatever. He ...