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  • #16
    Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

    ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
    You know that old, often misunderstood saying: "The customer is always right". It doesn't mean that you can count on the customers always making the right decisions. It means that whatever your potential customers decide, as a whole, must be accepted. If they've decided not to buy your product, you have to accept that reality. Bob: You may well be right. Perhaps there's no good profitable market for RPG procedure libraries. As someone pointed out in another discussion, a commercial procedure library may well save some programmer some time, but that company still has to pay for the programmer who can develop comparable functionality in-house. I still remember the debates that went on in the early 1990's regarding OS/2, and how difficult it was for a company to sell OS/2 products. This discussion sounds very similar. The bottom line is that you have to support yourself and your family. No matter how you or anyone else feels about RPG, if you can't do that with RPG tools, then no one would have any right to complain if you decided to leave the RPG software market. Clearly, you have some tough decisions to make. But I don't think leaving the iSeries world altogether has to be on the table. RPG may not be where the action is, but there's a lot of interesting potential in other aspects of the system. You have clear strengths in education and training. Perhaps you just need to add more diverse technologies to your training menu. If more and more people are doing Java, you could provide training to help people integrate RPG and Java code? Or help people integrate RPG into the LAMP stack? (I think I suggested elsewhere that this approach might be the best way to keep RPG alive.) Anyways, I don't mean to tell you how to run your business. But perhaps you need to be a bit more pragmatic and temper your "RPG über Alles" approach? These days, there's a lot more to the iSeries than RPG. Cheers! Hans

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    • #17
      Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

      ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
      Bob, Could it be that there's just not a demand for your product? Maybe it's great, maybe everyone could use it, but it doesn't appear that they want it. Could it be that you misjudged what the consumers want? Can you tell me, for example, why I should buy your product? chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Bob Cozzi" wrote in message news:6b367870.10@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Hans, > I've tried all of the suggestions you've proposed. > In fact, I'm doing the last one now with iSockets--it is free except when > used in a commericial product. In that situation I charge a small, > one-time license fee. So far, I've had only two tire kickers and no > takers. Most iSeries software houses seem to think if they just tell their > customers to go out and get iSockets for free, they are no violating the > license agreement. > > I tried the give away thing with xTools. I initially offered it for no > charge for the first 10 months it was available, but told people that > upgrades would be at the normal maintenance fee prices. Had 4 takes on > that. > > I've tried lowering the price to what I think a small business should be > able to pay for out of petty cash ($295)--zero takers. > > I tried a higher price ($5995) and had two customer buy into it. > I tried the current pricing structure of tiered pricing around > $$995/1500/2000 based on processor group plus an 18% maintenance fee. Over > the last two years this has yielded an average of 1.5 units per month. > > In this space it seems we have a problem. > 1) Programmers personalize a software purchas until $20,000 to the point > where they will not approach the powers that be to suggest they get it for > their shop. Sure a shop will buy Synon for $40k+ and put it on the shelf, > but pay $1k for something most of the programming staff is going to use > regularly. Doesn't happen. > > 2) A decades old problem (related to the first issue) is the programmer > saying "Oh, I can spend a few days/weeks writing that myself, why pay > Cozzi for his software when I can get the company to pay me instead. Of > course they often do a poor job of it. > > So it looks like I have a couple of choices: > A) Leave the iSeries software market. > B) Charge $20,000+ for my software and hope to sell a dozen or two copies > each year. Of course, how'd that work out for IBM with iSeries development > software? Until they bundled everything together and effectively raised > the price of the RPG compiler, people were not buying the other stuff.

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      • #18
        Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

        ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
        tough crowd here. I would think function libraries would have to be sold as a service program object with the startup routine checking the serial number. rd

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        • #19
          Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

          ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
          You sell the rights for a company to redistribute your product. You charge them money and let them copy it and put it on other computers. You then want to restrict the use of this product to... what? Only certain programs? How do you identify WHICH programs can use your product? Can you please give me an example of your scheme working on any other operating system? I can't fathom the concept. In fact, the only way you could do it would be some sort of key that would be passed on every call to your routines, and any such key could easily be spoofed by any hacker with two working brain cells. Joe

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          • #20
            Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

            ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
            It's an interesting point. If a user buys a PC product, and also happens to have .NET what prevents that user from using DLLs or other objects in his/her own programs? Dave

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            • #21
              Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

              ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
              That's the problem with selling general purpose APIs. They are general purpose. Unless you actually provide application-specific value-add, it's all but impossible to prevent someone from using them. And they might in fact argue that once they buy the product that contains those APIs, they are in fact licensed to use them however they want, regardless of how the API author wants to restrict them. Remember, the end user never signed an agreement with the author of the APIs, they only signed an agreement (if that) with the reseller. Joe

