Progress policies
I must disagree with certain implications of your comments. Policies in general are enforced with what might be called "RATIONALIZED" thought.
Synical huh? Progress has completely "rationalized" these policies. Whether they are considerate of their customer base or not is certainly debatable.
And I say NO they are not considerate.
Having implemented a "Pro-Active" upgrade policy program back in the '80s for a highly successful CAD/CAM development house I know from experience what will work and what is detrimental to business. Who said Progress was in business for any "good will" and considered future on-going business at all. It's a "get it while you can" attitude towards its customer base that will cause an exedous.
I sometimes wonder if the customer service representatives at Progress are on full commission. - What a thought! I understand that some of their support personnel were independents at one time.
I believe you will find that per user M$ upgrades remain more costly than those of Progress but not by much any more. PSC (like so many others before them) is unfortunately following the MS$ path.
I say:
If having purchased the source code to an application a company should be able to migrate it to any platform desired without penalty. Media charges only for those on Maintenance Contracts. Pro-Rated fees for those whose Maintenance has ended and wish to renew. That's a fair policy - its just the $$ values that get in the way.
Doug2 said:
I am convinced Progress policies in general are enforced without any rational thought about any future on-going business relationships with ISVs or end-users.
As someone else hinted at, they are there to keep PSC milking their established sales channels / user base and providing PSC the maximum short term income stream AND perhaps are driven by salesmen / account managers who have their stake in commissions.
The policies are overly complex, and are contradictory in several places.
I have now come to realise you first need to understand the implications of their different policies and then pick the ones which best suit your upgrade needs.
If you don't Progress will, and will more than likely cause bad-will between you & your end-users / finance department & kill a project (or future business) !. That is how bad their policies are.
(Dare I say corporate America & gouging in the same sentence at this point ? - What the hell yes I may !)
Being 100% open / honest about what you are doing is not the way to do it as I have recently learned to my own dismay. Please read on - I am honest to a fault on software user licensing HOWEVER..... for example requesting a "patch" upgrade (without disclosing a reason) for a CLIENT network license on the same version is gratis whereas needing that patch upgrade to allow you to run on a newly exchanged / leased PC which just happens to have WinXP on it COSTS you additional monies besides the privelege you have of paying the16% annual maintenance fees.
Sure 16% & cost of a client license is not that much - HOWEVER consider a 30 site say 30 user per site installation, several of the licenses being Enterprise level... wouldn't it be far better customer service to realise that, & keep that end-user sweet so additional monies for other REAL platform changes or user license additions would be willingly given versus systems being artifically constricted / designed to avoid the "bad" policy items.
Currently I am unsure if Progress are worse than any of their competition, regarding upgrade pricing policy but I will certainly be looking into this.
If we all accept what we are told by a company that has thus far ignored feedback from many of us we will ALL be worse off in the future. I am a firm believer in "voting with my next purchase" & strategic choices of development tools / vendors DO affect the next purchase, and sure it doesn't hurt them over night but usually things like this come home to roost !.
Good luck to you all, and I hope your technical & commercial dealings with Progress are better than my recent ones.