Thursday October 21, 2004 Bricking Up Windows
Reflecting on Microsoft's apparently canny decision to continue to treat multiple processors as one if they happen to be in the same package, Tim Bray asserts what I have been saying for a while in my keynotes, that pricing software per-CPU is doomed. In a massively connected world (where "the network is the computer"), why should pricing be based on an arbitrary element from the ephemera of implementation? Pricing per-CPU is as relevant as pricing per-Mb-memory or per-square-foot-of-machine-room or per-watt-consumed. The closest historical analogue is the Window Tax, which merely led to people bricking up their windows or using shutters.
Reading around I notice Jeff Nolan of SAP commenting on Tim's view and getting the wrong end of the stick about the idea behind Sun's pricing model. He says:
Of course, this doesn't work very well when you don't know who is using your software, as may be the case with many enterprise apps that aspire to deploy throughout the supply chain and have occasional users (trading partners?). This also doesn't work when your application is a service without an end-user client application
On the contrary, it's exactly the way to handle both sets of circumstances. Why should a software vendor have the right to get inside your business, instrument it and then monitor its activity? Sun's model for both Java Desktop System and for Java Enterprise System is to charge a fee based on the number of employees in the company or unit deploying the software, without reference to the purpose it's being applied to. Once you've paid you have an infinite right-to-use any and all the elements of the software package.
Stephen O'Grady at RedMonk says that licensing today is far more complicated than it needs to be, and goes on to hint that open source is another pressure on software pricing. I'd point out that per-employee pricing and publishing-style packaging are the perfect way to price the value-added delivery of open source - that's why Sun is pioneering it. I expect to see plenty of people copying the idea over time. It's a good job someone committed to defensive use of patents rather than a patent aggressor has patented it...
Posted by webmink
( Oct 21 2004, 09:01:40 AM PDT )
Permalink