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              • #22
                Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                Bob, there are several things working against anybody in the iSeries market. First, there are quite a few shops still running old applications. They don't want or need xTools, iSockets or your editor. They're quite happy with the 1985-era status quo. That limits the market a lot. Then you have the fact that RPG programmers work for... undercapitalised businesses. Companies buy and use iSeries because it's inexpensive to own, program and run. This mindset (cheap is good) permeates the iSeries market to the point where it is The Prime Consideration. Not time to market. Not quality. Not functionality. Cost. In this environment, programmers who want tools are routinely turned down strictly because of cost. They can't get approval for $99 books, either. Many manager-level types are former technical people. That means that when confronted with a 'build or buy' decision, they think how easy it would be to build, somehow forgetting (or not caring) how long it takes to build the thing to the level of production quality. Finally, you have the 'everything is free on the Internet' mentality. Support is free. Training is free. Software is free. Free as in beer. All that's left is some sort of value add for a company to bundle products on a CD and some consulting revenue for customising it to the customer's requirements. All of these issues conspire against an iSeries software vendor. I wish you luck. The PC market isn't much better, but I hear you can make it up in volume. --buck

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                • #23
                  Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                  ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                  Buck, Good analysis of the marketplace. I'd add one more category, the one my company is in. We have a lot of legacy apps, just as many other shops do. But we also do a lot of new development. However, that new development is almost never done directly in RPG on the iSeries, it's done in BCD's WebSmart. I'm sure that there are many shops that don't do new development in straight RPG, they use tools such as WebSmart, etc. and, therefore, don't have a need for RPG development tools. That's why I asked Bob to show me how I could use his tools. I wasn't being a wise guy by that comment, I just don't see a market for RPG subroutines and tools on the iSeries. chuck Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer. "Buck Calabro" wrote in message news:6b367870.17@WebX.WawyahGHajS... > Bob, there are several things working against anybody in the iSeries > market. First, there are quite a few shops still running old applications. > They don't want or need xTools, iSockets or your editor. They're quite > happy with the 1985-era status quo. That limits the market a lot. > > Then you have the fact that RPG programmers work for... undercapitalised > businesses. Companies buy and use iSeries because it's inexpensive to own, > program and run. This mindset (cheap is good) permeates the iSeries market > to the point where it is The Prime Consideration. Not time to market. Not > quality. Not functionality. Cost. In this environment, programmers who > want tools are routinely turned down strictly because of cost. They can't > get approval for $99 books, either. > > Many manager-level types are former technical people. That means that when > confronted with a 'build or buy' decision, they think how easy it would be > to build, somehow forgetting (or not caring) how long it takes to build > the thing to the level of production quality. > > Finally, you have the 'everything is free on the Internet' mentality. > Support is free. Training is free. Software is free. Free as in beer. All > that's left is some sort of value add for a company to bundle products on > a CD and some consulting revenue for customising it to the customer's > requirements. > > All of these issues conspire against an iSeries software vendor. > > I wish you luck. The PC market isn't much better, but I hear you can make > it up in volume. > --buck

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                  • #24
                    Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                    ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                    Bob, I have read your article and these posts... Hmmmm.... Sorry, but I am a little confused. What exactly is the problem? Are you requesting that IBM change the way a *SRVPGM operates? The very nature of a service program is to share all subprocedures that are exported. Even if they did, how would you restrict interfacing to it? The vendor (each vendor for that matter) would have to supply you with some type of specific module list so that you would allow the call to occur. Or the vendor would have to maintain some subprocedure API validation list on each customer's machine. How would they secure it? So your are back to something homegrown. I believe Joe P. hit the nail on the head. Curiously enough no one has responded to his questions. As Joe indicated, (see his posts) these are general purpose APIs. Also, if it is a "runtime", then why should it matter to you. Is that not what a runtime is? What if that customer already had your software before they buy software from the third party. How would you manage that? I do not know of any other OS that provides this type of fuctionality. If you are truly trying to avoid accidental or deliberate usage, then I would suggest you and the vendor use static binding. Since those vendors are in the software distribution business you could provide them with *MODULES (exclude source) and have them compile them into their programs. Yes, I realize it adds some complexity, but at least no one could use the code. Also a small comment. I find it interesting that people "jump" on the free software or free code bandwagon. It is not just about free!! I believe everyone and one time or another (some more than others) go to the Internet to search for ways to improve our code or jobs. In turn we help others and we provide code. So yes there is "free" code out there. Some of which do the things that your software does. All of us have shared code. The only thing the Internet has done is made it quicker to get to, thus people everywhere are aware of it. I am sure some of us remember keying in code from some AS/400 magazine... Maybe you could provide more detail on how you would manage this if you were IBM?

