Re: Ada vendors and the art of selling used cars

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:
> 
> It's more like a "no profit is better than a small loss". Single-copy
> prices either have to be very high, or there is a high probably of 
> more  support costs than the money coming in.
> 
> RRS is facing this problem with the support on Claw. Claw is several
> times more expensive to support than Janus/Ada is (probably because of
> the difference between a strong standard and no standard...). We're
> going to have to raise the support prices to the point where it will
> really not be accessible to the small project. I hate this, but we 
> can't leak money just to promote Ada...
> 

It's curious that the high-volume software houses do not give free 
support, last I checked, other than installation support.  They are
happy to give support at $95/call, $95/incident, $4.95/minute or 
whatever.  And, I suppose, most of their customers have no need to
call.  

[Some of the vendors (one of the checkbook/accounting programs, I think)
price the software as a loss leader to make money on the $'s/minute
support calls]

Maybe it takes high-volume to get the product to be reliable enough
regardless of all the variations in conditions of use that prevail 
(ie different configurations of the customers' hardware and software)
so that sales without support is relatively likely to give the customer 
good satisfaction.  And maybe the Ada market is too small to support
that kind of product.  


Al