Thoughts on DCE and donations

I've been reading the Competition: The WINNER thread and have various
thoughts in response to what I've read.  For the record, I purchased a
copy of D5Pro as an upgrade to the D4 Value Edition that came in Ted
Bracht's book.  I have downloaded and played with DCE 6, but haven't
really used it yet.

At the time I purchased D5 Pro, I was working on a project that I was
getting paid for, and could therefore justify the expense.  I'm finished
with that project (for now), and am not really doing much Dolphin
development right now.  Anything I am doing, I do in D5 because in D6 I
miss tools like StS and the System Browser.  When I can justify the
expense, I'll upgrade to D6 Pro and start using it.

I am very aware of Object Arts' need to make money off this product so
that they and the product stay viable long-term.  I'm generally not in
the camp that believes that software should always be free.

So, my thoughts:

- I haven't made a donation.  My plan is to pay for D6 Pro when I can
justify it.  If I make a donation now, it'll take me longer to save the
money for the Pro license when I'm ready to do that.  Eric's idea of
using donations as a down-payment on a license is interesting.  I'm not
sure if that'd cause me to make a donation, but it would certainly make
me think more about it.

- When I try out a tool for possible adoption, I want to make sure it
can do everything I need it to before I pay for it.  In the specific
case of Dolphin, if you want to attract users of other tools and
languages, they're going to need to see that they can replace what
they're using now.  If they're using VB, they're going to want to make
sure their ActiveX controls and such work in it (so I disagree with
Chris' suggestion that it be a Pro feature).  Ideally, they're going to
want to build an EXE and see how that works, which argues for including
Lagoon.  So, I guess my more general point is:

- The more full-featured the CE edition can be, the better.  VisualWorks
has a fully-functional non-commercial version (the only limitation being
that you don't get the VM sources).  Their license is pretty strict
about what you can and can't do with it.  If DCE 6 was more
fully-featured, I'd likely be using it for my play stuff instead of my
older D5 Pro version.  I don't know how much of a problem Cincom has
with people using the NC version improperly, and I can see that it might
be more of a problem with Dolphin.  I understand if Andy and Blair don't
want to go this direction.

- If I'm trying out a new piece of software, the more annoying it is in
terms of nagging, etc., the less likely it is that I'll be willing to
get past the nagging and really see what the tool can do.  I'd much
rather have it not nag me, but to know up front what I can and can't do
with the trial version.  That way, I can really try out the tool and get
to know it.  If I like it, and want to use it for my ultimate purpose,
then I know where the line is, and when I'm ready to cross the line I
buy the license.

All in all, this is a hard problem.  A lot of developers believe that
development tools should be free.  And there's a lot of piracy out
there, so if DCE had everything in it, there might be less Pro licenses
sold.  On the other had, a fully-featured and non-nagging trial
version/DCE might attract more developers who would eventually buy licenses.

Randy
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Randy Coulman
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