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                    • #25
                      Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                      ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                      Interesting discussion. I will provide my two cents from the iSeries software vendor perspective. 1.) We have product licensing per iSeries system. We wrote our own licensing mechanism and have used it since 1993 and it still works. We also can embed license calls into service programs when necessary. It is doable, although not a fun task. IBM also has licensing API's you can use if you really want to. 2.) If you want to sell products, you have to establish a need/demand and then spend a lot of time and effort marketing and selling those products. 3.) Haven't Brad Stone, Scott Klement, IBM and others already done Sockets and CGIDEV to death ? :-) It's possible that those things may be the reason you're not seeing a demand for your products. Hard to say without market research and marketing/selling. 4.) There is a market in my opinion for iSeries products and development tools, however they have to provide solid ROI or companies won't purchase them. We're constantly talking to customers and prospects about the why's of purchasing our software. With a solid ROI message your sales may improve. Just my thoughts :-) Regards, Richard Schoen RJS Software Systems Inc. "Providing Your....iNFORMATION NOW!" Email: richard@rjssoftware.com Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com Tel: (952) 898-3038 Fax: (952) 898-1781 Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT

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                      • #26
                        Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                        ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                        I don't know what Stone and Klement have to do with my point or my software... Nothing as far as I can tell. Certainly the iSockets thing is a simplified version of what Scott has done--however that is not he focue or point. iSockets is free so there's not issue with it. Brad's stuff? You mean CGIDEV2 from Mel Rothman? Certainly that is a big product, however my xTools only did a CGIDEV2-like *SRVPGM after IBM pulled CGIDEV2 for the 2nd or 3rd time. No addition charge for it either--I did it to stop the yo-yo availability of CGIDEV2 and to improve performance. RPG xTools - I want to simply restrict the runtime so that when an OEM software vendor uses it, their customer do not have the ability to compile/bind to xTools. But they can continue to use the OEM software. Other platforms that do this? Windows. Perhaps they just make hacking into it so obscure that 80% of techincal people can't or don't bother figuring it out. If I buy MS Visual Studio, I can buy 3rd party control add-ins. All of them are DLLs or whatever they call DLL's today. They have runtime and development licenses. They have redistributables and non-redist. We don't have this option on iSeries because any *SRVPGM can be bound to by anyone. All they need are the prototypes. The problem is not justifying the software to a third party, it is being able to prohibit an indirecty customer (a user of a 3rd party software package) from using xTools for their own development. Let's take DBU since everyone knows and pretty much owns that product. Suppose they came to me and said "Bob, we want to use your XYZ subprocedure in DBU." So in order for me to provide that level of capability so they could ship to all 10,000 customers, I'd have to potential for 10,000 iSeries shops running my stuff via DBU. Now say 2,000 of those shops decide they want to use a routine in xTools. There is NOTHING prohibitting any of the customers from using xTools in their own applications. If there were a runtime-only (i.e., no-bind allowed) attribute on the XTOOLS service program, I could charge the DBU folks a fair price, and they chould use xTools in their product.

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                        • #27
                          Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                          ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                          I don't see the difference between that and DLL's (which is what I have always compared service programs too anyway), Bob. In both you have to know the call parms or figure them out, and in both they can be restricted from running to a certain machine. Anything the DLL code does as far as checking the machine (files, registry, etc.) is equivalent to in concept but not as good as checking the serial number on the AS/400. Just my opinion as far as I know. Maybe I'm missing something. I remember modifying source code back in Windows 3.1 days to a Windows communications DLL they released code for to do some special stuff with scanners. And of course written DLL's for my own programs. I just don't see the difference at all in use, distribution, run time protection, etc, whatsoever with service programs. Even less protection in Windows across the board it would seem to me. rd

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                          • #28
                            Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying

                            ** This thread discusses the article: Piracy, Bootlegging, and Copying **
                            Maybe I'm missing something You're not. Service programs are equivalent to DLLs. There is no way to prohibit use of either. There are workarounds, but they require some forethought. Statically bound modules have been mentioned; that would be the most specific way. Another option would be to use the licensing APIs to prevent more than one concurrent use of a function, although that would mean that only one user of the third party program. One of the most specific ways is to create a service progrqam specific to the third party. Check the program stack and make sure a specific program is calling you. While not unhackable, it would certainly make life more difficult. Remember, the goal of licensing APIs isn't to stop hackers, it's to allow you to win lawsuits by proving the hacker knowingly circumvented the licensing agreement. Joe

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