Re: BK is *evil* corporate software

Henning Schmiedehausen
2002-10-10T08:04:11Z

On Thu, 2002-10-10 at 01:50, David S. Miller wrote:
> From: "Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@intermeta.de>
> Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 23:34:25 +0000 (UTC)
>
> For the vast number of three to five developers enterprises, it's
> simply unreasonably priced.
>
> Larry is trying to tell you that BK isn't for you.
> It costs too much to support small numbers of groups
> which is why he can't price it the way you want.

Guess what,

I did understand this in Larrys' mail. I didn't need you to figure it
out for me. :-)

But I didn't know this when we first asked for a price quote about six
month ago. I found no boiler plate sign saying "we're going for the big
guys. If you don't have a yearly cash flow well into seven figures, go
away".

BitMover Inc. pushes its lead product (which seems to be quite nice,
unfortunately it's not for _us_) aggressivly into the market by tackling
the 2nd most successful open source product ever [1]: the Linux Kernel.

I'd guess that 90% of the Linux kernel developers are either individuals
(and I count people like you or Alan still as "individuals", though
you're working for bigger companies. Is RedHat using bk internally on a
regular base?) or working for very small companies which develop a
specific part of the kernel (Driver, network protocol, name it) which is
needed in a product based on Linux.

So there is a discrepancy that is a thorn at least in my side: If I do
"fun work" on the Linux Kernel, I get to play with the "big boys' tools"
but I must not use them in my daily-bread work. (BTW: There I use CVS).

What I envision (Larry, are you listening?) would be a sort of "small
company license". Let's say "three to five seats, not expandable, if you
need a bigger license, you have to pay the full step up to the regular
bk prices even for the first seats" with a limited support (or support
contract at additional costs) for one version on one unix platform [2]
from a limited choice (Let's say Linux, BSD). Bundle this at about Euro
1k. Now you can whine about "you tailored a license just for yourself".
Right. Selfish me :-)

One point that BitMover shouldn't underestimate is the "familiarity with
tools". All of our developers came with "CVS pre-knowledge". So we
didn't have to train them from the start; we showed them the tools and
they were set. If you get a larger user base using bk, you IMHO would
get a "grass roots movement" into bigger companies.

BTW: Anyone using bk for Java development?

Regards
Henning

[1] #1 is IMHO still the GNU C Compiler suite.

[2] Everyone who can afford Windows XP Professional edition for five
developers can pay bk regular pricing too. :-)

--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH hps@intermeta.de

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